Since they dont seem exclusive or unique, consumers are wary about getting duped into paying more than they should. Get the Guardians award-winning long reads sent direct to you every Saturday morning, Fashion's dirty secret: how sexual assault took hold in jeans factories, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images, How Shein beat Amazon at its own game and reinvented fast fashion, ast year, Julia King, a 20-year-old art student and, hein is now one of the worlds largest fashion companies, but little is known about its origins. This suggests that while some suppliers are offering the same products on multiple websites, apparel factories in China are also extremely adept at mimicking one another and adapting to the same trends. here is a downside to Shein working with so many different factories at the same time: similar products are popping up all over the internet. Its impossible to go to work from nine to five. (The factory where they work doesnt supply for Shein, but does manufacture clothes for other foreign brands and for sale on AliExpress.). Through its manufacturing partners on the ground in China, Shein churns out and tests thousands of different items simultaneously. In turn, Amazon was able to undercut the prices of its competitors, and by 2020, 40% of its third-party sellers were based in China. It is possible that a typical university student could get started designing quickly, and the output could be high.. Last year, Julia King, a 20-year-old art student and influencer from Texas, noticed that a particular kind of sweater vest was taking over the internet. thank u so much for buying from me <3 stay safe, Mudah.mySdn Bhd [200701024583 (782603-V)]a Carousell Group company. In November, Shein appointed a global head of environmental and social governance, and the company told Rest of World, Plaid Cotton Knitted Vest Elastic V-neck Sweater Crop. Garment workers in Chinas eastern Jiangsu province. Eventually, retailers began using their own product photos, but that didnt make the experience any less surreal. Whereas Zara typically asks manufacturers to turn around minimum orders of 2,000 items in 30 days, Shein asks for as few as 100 products in as little as 10 days. Sheins fast growth has brought with it a series of controversies. Over the past decade, thousands of Chinese clothing manufacturers have begun selling directly to international consumers online, bypassing retailers that traditionally sourced their products from the country. It calls the system a large-scale automated test and re-order (LATR) model. Online shopping in the country has evolved into a form of entertainment, featuring livestreamers, flash sales and enticing pop-ups that compel consumers to scroll through the newest products. But a month or so later, King received a message from one of her Instagram followers. There were similar differences, subtle but noticeable, between two cherry-print cardigans from Shein and AliExpress. It unites them with proprietary internal management software that collects near-instant feedback about which items are hits or misses, which allows Shein to order new inventory virtually on demand. (A spokesperson for Shein denied it ever sold wedding dresses, but declined to specify other details about its history.) A knitting machine operator at a factory in the city of Zhejiang told Rest of World that, in Chinas garment sector, working overtime is a certainty. The company has become a poster child for the energy-intensive fast-fashion sector, which has become notorious for making goods with hazardous chemicals that quickly end up in landfills and oceans. Once your Amazon storage is out of stock [in the US], you have to replenish it from China, which is time-consuming.. It can also avoid directly managing inventory for almost any of the products it sells, minimising the amount of goods sitting unbought in warehouses. ByteDance, meanwhile, is hiring for dozens of jobs related to international e-commerce, and a crop of other Chinese firms are trying to claim their own slice of the market, too. The requirements are kind of high, he said. Seeing the pictures of me up on some random fast-fashion website Id never heard of before made me really upset, King said. But Shein isnt chasing catwalk trends rather, it often knocks off items seen on TikTok and Instagram, where hype cycles move significantly faster. But alongside that is a question: is it a norm that the clothing industry wants? The company says its founder, Chris Xu, was born in China, though a since-deleted press release described him as being from the US. Its the second-most popular fashion website in the world after Macys.com. Lin said he feels positive about what Shein has done for Chinese apparel sellers. The activity implies that the cycle of ultra-fast-fashion will only keep ticking up in speed and volume, as long as consumers continue to willingly buy into micro-trends and discard them just as quickly. Its engineers. - Size 3XL but M-sized fit (oversized fashion) But Shein didnt just try to compete with Amazon: it joined it. Between July and December of 2021, it added anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 individual styles to its app each day, according to data collected in the course of Rest of Worlds investigations. But the partnership between Amazon and Chinese manufacturers eventually began to sour. I just keep thinking: where does this end?. HUGE DISCOUNT Shein realised that and decided to optimise it.. Replicas of the vest soon began popping up on countless other clothing sites and e-commerce marketplaces, including Amazon, AliExpress, Walmart and Shein. Amazons activity in China may have inadvertently contributed to Sheins success. Because they know the bulk of what they buy is coming from China, many