Mother and daughter talk about fashion at the kitchen table in Askola. Above her mother is a cardigan bought from Prisma. The daughter bought a shirt from a flea market again. Previously, she also ordered clothes from the fast-fashion company Shein.
18 years old Estella Holen In the Finnish channels, Shein was started jumping in just over a year ago. Good-looking and cheap clothes were of interest. Orders were presented and unpacked at Some.
– However, I got a rash from my pants. There were also scandals. Many said the orders have come with some bugs, says Hole.
In addition to trousers, Hole ordered tops and lashes. Now, using a fast fashion like Shein is no longer exciting.
“Yes, I also asked if it makes sense to order clothes one by one from the other side of the globe,” says Mom. Päivi Hole.
Päivi Hole is not Shein’s potential customer base, but she knows about the clothing business, as she is the S Group’s Group’s sales director for home and specialty goods. The S Group includes Prisma, which is Finland’s most popular clothing shopping destination.
He talks later in this story about how fast fashion challenges the traditional clothing store.
Shein is already the world’s largest online clothing store
An American online publication Business Insider (you switch to another service) Shein is currently the world’s largest online-only clothing store, surpassing Zara and H&M in online sales. In the United States, for example, Shein’s shopping cart has been downloaded even more than the e-commerce giant’s Amazon app.
Ultra-fast fashion is talked about because the company’s operations are based on the use of the application and new collections are constantly being produced based on demand.
Shein is Chinese and especially targets young buyers on some channels like Tiktok and Instagram.
Shein is also familiar to young people moving around in a shopping center in Helsinki.
– Yes, it comes in every media. It is used by many influencers and young people around the world. Fashion influencers make demo videos of clothes some of them even get as gifts to promote them, says 20-year-old Saga Tolppanen.
Tolppanen says that he himself ordered Shein once. However, the purchase was disappointing because the size scale was not correct, the product was transparent and of poor quality, he says.
Also 15 year old friends Mayya Vechinnikova, Olivia Wedlake and Aleksandra Tsyganov know the company. The clothes are cheap, but made to look like they would be more expensive, they describe.
The background of the production of cheap clothes is thought-provoking.
– Videos have been shown at school that yes, we basically know where the clothes come from. They are made in poor countries, says Wedlake.
Many of the interviewees suspect that Shein’s clothes are made by child labor. There are no known doubts about the company, but there are other issues related to responsibility and ethics.
This is known from Shein
An e-commerce expert and a teacher at several universities Leevi Parsama says it’s primarily a Tiktok phenomenon, which explains why many middle-aged people haven’t even heard of the whole store or the “Shein phenomenon”.
– If a company gets a boost in a community or channel, such as Tiktok in this case, its spread can be hypernapo, Parsama says.
Asparagus has analytical tools that allow it to make an indicative assessment of the e-commerce market. According to him, Shein’s popularity has grown rapidly in Finland as well.
– In the summer of 2020, quite a few people visited the application, but since last summer, the growth has been almost vertical, according to my estimates. I would guess that the site is now visited by about a hundred thousand Finns a month, Parsama says.
It is difficult to obtain precise information on the market and mode of operation of Shein. The company had sales of about $ 10 billion in 2020, according to market analysis firm Coresight Research. Growth compared to the previous year is estimated at as much as 250 percent.
For example, the Swedish H&M had sales of approximately $ 20 billion in 2020 and Zara $ 14 billion. Both have thousands of stores around the world and operate only partially online. Many traditional clothing stores suffered in the corona year.
“From an environmental point of view, the company is taking fast fashion even worse”
Shein’s activities have also been monitored by a professor of responsible business Minna Halme From Aalto University.
– When it is known that from the perspective of sustainable development, even the current fast-fashion operating models are very burdensome for the environment, this will take the situation even worse, Halme says.
Prior to this, companies that had set speed records for the fashion cycle have renewed their collections every three to four weeks.
Shein’s business model is described as follows: Production is tailored to the use of the mobile application, sales algorithms, and data. The clothes are initially made in small quantities, only a few dozen. Production will be expanded according to demand.
– We estimate that it will only take a week from the start of design to packaging the product that leaves the customer, says Oliver Cassen of the Public Eye organization.
Sales are being tested by bringing up to 2,500 new models a day to the site.
The advantage of the business model is that less waste and clothing waste is generated when large quantities of clothing are not stored.
Professor Minna Halme from Aalto University says that even if clothes are not produced in stock, the business model is problematic in terms of overall loss.
– If the business flourishes by constantly buying more and discarding more, and in addition the quality is poor and the garment cannot withstand wear and tear, there will be a loss through it, he says.
