Chris Xu was born in 1984 in the Chinese province of Shandong. He graduated from Qingdao University of Science and Technology in 2007 and moved to Nanjing to work for an integrated marketing consulting company, Nanjing Aodao Information Technology Co, in 2008, where he specialized in SEO.
After learning about the commercial value of selling Chinese goods to international markets at a markup, he left the company and began working on building an online retail store for cheap items with two co-founders.
During that time, Xu discovered that wedding dresses were one of the most highly-sought products from international markets. According to QQ news, once Xu realized that the only thing stopping international customers from buying products was currency conversion, he 'vanished' with his entire SEO team.
Using the money earned from selling wedding dresses, he began focusing on building SheInside, now known as SHEIN.
