Burnout: The Aftermath of the Shein-pocalypse
Words by Keyona Fazli, Writer.
It really is the era of throwbacks, with more and more people on social media re-living the early to mid 2010s by making haul videos. What was once on YouTube in the 2010s is now increasingly more fast-paced and far more easily accessible through TikTok. But this nostalgia for dredging up the past has some dangerous consequences.
As the UK’s most popular haul video brand on TikTok, Shein has amassed over 18 billion views for #shein.The Chinese brand prides itself on offering extremely affordable clothing, mainly for women, trading in over 220 countries. Much of the sudden rise in shopping, hauls, and micro-trends comes from the mass online deliveries during lockdown. We all know that feeling of compulsion, of wanting to order new things to make up for the fact that we couldn’t leave our tiny flats on Bell Street, flats without gardens or balconies. Just me? Okay. It comes, then, as no surprise that Shein amassed over $10 billion in revenue in the pandemic of 2020 alone. Currently valued at $30 billion, the company seems to be rapidly growing in size, unshaken by its controversies of trademark disputes, human rights violations, and health and safety regulations.
Shein’s focus on algorithm-driven data has led to high-profile breaches. After making statements of corporate solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, had to apologise for selling a phone case that showcased a Black person in handcuffs being outlined in chalk. Furthermore, in 2020, Shein had to retract a necklace with the Swastika symbol as well as their marketing of Muslim prayer mats as home décor. In a company so large with such large levels of fashion output, it becomes clear that they are unable to track the inventory of what they sell. It is simply too much to handle, which is why it leads to such botch-ups.
An article from Bloomberg Bussinessweek looked into the rather suspicious nature of Shein and its background. Shein offers almost no information to customers about its origins; those interested in finding more information about where Shein sources its materials, how one might find employment opportunities there, or even where their headquarters is, are left in the dark. Even more suspicious is the extent of Shein’s immense success. Indeed, the trade-war era change to China’s tax code dramatically reduced costs for the company and its suppliers, which means they are able to undercut their global competition. As trade relations between China and the US were deteriorating, China responded to the new round of tariffs by waiving export taxes for direct-to-consumer companies, leaving them in the ideal position as their cheap products benefited from the $800 customs level. This resulted in the company’s sales nearly doubling between 2018 and 2019, jumping again in 2020 and 2021 due to the global lockdown measures. To this day, Shein does not pay export taxes on most of its products, an advantage that places them well ahead of rivals such as ASOS and Zara.
This information on Shein, is not however, my focus. Drawing you attention to TikTok ‘trends’ once again, the impact of the anti-haul movement must be acknowledged. The Shein-pocalpse, if you will, which was an attack on Shein and other fast fashion brands, placing an emphasis on the almost slave labour rates of 7 cents a day for garment workers and the heaps of environmental garbage generated through clothing returns and discarded garments. As it is cheaper for companies such as Shein to discard items that have been returned by consumers, this means brand new clothes end up in landfill mines, further polluting the environment with materials consisting mainly of polyester, a material that can take anywhere from 20 to 200 years to decompose. The anti-haul movement highlighted these atrocities and provided information to the uninformed, dominating ‘For You’ pages. While this did raise questions about Shein as a company, in reality it has not truly made much of a dent in the company’s profits. It has, after a few short months of broadcasting, fallen back into the shadows, another discussion that is long forgotten in the grand schemes of the capitalist agenda. Though the issues remain, the so-called hype around cancelling fast fashion companies has vanished.
It is also important to consider that many of you may have concerns about the privilege bias involved with telling people not to buy cheap clothes. To set the record straight, my issue is with the overconsumption of fast fashion: the £500, £1000, and even £3000 hauls, the expenditure of sums of money that confirm the person making these hauls has little regard for the welfare of the garment workers and environment, though they – clearly – have enough money to spend in a more ethical way. To those who simply cannot afford to do so, this article is not directed at you. This article seeks to call out the privilege and sheer disregard for what social media has been promoting about the negative cost of fast fashion.
At the current stage we are in, the aftermath of the Shein-pocalypse – a time in which there is no longer outpouring information about the consequences of fast fashion – we must begin to question if we really are deluding ourselves into thinking that there can be a win against such an industry. Gunning for one of its biggest companies, while these exposés on TikTok have promoted the truth about the human rights violations and severe environmental impact Shein has had, we are left almost certain that with their buyer ratings and wide profit margin, there is no stopping the capitalist train, no matter how much havoc it may wreak. We are burning out, the momentum is slowing, and the algorithm is no longer on our side. Shein’s recent successes place the company in uncharted territory. Unable to know if it will continue to expand outside the pandemic, with the easing of restrictions and people free to shop in physical stores again, we must wonder whether online retail will retain its appeal once consumers start to move around again.
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[1] 11/12/21 Statistics
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-14/online-fashion-giant-shein-emerged-from-china-thanks-to-donald-trump-s-trade-war