The NGO found deficiencies in Shein’s Chinese factories
The founder of Shein is a Chinese expert originally in marketing and search engine operations, Chris Xuwhich started the business just over a decade ago in Nanjing, China, selling wedding dresses, says Business Insider.
Since then, Xu expanded its operations and shortened the name of the company from Sheinside to Shein. The name mimics English and is pronounced she-in.
Today, the company is headquartered in Guangzhou, southern China.
Public Eye researcher Oliver Cassenin According to Shein, garments are manufactured in a total of one thousand factories and garments in China. Investigators reached 17 of them without revealing their identities and interviewed a few dozen employees.
– Some of the places were just unofficial workshops. There were serious shortcomings in working conditions, there were no safety arrangements in the factories under investigation and no emergency exits, for example, Cassen says.
According to the organization, almost all workers in the factories are Chinese migrant workers. In China, it is common for the more remote provinces to come to economic centers for several years in search of work.
– We are investigating working conditions because we wanted to find out who will ultimately pay the price for the very cheap clothes that are bought in Europe and elsewhere. The company’s target group is 10-25 year olds, Cassen estimates.
Shein’s workers are somewhat different from those of many other so-called sweat shops, Cassen explains. Due to the company’s fast idea-to-production model, the factories need experienced experts.
According to a study by Public Eye, workers have a reasonable income in China, but it requires very large hours of work.
– They can earn, for example, 10,000 yuan (about 1,300 euros) a month, but that requires 75 to 80 hours of work. There is one day off a month. This violates both Shein’s own ethical guidelines and Chinese labor laws, Cassen says.
According to Cassen, the company has promised to ensure that subcontractors better comply with the company’s own ethical guidelines.
– Admittedly, I am quite pessimistic about how working conditions in China are changing.
Shein’s popularity has grown at a time when e-commerce in general has been on the rise, partly fueled by the corona pandemic.
Prisma tries to deal with a completely different tactic than Shein
The most popular place to buy clothes in Finland is Trade Union Research (switch to another service) according to Prisma, a member of the S Group, which has risen in recent years. Tokmanni and K-Citymarket, for example, are also popular, although in general the clothing trade has suffered during the Korona period.
According to Päivi Hole, Sales Director of the S Group’s home and specialty goods trade, the popularity of fast-fashion companies like Shein is explained in particular by the fact that young people who seek influences from other peers and public figures are especially appealing.
– Young people have limited money for fashion, and they still want to renew their clothing store often. But I don’t think women all over Finland want Shein’s customers, Hole says.
According to Hole, Prisma intends to cope with a business model in which selections change much more slowly than in fast-fashion companies. Prisma’s current collections are renewed 2-4 times a year.
– We swim a little upstream here. Changing selections is not an end in itself. It’s not even responsible to switch from a black t-shirt to a black t-shirt all the time, Hole says.
The Sales Director emphasizes that the S Group is committed to the principles that aim to ensure responsible operations.
This means that the S Group’s own imports and products licensed by its partners come from factories that have been “assessed by an independent third party”. Nowadays, the laundry label also shows information about the factory where the product was made.
For example, the Finnwatch Association, which studies corporate responsibility, considers third-party audits to be important, especially for social responsibility and human rights.
However, major environmental problems in the clothing industry include the environmental impact of cotton production and the insufficient recycling of the clothing industry’s own textile waste.
Prisma’s cheapest jeans cost less than 13 euros. The jeans are made in Bangladesh. Prisma’s selection also includes jeans made in Estonia that cost 60-70 euros.
– The cheapest jeans are the most popular product in this product group. Ultimately, the consumer determines the direction in which the market is evolving, Hole says.
The EU intends to regulate fast fashion
Rapid fashion problems in terms of the environment and responsibility have arisen, for example, in the European Union, where a special digital product passport is currently being prepared.
The passport should show not only what the product contains and where it is made, but also, for example, whether the product can be repaired, explains Minna Halme, a professor at Aalto University. The idea is that the environmental impact of the product would be reflected in the price of the product.
Halme believes that the product passport is progressing, although there is also opposition to it in the industry. However, the biggest pressure on the fast-fashion operating model may come from a reduction in resources.
– It is no longer possible to increase the area used to grow cotton, for example. The price of raw materials should, of course, also rise with it. Then it would be absurd to engage in disposable consumption in the clothing world, Halme says.
In addition, the EU Commission issued a proposal in February on corporate responsibility, which will give companies new responsibilities for environmental damage, human rights violations and corruption in production chains.
During the corona pandemic, one can see not only an increase in the popularity of a fast fashion company like Shein, but also an increase in the demand for responsible clothing production.
– There are kind of two trends going on here at the same time. New companies have emerged in Finland and many European countries based on the product’s circular economy and longevity.
However, it may still take time for the big picture of fashion to change.
You can discuss the topic on 14.3. until 11 p.m.