Everlane, one of the early direct-to-consumer darlings, was reportedly sold to Shein by majority owner L Catteron over the weekend.

The deal, first reported by Puck, is worth $100 million and will help cover Everlane’s reported $90 million debt. Everlane and Shein have not publicly issued a statement on the reported deal. Users quickly took to social media to point out the hypocrisy and irony of Everlane selling out to the biggest name in fast fashion. Everlane, founded in 2011, built its brand on the idea of “radical transparency.” It disclosed exactly how much it took to produce each item and where its items were manufactured. In 2012, it even shut down its website to protest the “excess” of Black Friday — though it has since changed course, and for years now, Everlane has participated in the tentpole retail event.

But Everlane’s fire sale is also the latest nail in the coffin of the DTC 1.0 era from the 2010s. In April, Allbirds — whose annual sales declined from $277.47 million in 2021 to $189.8 million in 2024 — sold off its brand assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million. The publicly-traded company then quickly announced it was pivoting to AI computing infrastructure, renaming itself NewBirdAI in the process.

Everlane’s sale to Shein is another nail in the coffin for millennial DTC brands