Shein is bad for the planet and bad for humanity. They profit through exploitation; mostly of their workers (breaking even Chinese labour law), ripping off designs, dodgy marketing practices, skirting local tax laws and employing dark UI patterns. Their clothes are so low in price and quality that they are often worn once and thrown away. At $40B GMV they are bigger than most of their competitors combined; fast fashion on steroids, flying under the radar. Their mere existence is accelerating the destruction of the planet and feels like a distopian hell hole that won't be stopped.
It works something like this;
1. Somebody uploads a design they found (probably stole) and creates a piece of clothing
2. Somebody else with just a shred of desire clicks on a couple of buttons and pays $3.78
3. A Chinese sweat shop worker immediately picks up the order and creates the piece of clothing and gets paid $0.03 for the trouble (whilst working 18 hour days in leui of any breaks, weekends or holiday)
4. The clothes get air shipped across the world and delivered to the customer, skipping customs and taxes
5. The customer, who basically forgot they bought the clothes (it was after all purchased in a tiktok haze and didn't affect them much financially) trys on the item, takes a photo, and throws it in the closet
6. A year later it gets donated to charity, who assesses the quality and redirects it to landfill
(most of my information here has come from a documentary, "Inside the Shein Machine)
> Shein says it’s able to make affordable apparel by monitoring user behavior to predict customer demand and producing items in small quantities. The Chinese e-commerce company known for its $5 T-shirts and $20 cocktail dresses controls 40% of the fast-fashion market share in the U.S., with an estimated $8 billion in sales in the country last year. Shein’s inventory turnover rate is twice as fast as other competitor retailers such as H&M and Zara.
(the video also mentions "De minimis tax loophole" which I think another commentator here on HN mentioned)
$5 is not actually that cheap for a T-shirt. A branded Jack and Jones one costs 10€ here. Cheap crappy ones less than 5 and that's in the store. Though I never buy those because they're thin, always have a different fit and sometimes they give off colour in the wash. The J&Js don't even shrink at 90 degrees Celsius.
How can T-shirts be "current"? :) The design has not changed for 50 years or so.
Perhaps the colour but they are available in a super wide range anwyay (luckily, because Jack & Jones did only white, black and navy for a couple years).
You must not have any women in your life :) Every woman I know has been ordering tons of stuff from here for the last couple of years. Now I see many of them moving to Temu, and I would expect TikTok to overtake all of them within 12-24 months.
It makes me feel as if they're aggressively picking up where Forever 21 left off.
The Men's section looks like it would all be worn by the same dude (a certain British vegan chef with a goatee on YouTube).