While Shein may be well worth its financial costs, the same cannot be said for its ethical costs. With such unacceptable practices, the company should be boycotted altogether. Shein was founded in 2008, but only in recent years has it gained widespread recognition.
From poor working conditions, high levels of toxic chemicals in clothing, and copying items from independent designers to mishandling customer data, there is now an overall worldwide push to boycott this company.
Despite gargantuan profits, SHEIN HAS been accused of stealing designs from small independent labels, selling offensive items including Islamic prayer rugs as decorative mats and swastika necklaces, selling items containing unsafe amounts of lead, and forcing garment workers to work in extremely unethical conditions.
According to a report by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Shein has been linked to several factories in Bangladesh and India that have been found to violate workers' rights, including low wages, long working hours, and unsafe working conditions.
There are many advantages of fast fashion for consumers. But fast fashion is very harmful to the environment and workers in supply chains. By boycotting fast fashion, you feel so much better about your purchase decisions. You are making an immense positive impact on fashion as a whole.
Ditching fashion would lift a huge burden off our planet. We'd save water (used in crop-growing and dyeing processes) and carbon dioxide emissions (from the industry's energy use). And we'd also prevent pollution from the fertilisers and pesticides used in cotton farming, and hazardous chemicals used in dyes.
If we all boycott fast fashion, the garment workers will lose their jobs!! They will be fired by the fast fashion brands and they will be forced to take the next available job. And that job will likely pay less and be more unsafe than their previous job. We can't let these garment workers lose their jobs.
The documentary reported Shein garment workers are paid as little as four cents per clothing item in work shifts that can last up to 18 hours.
Chris Xu, the founder and billionaire behind the company, primarily owns SHEIN. SHEIN leverages a real-time retail business model, where fashion trends are created out of social media platforms like TikTok, which are quickly turned around as products available for shopping online.
The company mainly sourced its clothing from China's wholesale clothing market in Guangzhou. However, Shein became a fully integrated retailer in 2014 when it secured its supply chain system. Now, the company utilizes a network of manufacturing partners and suppliers to make and deliver its products.
Shein often notes that they have a code of conduct that they expect their factories to keep. They insist that this code of conduct ensures no child, slave, or underpaid labor and that it meets all labor laws.
“It's not lucrative for them to sell in China,” said Schmidt. “[And] these products that would seem cheap to us are not as cheap to [consumers] in their home country.” Instead, Shein concentrates on exports, naming Europe, the United States, Australia and the Middle East as key markets.
'Dream come true': Shein opens pop-up in Sydney's Parramatta.
Shein is a company from China. While it has a base in China, there is no physical store or chain of shops responsible for managing orders.
Many also worked without contracts or minimum wage requirements, thereby allowing the company to reportedly fail to pay its employees properly. Channel4's documentary, Inside The Shein Machine, sent undercover cameras to film factory workers who were forced to pull 17-hour shifts to make hundreds of garments a day.
It doesn't matter how many followers you have or if you just started content creation. While Shein will want to work with established personalities on social media, they also want to work with their devoted customers. So don't be afraid to apply if you don't have a specific niche or strong social media presence.
Is SHEIN a good company to work for? SHEIN has an overall rating of 3.4 out of 5, based on over 190 reviews left anonymously by employees. 49% of employees would recommend working at SHEIN to a friend and 52% have a positive outlook for the business. This rating has decreased by -7% over the last 12 months.
Buy to Resell At a Premium
From a large SHEIN catalog, pick options you like the most: for example, you can sell exclusively jeans or casual t-shirts. However, you must carefully calculate the ROI, as well as money you spent on the product and add a percentage so that the sale generates revenue.
Clothing produced by fast fashion brands are oftentimes made from cheap materials, like polyester and acrylic, and not built to last. These materials shed when the clothes are washed and end up in our oceans, then in the food and drinks we consume. The fashion industry is the second most polluting in the world.
The disadvantages of fast fashion include –
not paying fair living wages to workers, poor working conditions, child labor, environmental destruction from hazardous chemicals, plastic-derived materials, and increasing amounts of water pollution and textile waste.
The Darker Side of Fast-Fashion
Fast-fashion production is outsourced in countries like India, Vietnam, China, and Bangladesh with cheap labor. This raises other concerns in relation to the exploitation of workers who work in unsafe and inhumane conditions with zero safety net and low wages.
Is Nike fast fashion? Yes, Nike is fast fashion. While Nike has had many labor and sweatshop controversies over the years, they do seem to be cleaning up their act and offering more transparency.
It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.
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