The company ships orders to its customers directly, mostly from one 16 million square foot warehouse on the outskirts of Guangzhou. It has accelerated the “test and repeat” model, made famous by the likes of H&M and Zara owner Inditex. The Covid crisis provided the company with a sales boost, says Richard Lim, chief executive of independent consultancy Retail Economics.
The brand advertised on daytime television shows in the US, and fashion influencers showcased Shein products and hauls alongside other retailers, like Fashion Nova and Zaful. It was, however, the retailer’s early use of TikTok and ability to market viral products that skyrocketed Shein’s popularity. In fact, it has cemented its reputation among regular people, particularly Gen Z shoppers, who promote the brand through unsponsored clothing hauls and outfit posts on social media.
As Wired reported, the brand sends free clothes to influencers, who then make content featuring the items they receive — some of which become the famous Shein hauls — and offer discount codes to their followers, from which they often receive a commission. Shein is a huge name on social media, but there is a lot of information and history regarding the brand that most influencers aren’t mentioning. Before you consider adding another fitted mini skirt or crop top to your Shein cart, you should know a few things. The Chinese apparel market is extremely competitive, and Shein’s priority from the beginning has been to export goods abroad. China began waiving export taxes for direct-to-consumer companies in 2018 after the US imposed more tariffs, Bloomberg reported.
Is Shein’s speediness ethical?
Yet Shein’s emergence as a fast fashion juggernaut can’t solely be attributed to the price of its clothing or its ubiquitous internet presence. The retailer is also nowhere to be found in the physical world — at least not in brick-and-mortar stores, although it has previously hosted in-person pop-up events. Shein appeared to have sprung out of thin air into the mainstream, unlike fast fashion’s old guards, whose spacious, brightly lit stores were proof of their dominance. Yet, Shein is so far ahead of competitors like H&M, Zara, and Asos, according to an analysis by Apptopia, that it’s difficult to compare them. Although the firm has paid out more than $1m (£741,000) to independent designers to date, Twitter still sees complaints from smaller businesses. Some claim that Shein has allegedly copied their designs and sold similar items at a lower cost.
In what author and Chinese technology expert Matthew Brennan has branded “real-time retail”, smaller companies along its supply chain are fed information from its in-house tools on what’s trending or how well certain products are performing. The company has benefited from viral marketing that is especially popular with gen-Z on social media, Winder says. The popular #SheinHaul tag on TikTok and Instagram sees thousands of teens and young adults act as influencers for the brand https://www.forex-world.net/ as they share what came in their latest bulk order. The company is well-known on apps such as TikTok and Instagram, where generation Z shoppers will show off their #SheinHaul — a collection of clothes ordered from the online-only retailer at deeply discounted prices. I’ve previously written about how the fashion industry is one of the world’s most resource-intensive sectors, even though there is no official research that fully summarizes fashion’s environmental impact.
“As a global company, Shein takes visibility across our entire supply chain seriously,” the company told Global News. A 2022 Bloomberg report found that Shein’s garments contained cotton linked to China’s Xinjiang region. Rights groups and governments have accused China of forced labour and internment of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority, in Xinjiang. A spokesperson for Shein reached out after publishing to note that, according to internal polling from February 2022, most customers surveyed reported wearing items they’ve purchased from the company more than once. The Chinese brand insists that its method of producing clothes in small batches is more efficient and that little goes to waste.
Before Shopping At Shein Again, Here’s Everything You Need To Know
It’s able to place very small initial orders with these factories, about 100 or even smaller.” These batches were much smaller than Zara’s and that of ultra-fast fashion retailers like Boohoo, which reportedly ordered about 300 to 500 units per style. If a specific top goes viral overnight on TikTok, for example, Shein will be able to instantaneously ramp up production on the garment and place additional orders depending on demand. These comments usually appear on videos of Shein hauls or styling videos, in which users try to shame well-off creators for buying from a purportedly unethical company. To be clear, there is no evidence that Shein employs children or produces an unsafe labor environment, but the company has not publicly disclosed workers’ wages or hours. In August, Reuters reported that Shein has yet to disclose information about its working conditions and supply chain to the British government, which the retailer is required to do under UK law.
- That means Shein is constantly gathering and analyzing customer data and uses that knowledge to craft new designs — within as little as three days.
- With Shein’s prices being so low, it’s probably not surprising that the quality of its products is generally not the best.
- Shein had also previously falsely stated on its website that its factories were certified by international labor standard bodies, according to Reuters.
Leconte says that the idea of ordering clothes and wearing them for a single event before getting rid of them has become the “norm” for many today. Observers of the retail and fashion industries have started to pay closer attention to Shein in recent years. Founded in China in 2008 by entrepreneur Chris Xu and now based in Singapore, Shein has taken the fashion world by storm.
Intellectual property infringement
Designers have told outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and the Guardian that Shein has allegedly ripped off their work. Shein has spent years cultivating relationships with Chinese garment factories and manufacturers, whereas most Western brands generally outsource this work. Inditex is similarly situated close to a garment production center in the northeast region of Spain, but according to Brennan, business in China moves much faster. It’s a huge challenge, with the fashion https://www.investorynews.com/ industry accounting for up to 8% of global carbon emissions, according to one UN study. Shein X, the retailer’s tutorial programme, recently ran a competition for young designers with a $100,000 (£74,227) prize and fashion collection on offer in a bid to boost its credentials. A senior Shein executive told the BBC that it also has a team reviewing new designs by its suppliers before they reach the website, to try to filter out any infringement issues, which it takes seriously.
Anti-modern slavery reporting
While venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs tout Shein as the future of fashion, the company’s rise didn’t occur in a vacuum. Its success is predicated on a confluence of factors, from geopolitical trade policies to a decades-old, disaggregated global fashion ecosystem. Shein was recently described as “manipulative” by web design agency Rouge Media, which identified eight prompts on its website encouraging shoppers to spend more money or give away personal data in exchange for discounts or reward points.
It wasn’t until 2014 that Shein began to acquire its own supply chain system, transforming itself into a fully integrated retailer. By 2015, the company had shortened its domain name to Shein, a move that reportedly made the brand more memorable and searchable for shoppers. Yet, prior to these https://www.dowjonesanalysis.com/ major changes in 2014, the company had a decent online presence and enough customers to expand its operations. It was an early adopter of social media marketing, partnering with fashion bloggers for giveaways and promoting products on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest as far back as 2012.
The retailer was started in Nanjing, a province in China, by entrepreneur Chris Xu, who specialized in search engine optimization marketing. Xu has yet to publicly express any interest in women’s fashion or clothing design (granted, it doesn’t seem like he has done many interviews in English); his expertise lies in SEO and brand marketing, key factors that have contributed to Shein’s online popularity. Its customer base, retail analyst Emily Salter says, are “quite contradictory shoppers” overall, with Gen Z more willing to buy second-hand and rent clothing, but also making up the core of fast fashion brands like Shein that have come under intense scrutiny. In January 2021, after repeatedly being accused of ripping off independent designers, Shein launched Shein X, a program intended to “inspire and support young designers to chase their dreams,” according to the company’s website.
At Vox, we believe that clarity is power, and that power shouldn’t only be available to those who can afford to pay. Millions rely on Vox’s clear, high-quality journalism to understand the forces shaping today’s world. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Shein said it did not fund or approve the ads and it was committed to “upholding high labour standards”. Eventually, she also snapped up homeware, joggers and even got her mum into shopping on the website.