> Shein drops up to 10,000 new items on its website daily...
Shein and Temu shipping all through planes.
Without being a super eco-conscious person, I am wondering if those ultra-fast-fashion is sustainable. I am sure some of those products are great. But the amount of trash that it would generate is staggering.
It feels like it is a massive transfer of trash from one country to the rest of the world... done in individual packages... sent by plane. I fail to see how society in general is benefiting from it.
> Without being a super eco-conscious person, I am wondering if those ultra-fast-fashion is sustainable. I am sure some of those products are great. But the amount of trash that it would generate is staggering.
It isn't. If you want to dress sustainably, you should be primarily buying second-hand clothes (and ideally ones that are made from textiles that survive years of wear and wash). Fast-fashion is an ecological disaster, both in terms of the sheer volume of low-quality material produced and its byproducts (e.g. dye discharges in water from factories).
The problem is that choosing clothes that will last is extremely hard for a layperson.
I have €20 shirts that have lasted for more than a decade and €100 shirts that looked like crap after a few months. Brand is not a guarantee either, I have bought superficially similar products from the same brand with radically different results (I suppose they were made in different factories). Same goes for material, there is 100% cotton clothing that is great and other is absolute crap. Over the years I have found a few brands that I more or less trust, but the process involves a staggering amount of trial and error because most brands are just either bad or inconsistent. In particular, European brands seem to be the worst offenders (and I say this as an European). American brands seem somewhat more reliable, although this might be just statistical noise from small sample or selection bias from American brands that reach Europe.
In general, I find the whole textile industry outraging. No other physical goods industry that I know has so little regard for the customer. What would happen if a brand sold 14" laptops that actually were 13" and short-circuited your whole home when plugged in? At the very least people would return them, and probably many would sue. But with clothes, it's very common to buy size 36 pants that turn out to be smaller than your size 34 pants (apparently, they haven't mastered the technology of measuring tape) and that bleed dye and spoil your whole laundry when you wash them. And we have somehow collectively decided that those obviously avoidable things are acceptable. Why?
> In general, I find the whole textile industry outraging. No other physical goods industry that I know has so little regard for the customer.
I'd point at software, but I guess it's not physical, so the next "best" thing would be... just about all the bottom-feeder dirt cheap stuff from Aliexpress/Temu/etc., that I'm even more apalled that they exist now that I hear they're being shipped by air.
Anyway.
> And we have somehow collectively decided that those obviously avoidable things are acceptable. Why?
I imagine for the same reason most tech sucks: because the market is supply-driven, and doesn't get any useful feedback from the customers. Buyers choose from what is available, and the choice is only between bearing the bullshit, or doing without a category of goods - which for clothes is even harder than with smartphones... It's neat little local minimum in developed markets: even when the barrier to entry is low (much easier to launch a clothes line than build a smartphone), the most profitable move for all competitors is still to double-down on the race to the bottom.
Or put another way: customers have a certain amount of dissatisfaction they're willing to tolerate. Anything more satisfying than that limit is just leaving money on the table.
I mentioned to a colleague today the sweater I was wearing was 12 years old (discussing this exact fast fashion subject). He said "you just kept it in the closet for 12 years?" - Nope, it's my fav sweater to wear. I handwash it and hang dry it, as I do all my clothes, and it was made in Portugal from quality materials, works out to $35 a year (~$400 sweater).
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
What kinda pisses me off with these things is that cost isn't a reliable indicator of quality. A lot of luck seems to be involved.
I've worn a 15 € supermarket-brand hoodie around the house for about ten years before it started showing any signs of fatigue at the elbows. I've had more expensive, "name brand" articles of clothing wear out after much shorter and lighter use. In between, the absolute worst was a 30-40 € H&M blouse which became two sizes too big after a month.
Cost isn't necessarily an indicator of quality, but it is an indicator (often, of consistency in a brand). I mentioned the price not because of quality indicator, but because of how I approach it, is how I give myself permission to buy expensive things (I think about it over time): if I know they will last and they are made to my standard. As mentioned here[1] the whole clothes thing is a bit of a hobby/process for me. The sweater I was particularly mentioning was hand made in South Korea (I actually visited the factor) - everyone is paid properly, and most of their stuff is low impact[2] meaning they don't fly materials all over the world to assemble the garment. The sheep for their wool for example, is from Japan. For me this is part of a wholistic approach I have to living my life while minimizing my impact, I keep all my clothes with the intention of passing them down. I've yet to find anything outerwear(hoodies, jeans, shorts etc) made to my standard that is less than $100, I'm not sure it's possible if you include responsible sourcing.
