Shein founder Sky Xu has put on weight.
Several people close to Xu remarked on the change ahead of Shein’s IPO. The entrepreneur who built one of the world’s largest cross-border fashion businesses has kept such a low profile that, for years, people joked that “there were no photos of him.” In some of the few early reports about Xu, “slender” was among the recurring descriptions.
Some people familiar with him said he has stepped back somewhat from Shein’s day-to-day operations over the past year. Others attributed his changed appearance to the pressure surrounding the company. One person offered a simpler explanation: it “may just be the middle-aged fate of a Shandong man.”
For years, outsiders tended to describe Xu with a familiar set of words: low-key, smart, pragmatic, and self-made. In interviews with 36Kr, however, people around him increasingly reached for another vocabulary to describe the latter half of his entrepreneurial journey: “exhausting,” “carrying a heavy burden,” and “mixed emotions.”
The shift mirrors what has happened to Shein itself.
