Trendsi converts Utah moms into influencers
Sherwin Xia, co-founder of Trendsi, on building the Shein for Utah moms
Trendsi started with sellers who looked more like commission driven retail operators than classic internet creators. The early wedge was women who already knew how to move product, often through boutiques or MLM style sales, but lacked easy access to inventory and fulfillment. Trendsi gave them a way to test fashion, ship from a warehouse instead of a basement, and gradually turn selling skill into an audience business on TikTok and Whatnot.
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This is different from the multi product creator model on Beacons, Patreon, or Kajabi, where the creator usually starts with content and then adds merch, courses, tips, or memberships. Trendsi began with people whose first product was physical commerce, not media, and who used social platforms mainly to find buyers.
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The practical workflow was unusually offline. Many early customers drove to LA wholesalers, bought apparel in bulk, stored it at home, and packed orders themselves. Trendsi replaced that with drop shipping, quality control, branding, and later wholesale and custom manufacturing, which made it possible for a solo seller to behave more like a small brand.
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That customer mix also explains why Trendsi focused on sales first and influencer partnerships later. Professional creators protect their feed quality and treat merchandise as a side business, while sales focused moms post more aggressively and depend on conversion. In China live commerce has shown the same pattern, where trained sellers often outperform celebrity traffic for steady GMV.
The next phase is convergence. As social shopping grows, more of these sales first merchants will add creator behaviors, while established creators will add more commerce SKUs. The winning platforms will be the ones that combine audience building with the boring work underneath, inventory, fulfillment, and product development, so a seller can graduate into a brand without changing systems.