Oh, I agree with your point. But I can't afford to fly around the world and inspect factories. Hell, even if I could, I wouldn't have the time and the inclination to learn what to look for.
> if I know they will last and they are made to my standard
That's exactly the issue. How do you know that as a regular person?
I'm mostly happy with my shirts for example, which I think are made locally in France (but don't know how they source their materials). Their quality seems to be fairly stable, and if I buy them on sale, they're very good value for money.
But with other name brands, it's been more hit and miss. Levi's jeans, for example. One pair has lasted so long, I don't even remember when I've bought it, used it a lot riding a motorbike. Another pair has started thinning between the thighs in maybe two years of lighter use (going to the office or out around town), and it's never even been close to my bike.
> I've yet to find anything outerwear(hoodies, jeans, shorts etc) made to my standard that is less than $100, I'm not sure it's possible if you include responsible sourcing.
I'm absolutely fine with paying more for garments that last. What I hate, is paying a ton and ending up with poor quality.
If you would be able to articulate what you look for in a quality garment, I'm sure a lot of people would be more than happy to read on it.
That's true, unfortunately. OTOH, I have several Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts bought in an outlet that lasted for 10+ years and still look Ok. I would say you're more likely to get quality out of "actual" brands than own-brands of stores such as H&M (which follow the fast-fashion trend too), but that's still not really reliable I'm afraid...
> you're more likely to get quality out of "actual" brands than own-brands of stores such as H&M (which follow the fast-fashion trend too)
Fashion brands aren't build for quality. They're built for aesthetic. If given a trade-off between ruggedness and something more frivolous and daring, a fashion brand should pick the latter. That's how they differentiate.
I once bought a Burberry hoodie in a Turkish market (not the ones with the name plastered all over it, subtitle little tag in a corner). It lasted for many years and my girlfriend at the time who was a lawyer at a prestigious lawfirm and lived in Kensington Ave. London thought it was the greatest piece of clothing I possessed. It cost 15 Euros, but probably only because I didn't know how to bargain properly, and it never occurred to her that it wasn't a real name brand apparel.
The sibling below mentions Tommy Hilfiger, and it just reminded me that one of the worst pieces of clothing I ever bought was from a Tommy store in New York.
One store that's absolutely worth a visit if you live in NY is the century 21 outlet mall near ground zero. I've been there twice when I attended a conference and you get really good quality clothing for cheap, that was absolutely worth it. Every single one of those lasted a long time.
How do you just buy guaranteed classics. i.e., I want the heinz ketchup of wardrobe items. Consistency. I mean, Levi 501 is an example... but beyond that, everything I wear is so basic but it keeps changing. Even Nike Airforce One's keep changing so much. I just want a black shirt that stays black, black pants that actually fit and don't rip, a black sweater that doesn't pill much, a black jacket that I can beat the hell out of... etc.
I've seen a lot of people say that 501's got noticeably worse over the years. If you want good jeans buy traditional selvedge denim, you know the ones that can stand by themselves if you put them because they are so dense. Back then it was protective clothing so they are very durable.
I'm one of those people, though I don't use 501s specifically. I've noticed Levis quality has become hit-and-miss. I have two pairs, bought at the same time. Same model, same color, only the length is different [0], but same waist size.
They don't even fit the same! One is clearly larger, whereas the other was skin-tight when new. One seems somewhat thicker than the other.
In the last 15 yrs, I've used a dryer no more that three times. Aside from being better for clothes, it's less gas / electricity (i.e., better on the environment). Sans super high humidity, it's not a bad habit to have.
I too have a hoodie which is probably going on 15 years old now. It's finally started getting faded and looking a bit old but still very much usable, think it came from Walmart when I was visiting the US.
