Donald Tang: How SHEIN Got So Big So Fast - The Fastest Growing Company in History | E1208

If you want, uh, your business to thrive on a global scale, you have to become a local community business. In Great Britain, you wanna be a UK company. You wanna be part of the fabric. You don't wanna be a, some company parachuting in just making money. That's not the kind of a trend anymore.

You are profitable, you are growing insanely fast, customers love the products, why IPO?

We wanted to embrace public diligence. We're operating in more than 150 countries. Once you're a public company, transparency is no longer an option. It is a responsibility. It is a requirement.

Ready to go? Donald, I am so excited for this. I've been looking forward to this one for a long time, so thank you so much for joining me.

Well, thank you for having me.

Now, I would love to start, I heard that you worked in a series of restaurants to finance your education in the early days. Can you just talk to me about that? Where was it? How old were you? What did you learn from those early days?

I was 17. I was lo- I was love-struck. I came to United States to chase a girl and I had no place to live. Well, that, that's the gist of it.

(laughs)

So went to a, a restaurant to beg for a job, and I succeeded. And I washed the dishes, and I bussed tables, and I waited on the tables. But I wasn't very good at it because my English was terrible. I persisted and I continued to climb the ladder to become assistant manager. So that was my career. It was a pretty good one. It was in Santa Ana and I got shot at. But that trained me to be tough and resilient. But that was one of the early experience or experiences that I had.

I mean, I, I was not expecting that. That was not in the research. Um, can I ask you, when you look back to that time now, I think, a lot of the time, we look at incredibly successful people and we say, "They were kind of always destined for that." When you were working in a restaurant, a busboy, climbing that ladder, did you always know that you'd be successful?

The definition of successful or success for success, um, is situation dependent or personal. It, it, it's very personal. You know, for me, I just wanted to be with the girl I love. That was success. If I can survive and continue on that path, that's great. I, I never really thought about making money or anything else.

How has the definition of success changed for you?

Oh, it's the same. Every day, you live your life happily, that's a success. I don't need a lot.

And so then how does the first job in finance come to be? 'Cause you have this incredible career at Bear Stearns, you know, like, 15 years, uh, you were chairman and president of Bear Stearns International. How did the job at Bear happen and how do you get into finance?