people, understandably, assume that similar items originated from the same factories. As Chinese sellers joined the platform, western consumers were flooded with thousands of new brands selling basic goods, from kitchen supplies to electronics chargers, under unfamiliar names like Nertpow, Fretree and BSTOEM. These forums are the natural outcome of an online shopping ecosystem that has made international consumers more aware of the Chinese companies making their clothes. But Shein is totally different. From January to October of 2021, Lus research found the company offered more than 20 times as many new items as Zara and H&M. But Shein does not have high design requirements. It was founded in 2012 under the name SheInside, and reportedly began by selling wedding dresses abroad from its first headquarters in the Chinese city of Nanjing. A polished advertising operation is layered over the top, run from Sheins head offices in Guangzhou. Many of the sellers werent entirely happy with Amazon either, which required them to abide by an ever-shifting set of policies, and to pay hefty fees for services such as warehousing and order fulfilment. Theyve built a lot of loyalty from their suppliers, so they can have more urgency on their orders, she said. Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here. Fast fashion is well known for its very frequent replenishment of products, said Sheng Lu, a professor at the University of Delaware studying the global textile and apparel industry. (Shein declined to say whether the sales or valuation figures were accurate.). Shein has poured significant funds into Google and Facebook advertising campaigns, influencer deals, and even its own social-media reality show co-hosted by Khlo Kardashian. Lin Zhen is a Chinese clothing manufacturer and the head of the largest organisation of Amazon sellers in Fujian, one of Chinas main garment-producing provinces. Designs are commissioned through the software some original, others picked from the factories existing products. At the heart of these issues is Sheins aggressive business model. Shein is now one of the worlds largest fashion companies, but little is known about its origins. all went well & smooth!! Do we really need more companies like Shein? Receive your order as listed or get your money back. Capitalising on this shift are companies such as Shein: the most successful, well-known and well-funded online retailer of its kind. But a pair of yellow platform clogs from Shop-Pche a clothing brand with a website saying it was founded in New York were indistinguishable from their AliExpress equivalent. Many of these companies are leveraging data to forecast what items they should produce, said Lu, from the University of Delaware. The duplicated products are often brandless basics such as T-shirts, or knockoffs of items from independent labels and major fashion houses. Rui Ma, founder of the investment consulting firm Tech Buzz China and contributing columnist for Rest of World, said that Alibaba could leverage its existing e-commerce expertise for the project, but its not clear how much it will be prioritised. Rest of World, a non-profit, tech-focused journalism outlet based in New York, spent six months investigating this new ecosystem, speaking with manufacturers, collecting social media and product data, making test buys and interviewing shoppers and industry experts in China and the US. It was multiplying, almost of its own accord, in the factories of Chinas swelling ultra-fast-fashion industry. Heart-print jeans from Cider and AliExpress differed in material and stitching. The secret is Sheins internal software, which connects its entire business, from design to delivery. Starting around 2013, the e-commerce giant began aggressively recruiting manufacturers in the country to sell cheap products abroad on its third-party marketplace. reason to sell: Been eyeing on another cardigan instead of this one. Among the test buys were two sweater vests, both marketed using Julia Kings Depop photo: one from Amazon and one from AliExpress. Because some suppliers such as Lin sell through multiple channels, consumers have complained on social media about seeing the same clothes appear on Shein, AliExpress, Amazon and stand-alone e-commerce sites, all at different prices. Using herself as a model, King paired it with jeans and a Dior bag, snapped a picture, and listed it for $22 on Depop, an eBay-like resellers app favoured by gen Z. Several experts expressed concerns about the models long-term prospects. Taobao, a domestic Chinese e-commerce platform owned by Alibaba, helped pioneer interactive features such as custom product recommendations, and even built a miniature social network into its app. Since they dont seem exclusive or unique, consumers are wary about getting duped into paying more than they should. The company confirmed that it starts by ordering a small batch of each garment, often a few dozen pieces, and then waits to see how buyers respond. But alongside that is a question: is it a norm that the clothing industry wants? While the items were often extremely similar, most werent carbon copies. On social media, the company has partnered with countless micro-celebrities, fashion bloggers and reality show contestants, who show off deliveries of trendy clothes in haul videos posted to TikTok and Instagram. Shein brought that style [of shopping] to the west, and it really works with Gen Z, she said. In June, the company accounted for 28% of all fast-fashion sales in the US almost as much as H&M and Zara combined. Sheins software-driven model allows it to remain at arms length from the labour force actually making the products on its platform. - only worn ONCE to TRY A vest that had started as a one-off vintage find was now available for anyone