Opinion
The next Shein could start as a small business no one has heard of yet
According to Tal Niego-Yassur, Founder and CEO of ehouse, "The next SHEIN may already exist today as a small online store that no one beyond its customer base has heard of. But the bigger story is that thousands of businesses do not need to become SHEIN to benefit from the same transformation."
SHEIN’s Hong Kong IPO naturally draws attention to the big numbers: nearly $42 billion in annual revenue, hundreds of millions of customers, and operations across more than 160 countries and regions. But behind those figures lies an equally compelling story about how global commerce businesses are built today.
SHEIN did not become a global giant simply by selling inexpensive clothing. It built an infrastructure that connects demand, inventory, suppliers, logistics and data, allowing the company to respond almost in real time to what consumers want.
For small businesses, SHEIN’s model may seem like a different universe. Yet many of the capabilities once reserved for companies of its scale are becoming accessible to almost any entrepreneur. A small business can launch a global online store within days, connect to external warehousing and shipping networks, manage thousands of orders through software, and use AI to create content, analyze customer behavior and optimize marketing. The gap between a five-person business and a company with hundreds of employees has not disappeared, but the ability of a small team to operate with the capabilities of a much larger organization has changed dramatically.
I see this shift most clearly among businesses selling physical products. For years, capital and attention flowed primarily toward software startups, while entrepreneurs selling products online were left to deal with inventory, packaging, returns, couriers and customer service themselves. Technology is finally beginning to close that infrastructure gap.
This does not mean that every small Shopify store will become the next SHEIN, nor should every entrepreneur aspire to. A profitable business generating several million dollars in revenue, employing a small team and providing its owner with financial independence can be a major success in its own right. But this ecosystem is also where brands with the potential to become much larger companies are emerging.
The earliest signs are not necessarily follower counts or rapid revenue growth. More interesting are businesses with strong repeat purchase rates, products that solve a clear need, margins that leave room to invest in growth, and demand that does not depend entirely on constantly increasing advertising spend.
Sometimes, you find an excellent product and a loyal customer community backed by spreadsheets, manually managed inventory and a living room that has turned into a warehouse. That gap can itself be a sign of potential: demand is already there, but the infrastructure has yet to catch up.
AI is likely to accelerate this trend. It is rapidly lowering the cost of activities that once required multiple employees or external providers, from creative production and customer service to data analysis and localization for different markets. At the same time, external infrastructure allows businesses to access warehousing, picking, packing, distribution and management systems without having to build everything themselves.
But SHEIN also offers an important warning. Part of its model was built around the ability to ship low-cost products directly from China to consumers around the world. Changes to tariff policies in the U.S. and Europe have eroded that advantage. In the first quarter of 2026, the company’s growth slowed to 1.1%, while U.S. revenue fell 14%. Even an extraordinarily efficient machine can become vulnerable when it is optimized for only one set of market conditions.
That may be the most important lesson for today’s small e-commerce businesses. They do not need to replicate SHEIN, nor do they necessarily need to dream of becoming SHEIN. Their advantage lies precisely in their ability to move quickly and remain flexible: testing a new product without building a factory, switching suppliers, entering a new market or changing their shipping model without having to restructure an entire organization.
The next SHEIN may already exist today as a small online store that no one beyond its customer base has heard of. But the bigger story is that thousands of businesses do not need to become SHEIN to benefit from the same transformation. As technology, AI and enterprise-grade infrastructure become accessible to small businesses, size is no longer a prerequisite for operating at scale, and that may prove to be the next major shift in ecommerce.
Tal Niego-Yassur is Founder and CEO of ehouse.
