Shein is an online retail company established in 2008 by Chris Xu in Guangzhou, China. It became fairly popular at the beginning of 2020 as word about it spread on the gen-z all time favorite app TikTok. It lured it’s customers with trendy and fashionable styles coming at extremely affordable prices and adding around 500 new products on a daily basis. However these accommodations came at a price. The products sold by Shein are usually of poor quality and moreover the designs are almost always stolen from other brands and designers, with no credit given, on which the company has been called out on multiple times.
As in the case of a small Instagram based business owner Bailey Prado, who shared a heartfelt post comparing her designs with products sold by Shein accusing them of copying her work. “The way Shein copied my whole life… There are over 20 of my designs that were directly copied (…) what is it going to take for fast fashion companies to stop stealing from small designers. I spend so many hours of my life designing and making everything by hand” she writes addressing her audience with the issue. Below you can see some side by side photos comparing the products, which indeed are almost identical.
Another ignored by Shein’s customers issue is the fact that the products sold by the company are made in factories and sweatshops with rather questionable working conditions ranging from low wages, little to no breaks and excruciating hours. Furthermore, even though Shein states on it’s website that it in no way affiliates with child labor, they take advantage of legislations passed in countries such as Bangladesh which enable children as young as 14 to work legally.
Thankfully, after multiple public voices started openly criticizing the company, a lot of the customers started boycotting Shein and leaning towards more trustworthy companies. Nevertheless, the change did not last long, as many people seem to have already forgotten or simply decided to ignore the concerns regarding Shein and returned to using the website.
The company made sure to make the public forget and fix it’s image by recently launching it’s SheinCares campaign. The program aims to draw focus to the issue of animal welfare through spreading information. In it’s spirit the company also pledged to donate $300 000 to foundations supporting animal welfare.
As it surely is a great and considerate idea we must not forget that the issues with Shein still stand, as they have done nothing to fix them. On the contrary, their company keeps growing with over 100% annual sales increase, which leads to opening more and more sweatshops, hiring more underpaid workers and producing more low quality products that contribute to fast fashion, as they are already ending up in thrift stores and in the garbage, only months after being bought. This truly puts the emphasis on fast in fast fashion. I’ll leave it to you to be the judge on this: Is the low price, really worth the bad quality, design theft, human toil and many others?
Ola Paprocka
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