No ooh la la for Shein
FRANCE: LAWMAKERS SET TO CURB FAST FASHION EXCESSES
With jaw-droppingly low prices and a seemingly endless selection of trendy clothes, Shein has taken the world by storm – and found itself in the crosshairs of French lawmakers who want to curb the excesses of fast fashion.
Customers love the Chinese-founded firm’s massive catalogue of ultra-cheap items, from $8 (about R50) sundresses to 48-cent bracelets, at a time when inflation has shrunk purchasing power around the world.
Like H&M and Zara, Shein has been accused of using factories staffed by underpaid and overworked garment makers, and of causing widespread harm to the environment.
Critics also accuse the company of promoting hyperconsumerism and selling clothes designed to be discarded after a few wears – a charge also levelled at its rivals.
But what sets Shein apart, analysts say, is a hyper-efficient supply chain and product development process.
“In theory, Bangladesh could probably sell garments for cheaper than Shein. However there’s no ecosystem there to market it, to brand it, to sell it overseas, to ship it,” Allison Malmsten, China market analyst at Beijing-based Daxue Consulting, told AFP.
“China has all of these elements.”
Shein moved its headquarters to Singapore between 2021 and 2022 to dodge increasing global scrutiny of Chinese firms, according to analysts.
Still, it benefits from China’s unique combination of a massive low-cost textile manufacturing industry with highly developed e-commerce technology and logistics networks.
That ecosystem has also spawned the online shopping app Temu – while it is frequently compared to Shein, it acts as more of a discounted Amazon-like marketplace offering third-party home goods, tools and gadgets.
Shein offered an astounding 1.5 million different apparel items for sale last year, according to research by University of Delaware fashion expert Sheng Lu – far surpassing pioneering Spanish fast-fashion brand Zara, which stocked 40 000 styles.
While such a large variety usually comes with huge risk and production costs, Shein reported $23 billion in revenue and $800 million in net profit in 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The only reason Shein is able to get away with this is because they have very little waste in their warehouse,” Rui Ma, China business expert and founder of the Tech Buzz China newsletter, said.
“By testing and producing new products in small initial batches of 100 to 200 items, we gather and evaluate customer feedback in real time and restock only the products that our consumers truly want,” Shein said, adding that this avoided “the pitfalls of overproduction”. –