In the same vein I've got an old pair of dirt cheap trainers I bought on another US trip in about 2008, still abosolutely fine and cost under $20. In contrast the expensive pair of converse I bought less than 2 years ago are already falling apart.
Except in this case, $400 can also buy you one shirt per year for 12 years, all of which combined would most certainly last you longer than 12 years. Moreover you wouldn't have to waste your time babying them.
It's funny you can easily spend 10-15 USD more and get a product that will last you 5 more years. Old Navy sounds like crap, it is but they have gems where flannal shirts are double stitched and hemmed perfectly. I even buy pants I haven't had to replace in years.
I wear mostly swag T-shirts, but they are dear to me because of what they represent, so I split between hand-washing and washer with bronners, and always hang-dry. I have not seen any significant wear in years. I think dryers are the big destroyers of clothes. If you look at the lint, it makes sense, since that's all clothes material worn away by friction.
Heat is particularly bad, so is drying in the sun. I handwash in cold with baby shampoo. I have a "drying closet" I've built. I must confess... figuring out stuff that will last 100 years is a bit(coughhugecough) of a hobby of mine. I get very into who designed something, why they did it, what materials they selected, what factory they used. It's a bit weird I guess as I'm obsessive about it, but I really enjoy it. Nice to see someone else taking care of their clothes!
Looking around me and from my memories: houses (brick, stone, metal,) books and good quality paper, bicycle frames (metal), good quality furniture, metal knives forks and spoons, paintings, anything made of glass or metal.
Houses fall apart quickly without maintenance: when roofs fail, or moisture gets in through other means, you get mold and other problems. Plumbing problems can also cause a lot of destruction. Also, earthquakes will quickly topple houses made of brick and stone.
>books and good quality paper,
Lots of books don't have good quality paper, and it falls apart after a few decades. It might not be such a problem now, but a lot of latter-20th-century books have fallen apart because of this.
>bicycle frames (metal)
Steel bike frames rust, and both steel and aluminum frames can have welds break because of the stresses of riding and use. However, most of the money in a decent bicycle is in the wheels and components, not the frame, unless you have a high-end bike (carbon fiber), and these all wear out with use.
>good quality furniture
Highly susceptible to water damage, even from drinks. Finishes get beat up with use. Wood warps with moisture changes. Solid wood furniture without veneers is probably best for avoiding ugly damage from use, but warps easier, and costs a lot.
>paintings
These only last because people are really careful with them. Even so, to be really kept in good shape they need highly controlled conditions: ask any art museum.
Not sure about GP’s setup by I accidentally have a drying closet too. It’s quite common where I live. There is a cold water clothes washer next to my bathroom. In the bathroom there is a retractable clothes line (just a wire in a spring reel and hook on the opposite wall). I have a dehumidifier in there which must run 24/7 anyway or the house will mould. Just put to wet clothes on the line, put the dehumidifier on clothes drying mode, and close the door. Doesn’t take long for the clothes to dry, and my things last much longer than when I was in the US and used a tumble drier. Not to mention my t-shirts don’t get all misshaped.
We have the same drying closet! Except mine is on purpose, but that is hilarious!!!! I've never met anyone else who puts a dehumidifier in a closet to dry clothes. I actually do add a tiny amount of heat (space heater on low) as I very much don't want any smell.
I mentioned using bronners, but most of the time I just wash my clothes with just warm water.
What I have noticed is that when I do this, my clothes no longer develop a mildewy smell if I forget them sitting wet. They still come out smelling clean (i.e. not smelling.)
Oh that's clever. We dry our clothes on a rack in the corner of the livingroom (the added humidity is a bonus here, because otherwise we would have to run a humidifier all the time), but this (esp. the folding of the dry clothes) generates quite a lot of tiny dust particles which are kinda annoying.
I didn't know people would be interested in this, I've always kept it a bit of a secret because I thought it was kinda weird and my wife razzes me like crazy for now intense I am about it. Guess I need a blog...
Overall clothes made in Portugal are very good quality, and they aren't all that expensive for what they are. [0][1] A good heuristic is to go for boring looks.
I recently got into sewing, turns out it's a very good way to learn how to recognise good quality clothes. It's also a very good way to recycle old adult clothes into brand new clothes for children. Highly recommend to any nerd wanting to do some manual labour away for the computer.
