A light blue denim dress for 35.49 euros. A pouch bag for 11.99 euros. A fine rib top for 5.99 euros. This is a glimpse of what’s on offer at Shein’s pop-up shop opening today on Tauentzien, the Chinese online retailer that once again advertises lower prices on its website.
There you can find clothes from as little as 6.50 euros, bags from 3 euros and tops from just under 4 euros – before discount and sale campaigns, mind you. Everyone can imagine what this seemingly grotesque pricing means not only for the quality of the goods, but also for the production and working conditions behind it. Or not?
Shein is one of the most difficult companies to value in the global fashion industry right now. This also becomes clear on Thursday evening (March 23) before the pop-up opening, which was reserved for a journalistic specialist audience. Good news right away: topics of sustainability and pricing were at least not completely ignored in a panel discussion.
Do I need this ? Whether there are efforts to encourage conscious buying behavior was not discussed.Imago
The corporate credo of the company with its headquarters in Guangzhou, China, which the European boss Cui He and the head of global communications, Peter Day, mantrically prayed down in the stage talk – they want to make fashion and beauty “accessible to everyone” – seems a bit euphemistically . And yet Day provides an explanation for the dumping prices that should at least puzzle even experienced experts.
The highly technology- and AI-driven company calculates its production quantities in the most realistic and flexible way possible. In contrast to what is usual in industry, large quantities of individual parts are not produced here in the hope of getting rid of them. Instead, Shein only has small quantities of each design made – Day speaks of “100 to 200 pieces” – which are then offered on the website.
Low prices should be achieved by avoiding overproduction
The technology should then quickly recognize which designs are going well: what is in demand is quickly reproduced in China; what meets with little approval is discarded. “When we get a positive signal for a product,” as Peter Day puts it, they use their own “supply chain management system to work with our third-party suppliers to produce enough copies of the garment to meet that measurable demand.” That The result is less overproduction – one could also say: less textile waste – which has to be factored into the final prices of other suppliers.
If that’s the case and implemented consistently, it would at least be a technical system that would also be good for other fashion companies – those from all price segments. Because we remember: In 2018, an annual report by Burberry shocked, according to which the British luxury brand shredded overproduced products with a total value of several million euros every year instead of selling them at discount prices, recycling them or donating them.
No fans of mass-produced goods: The group Extinction Rebellion protested at the pop-up in Toulouse, France in 2022.Imago
This approach, which is also common with other luxury labels and fast fashion providers, serves the purpose of not ruining your own prices. A better calculation according to Shein’s on-demand principle sounds like a sensible solution here. But it is questionable what the rapid post-production of popular parts means for the “third-party suppliers” Peter Day is talking about. Or better: For the workers in the Chinese textile companies with which the company works.
According to research by the Reuters news agency in 2021, Shein only partially mapped its own supply chains at the time and dealt with certifications inaccurately; In the same year, the Swiss NGO Public Eye reported that the fast fashion supplier also had its products made in sweatshops, where seamstresses without employment contracts worked up to 75 hours a week for piecework wages with no minimum wage. A report from January of this year, which Shein commissioned three international testing agencies to produce, including TÜV Rheinland, conveys a different situation.
Independent testing service providers determine adequate working conditions
The three independent audit service providers found that the workers in Shein’s suppliers earned between 40 and 75 percent more than the average of private employees in the respective Chinese region under adequate conditions. To guarantee this, the textile companies would be asked to “sign a code of conduct that can be viewed on our website,” says Day. It is difficult to determine why the various reports do not agree, or whether the situation has simply improved between 2021 and 2023.
Back to the prices: These too can only be viewed ambivalently. Because it’s true – there is a need for affordable clothing, for a fashion range that is inclusive at all levels. “We have a great range for curvy men and women who are not offered the same large selection elsewhere,” says Cui He, the European boss; In addition, you achieve your own goal of being accessible to as many people as possible through the fact that you sell to around 150 countries via the online shop. “And I don’t need to say,” says Cui He, “that our price level also reflects this claim.”
There are worlds in between – and Tauentzienstraße: KaDeWe in the back, Shein’s pop-up in front.Imago
But it is also true that Shein’s prices are not just for those customers who can hardly afford more than an occasional five-euro sweater. They also tempt a broad mass to not just put this one cheap item in the digital shopping cart – but to load it up with thoughtless spontaneous purchases. If you don’t like it, you don’t even have to send it back: five euros wasted, so be it. Whether there are efforts to encourage conscious buying behavior was not discussed on Thursday.
According to a Greenpeace report last year, the company, whose 2021 sales were estimated at just under $16 billion, puts between 6,000 and 9,000 new items online every day. Numerous online articles even mention the danger of addiction for teenagers.
In the pop-up shop on the Tauentzien, one cannot resist the impression that fashion is being transfigured into a disposable product that can be consumed quickly: Here, a vending machine with small accessories is available for visitors. You only have to put in a euro to make him spit out a plastic purse, a key ring or a hairbrush.