Shein has opened a 737,000-square-foot automated distribution center in Lebanon, Indiana, about 1.5 miles from the Whitestown facility it built in 2022.
The Lebanon facility uses a goods-to-person system that brings products to worker stations instead of sending employees to the shelves. Between the two Indiana sites, Shein now runs more than 2.5 million square feet of fulfillment space in the state. The company expects to add hundreds of jobs there as the facility ramps up, on top of the more than 1,300 people it already employs in Indiana.
Rival Temu is making the same move, expanding its own domestic fulfillment to work around the trade rules squeezing cross-border shipping. Both companies have run a version of this play in Europe already, routing parcels through Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland to soften the EU’s new per-parcel duty.
In Vietnam, Shein has cut its logistics hub outside Ho Chi Minh City from about 37 acres to about 15 since April, laying off most of the staff, reported Reuters. Its chief executive has pledged more than $1.5 billion for supply chain infrastructure in Guangdong province instead.
