Gen Zers Are Falling in Love With Fast-Fashion Brand Cider.

• Cider is an online fast-fashion brand growing in popularity with Gen Z women.
• The company raised $140 million from Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and Greenoaks Capital.
• The Cider app saw 2 million downloads in the US in the first half of 2022.

Kiandra Mondel visits the website of a clothing brand called Cider twice a week. She says her first objective is to browse the brand’s latest designs. Sometimes, she’s on the hunt for something specific like a formal dress. Other times, she looks for something more basic, like a simple white top.

Mondel, who’s 22 and from Costa Rica, has been conducting this ritual ever since she discovered the fast-fashion retailer. She says she also follows fashion bloggers who model clothes from Cider on TikTok and Instagram.

Since it launched in 2020, Cider has been vying for the attention of Gen Z women like Mondel.

The brand’s offerings range from $3 socks dotted with eggplants to $80 formal maxi dresses. Several self-proclaimed “Cider lovers” told Insider that they find the price points reasonable.

The brand has won approval with Gen Z customers by sourcing its designs directly from viral trends. Cider has tapped into Gen Z’s growing fixation on the “cottagecore” aesthetic, defined by floral fabrics, muted colors, ruffles, and lace. Videos listed under the search terms “cider haul cottage core” have racked up almost 11 billion views on TikTok. More recently, Cider has launched apparel based on trends like Barbiecore and fairy grunge.

Search “cider clothing” on TikTok and you’ll see a host of videos young women have uploaded. El Buckles, a creator on TikTok, posted a video called “what I ordered vs what it looks like,” that compares her recent purchases from Cider to images of the products on the brand’s website — Buckles appeared to be satisfied. The video has more than 170,000 likes. There are several similar videos on TikTok that range from positive to disappointed reviews of the brand’s clothes.

Between 2021 and 2022, TechCrunch reported that downloads of Cider’s mobile app jumped by 1,686%. In the first half of 2022, the app was downloaded more than 2 million times in the US, according to TechCrunch, which cited data from Sensor Tower, a market-intelligence firm.

‘In the footsteps of Shein’

Shein, which launched in 2012, showed the world that young people had deep pockets for fast fashion. Shein was valued at $100 billion at its most recent funding round in April 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal. Cider was last valued at $1 billion in September 2021, according to TechCrunch. Cider declined to comment on its valuation.

Chris Xu — a Chinese entrepreneur who dabbled in other e-commerce companies before launching Shein, according to The Guardian — founded the company. Cider told Insider that it is a “global brand” and has not publicly disclosed any of its founders, aside from Michael Wang. Wang also founded YCloset, a Chinese version of Rent the Runway.

Cider has a way to go before it matches Shein’s global footprint, but the two brands already share a handful of similarities. Both Shein and Cider have relied on TikTok to promote themselves to Gen Z women. The brands also leverage artificial-intelligence algorithms to source trends online and manufacture small batches of clothes based on those trends. According to a representative from Cider, the company “drops” those clothes on the site to gauge customer reaction and then adjusts production in real time.

Thanks to the startup’s success with Gen Z women, Cider has raised $140 million so far from well-known firms like Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, and Greenoaks Capital Partners, according to PitchBook. It’s unclear what Cider’s revenue looks like compared to Shein’s. Cider declined to share its revenue numbers, but Shein accumulated $16 billion in sales over the course of 2021, according to Bloomberg.

Connie Chan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz who led the firm’s investment in Cider, wrote about the similarities between Shein and Cider, noting that “Cider is following the footsteps of Shein and building a direct-from-factory marketplace to embrace the future of Real Time Retail.”

#cidergang

The buzz around Cider on social media is picking up.

Videos listed under the hashtag #cidergang — as the brand’s fans often refer to themselves— have more than a 100 million views on TikTok.

Like Mondel, 11 other Cider fans that Insider spoke to said they browse the site between two and five times a week. Many of them discovered the brand on TikTok last year and said they introduced their friends to Cider, too.

The investor Connie Chan said that Cider takes a different approach to curation than Shein. She wrote in a blog post: “The #cidergang is a global community of fashion-forward Gen Zers that expect tighter curation, higher quality, and an accessible price point.”

Molly Kirby, a 22-year old Delaware native now living in Germany, bought her first items from Cider in July after browsing the site for two years.

Kirby said she’s struggled her whole life to find trendy “plus-size” clothes. She said she would thrift or try plus-size retailers like Lane Bryant or Torrid — neither of which catered to younger customers.

Shein also carries plus-size clothing, but Kirby said she has qualms about buying clothes from the company. She believes Shein markets itself on a premise its clothes are high quality, cheap, and quickly produced. She said it’s hard for her to believe that any company can ethically make clothes that meet all three conditions.

Kirby admitted that she’s not entirely sure how Cider produces its clothes, but the brand reeled her in with its designs, quality, and price point.

Cider’s prices tend to be a bit higher than Shein’s prices. A one-shoulder midi-dress from Cider is $20 while a similar dress on Shein is just $4. A purple sweater vest from Cider is around $28 while a similar vest is $13 on Shein.

“The prettiest clothing I own is from Cider,” Kirby said, adding that she’s willing to pay a little more for them.