As Sequoia Capital China-backed Shein nears a long-awaited IPO in the U.S., the hurdles it’s facing continue to stack up. The latest is the anticompetitive lawsuit that Chinese e-commerce platform Temu filed against the company just earlier this week, accusing Shein of orchestrating a “scheme” to block Temu’s growth in the U.S.
In the 100-page complaint, which was filed on Wednesday in a Washington, D.C. district court, Temu accused Shein of a whole number of anti-competitive practices, alleging that Shein “improperly seizes” its suppliers’ IP rights, sometimes without their knowledge, to prevent them from listing or selling similar products with Temu, and accusing Shein of “detaining merchant representatives” in its offices for “many hours” and threatening them with penalties for doing business with Temu, among other things, according to the court filings.
