Shin to name Claure, a former SoftBank executive, to lead the Latin American business

SoftBank 9984 Mr. Claure -0.32%

Chief Operating Officer and company founder Masayoshi Son is known for his role in handling issues related to Japanese conglomerate investments, including recent CEO WeWork. Inc.

and Sprint. He left SoftBank in January 2022 after a dispute over billions in compensation. He served as CEO of Sprint from 2014 to 2018.

Mr. Claure is the founder and CEO of investment firm Claure Group.

Schein and a spokesman for Mr. Claure did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Operating in over 150 countries and offering value apparel and beyond, Shin has grown to become one of the world’s top online retailers, rivaling Inditex. S.A

Zara and H&M Heins and Moritz AB

Shin’s appointment of Mr. Claure will help oversee the company’s operations and strategy in Latin America, and is part of its efforts to expand its reach to suppliers and partners in the region, with a primary focus on Brazil and Mexico, the people said. .

Part of Mr. Claure’s focus is on building supply chains in Brazil and the region by partnering with local businesses and manufacturers, he said.

In the year Founded in 2012 in Nanjing, China’s Jiangsu province, Shein will move its global headquarters to Singapore in 2021 and has increased its headcount in the city-state from five people to 100 as of late last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Shen is diversifying its supply chain and building an on-the-ground presence in markets around the world to reduce its heavy reliance on Chinese suppliers. The company started production in Turkey last year and is operating warehouses in Poland to serve customers in Western Europe, the Journal reported. A Schein executive said last year that it plans to build three large distribution centers in the US.

Shin has a large network of over 3,000 suppliers in China’s Guangdong province.

During his time at Softbank, Mr. Claure worked to turn around companies in which the company invested, such as WeWork. SoftBank in 2010 He had a controlling stake in WeWork, a co-working office company that collapsed after its 2019 IPO attempt failed. Mr. Claure then led WeWork to its IPO in October 2021 as executive chairman.

Shein has faced questions in the US over allegations that she used cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, where officials are accused of abducting the Uyghur Muslim population. The company said in a December note to investors that it has no suppliers in Xinjiang and follows US policy on listing Uighurs as part of the Mandatory Labor Protection Act.

Shein operates on an on-demand manufacturing model that uses proprietary software to control production in real-time. The company measures customer preferences and interests using algorithms that include sales, application and other data.

Write to Keith Zhai at keith.zhai@wsj.com