to buy, and often for an even lower price. Celebrities including Bella Hadid had been photographed wearing shrunken, argyle-patterned styles, channelling classic 1990s movies like Clueless during a wave of millennium-era nostalgia. A spokesperson for Shein declined to say much about the software, but said the company invests heavily in training, technology and IT support to help our suppliers become more efficient and profitable. Soon, King found the perfect example in a secondhand shop: a child-sized pink-and-red knitted vest that fit tightly and cropped on an adult. As with many fashion trends, it had been plucked from social media and dropped into the frenzied machine of the global e-commerce market. If the cropped sweater vest is a hit, Shein orders more. Click Buy to place an order. - DM for details (eg: close-up photo) In May, the company became the most popular shopping app in the US on Android and iOS, and, the same month, topped the iOS rankings in more than 50 other countries. Comparisons to fast-fashion giants such as H&M miss the point: its more like Amazon, operating a sprawling online marketplace that brings together about 6,000 Chinese clothing factories. He has sold clothing to consumers in Europe and North America directly since 2011, long before they learned to buy everything from mattresses to toothpaste on Instagram. Then there are brands like Cider, a Hong Kong-based e-commerce clothing brand backed by the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Over time, the image of Kings torso would be altered, warping her body shape; at one point, another persons manicured hand was awkwardly Photoshopped on to it. -on hand In October, Alibaba which pioneered the Taobao-style of shopping that Shein originally learned from launched its own shopping site for North America and Europe, called AllyLikes. The same month, a report circulated that Shein was worth more than $47bn, making it one of the tech industrys most valuable private startups. In emailed comments, Shein said the company takes all supply chain matters seriously and is fully committed to upholding high labour standards. Sheins clothes arent intended for Chinese customers, but are destined for export. In September 2021, Rest of World ordered five clothing pieces from different shopping sites (Cider, Shein, Amazon, Halara and Shop-Pche), and what looked like imitations of the same products on AliExpress. Over the summer, when a $16 crisscross crop top from Amazon went viral, TikTok users began pointing out that it was available for only $13 on Shein and as low as $3.83 on AliExpress. The company offers thousands of its own products on Amazons marketplace, including some that have become bestsellers. The duplicated products are often brandless basics such as T-shirts, or knockoffs of items from independent labels and major fashion houses. (The former settled for an undisclosed sum, and Shein said it doesnt comment on ongoing litigation). Theyre spending truckloads of money trying to capture consumers who are searching for products, said Cooper Smith, an e-commerce and fashion industry analyst who previously worked as the head of Amazon intelligence at Gartner. Receiving timely payments is a huge problem for factories in China, said Malmsten, the market analyst. After watching the companys rapid rise, major Chinese tech giants and newer startups are now racing to imitate it. Each of Sheins suppliers gets their own account on the platform. It was founded in 2012 under the name SheInside, and, in Zhen is a Chinese clothing manufacturer and the head of the largest organisation of Amazon sellers in Fujian, one of Chinas main garment-producing provinces. A big brand might need a very high-end designer, or a designer with top technology, and even then may only be able to produce 20 or 30 styles a month, said Lin. Like all the manufacturing industries in China, the number of employees working overtime is basically already saturated, said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous because they werent authorised to speak about their job publicly. The results of that reporting reveal how Chinese apparel makers have evolved to cater to the desires of internet-native consumers and transformed their consumption habits in the process. For years, European brands such as Zara and H&M have embodied fast fashion, shortening the route from catwalk to shop window from months to weeks. They alerted her to the fact that an obscure, now defunct Chinese shopping site called Preguy was using her photo to sell its own cheap reproduction of the thrift-store vest. Engineers looking at data.. Equipped with English-language social media profiles, Amazon seller accounts, and access to nimble garment supply chains, they have fuelled the acceleration of trends and flooded closets everywhere with a wave of impossibly cheap clothes. You can see the current sales, and then it will tell you to stock up more if you sell well, and what you need to do if you dont sell well. Rather than mimicking Amazon directly, Shein grew by bringing traits of Chinas gamified e-commerce market to the rest of the world. Amazon whet the palate for online shopping, taught [Americans] how to shop online, and created the habit, said Allison Malmsten, a China market analyst at Daxue Consulting in Hong Kong. It added that it takes immediate action if it identifies that a supplier isnt adhering to its code of conduct. (RM16 OFF) SHEIN plus heart button drop shoulder cardigan, Fast reply Today, Lins clothing company, Xiamen Ouchengsheng, known as OCS, earns nearly $100m in annual overseas sales, he told Rest of World. Sheins approach appears to be paying off: in August, its website had 150 million visitors, 40% of whom came via search, according to Similarweb, compared with 4% of Zaras.