Untold: Inside the Shein Machine (All4) Op-Ed by Tamara Cincik.
Today is Anti Slavery Day.
Last night, All4 screened an expose on fast fashion brand Shein, addressing not only the conditions and unfair pay rates for garment workers, and how the brand uses tech to keep consumers shopping. The undercover investigation from Channel 4 and The i newspaper into the largest fast fashion company in the world, Shein, has revealed that workers at factories in China that supply clothes frequently are paid 3p per garment, work up to 18 hours a day, with no weekends and just one day off per month.
Let's be clear those are not wages in real terms, this is servitude dressed up as work to make our clothes.
Hidden camera footage by an undercover investigator exposes the levels of workers' rights and safeguarding procedures being ignored in the company's factories across the Guangzhou province of China. Production in China was an issue, with the use of Uighurs in exploitative working practices, which Fashion Roundtable covered extensively in our Cleaning Up Fashion report.
The programme also reveals how the Shein app and website are engineered to generate addictive clickbait that is colourful and friendly, but loaded with “dark patterns” (the marketing term for techniques designed to make people buy on impulse). From free shipping for a certain total spend, to discounts with a countdown clock to emphasise limited availability, the algorithm knows what you’re going to buy before you do. Shein established itself during Covid, when shoppers were even more liable to make impulse online purchases. The brand's use of “micro-influencers”, with small to medium-sized audiences, are a core part of the Shein methodology. More famous content creators, i.e. those with follower counts running into six or seven figures, command high fees for promotional videos; but the micro influencers are all too often happy to get paid in free clothes, which cost pennies to make, and their recommendations often come across as more authentic to their followers, because they are less obviously advertising and are more engaged with their audiences to boost their follower numbers.
Shein revenues for last year are estimated at $16bn all while spending next to nothing on advertising., or it seems for the production of their clothes. In the past three years, Shein’s figures are eye watering. In 2020, its GMV exceeded $10 billion for the first time, with a growth rate of 250%. In 2021, this figure reached $20 billion, while the self-operated revenue was approaching $16 billion.
As Jack Seale in The Guardian says: "The problem is not that people don’t know what they are buying. The problem is that they don’t care. A few years ago, fast fashion was under fire from documentaries much like this one; accusations were made about ethics and sustainability that several big brands felt forced to take on board. Then Shein arrived, pricing its garments even more aggressively, making them even more disposable, gambling that not many people are willing or able to pay £65 for the good stuff when they can get a quick hit for £4. Shein was right."