I often wonder if we've done consumers, at least in the USA, a significant disadvantage by retiring hard skills like sewing, woodshop, auto repair, cooking etc from middle and high schools. When you understand how to do something, you are more aware of when you're being ripped off, what is quality, and what truly you'd rather pay for someone else to do or provide for you. When you don't have any of those skills or knowledge, you don't know when you're being ripped off OR once you begin to feel you're being ripped off you have to develop the skills to provide what you're not willing or able to buy right in that moment where you have an immediate need.
Never heard of loom but their stuff is great, love they list their factories. Interesting they only guaranteeing 90% of the Portugal work is done to minimum wage, first time I've seen that level of honesty from a designer, good for them!
Not the person you asked the question to but in my case the answer is yes, except for my underwear. That goes in the washing machine at 30 C (86 F).
Workout clothes are plastic, some T-shirts are plastic too, some are cotton. Socks are cotton or wool. I put them in a bucket of cold water with a detergent made for that (sorry, I don't know the English word for that.) Liquid for wool and socks, powder for the other clothes. Five minutes are enough. Up to here is not worse that putting everything into a washing machine and you can do it in any house.
The tedious part is washing away the soap with cold water. That takes time. I hang the T-shirts and the large clothes and wash them with a hand shower. You need a place to do it without flooding the house. For small clothes and socks, the bathroom sink. Squeeze out water gently by compression, don't twist.
Then I hang them to dry. From here on is the same as with a washing machine. Once they stop dripping water you can put them anywhere. In winter you need either a window in the sun or a source of heat or it will take forever and they'll smell. Don't put them directly on a heater, that would destroy anything plastic quickly. Leave a span.
This is not something that can be done in every house but if you can then clothes will last much longer especially the workout plastic ones. Check the detergents for water temperature, colors, type of fabric, time etc.
Edit: make sure to let air flow somehow because that water in the clothes must get out of the house or you'll get mold especially in some climates.
How is this any different from a washing machines handwash/delicate program? It soaks in soap with no movement, cold temperatures, then rinse it gently with water.
I wish that's how mine did it, even on the hand wash/delicate setting, it still does 3 spin cycles (although I'd guess not as fast as the other modes). But more importantly, I hand wash so I can spot clean. Easiest way to spot deep stains etc is when the clothes are wet and you can hand inspect them. I'm so obsessive about this stuff i won't even accept any fade in the blacks, and no yellowing in my whites.
Yeah Next are pretty good if you know what to look for, lots of their stuff isn't great but their 100% wool products are not bad at all. They use cheap dyes so their stuff isn't particularly colour fast, but if you take care of it, it will last a long time.
They use Merino wool, however not very much of their wool is sourced through the Responsible Wool Program(4% as of 2022), so there is a lot of wool in their cloths come from places you may not like how the sheep are treated. Their cotton is around 60% slave free(not bad for a fast fashion brand).
I have some stuff like this, just let me beanie go after ten years. It cost me $200 but I wore it daily for ten winters under all kinds of circumstances. It was wool.
I have one like those: love it, perfect for skiing and other outdoor stuff in winter. I also "loose" it once per winter, only to find it a couole days of searching later. Unfortunately, it seems to be gone for good this time, 12 years in. Cost me 30 bucks back the day, just hope they still make similar ones.
And yes, I know that sounds a lot like Homer and his blue pants.
Technically walking into any store and buying clothes is more eco sustainable than anything Temu or Shein. Doesn't even have to be second hand as long as it was bulk delivered to that store and bought by you on that spot.
Yes. To lazy to cite, especially as the article was German and written for Switzerland, however the point was that even a badly organized delivery route and same day delivery is in most cases more efficient than driving a 5 or 10 minute distance.
I've been thrifting a bunch recently and it's amazing how different even a 90s tshirt feels compared to a modern one. There's a heft and thickness to it that just doesn't seem to be the priority anymore. Also everything now seems to not be just cotton but blend in something that lets it stretch.
> It isn't. If you want to dress sustainably, you should be primarily buying second-hand clothes (and ideally ones that are made from textiles that survive years of wear and wash). Fast-fashion is an ecological disaster, both in terms of the sheer volume of low-quality material produced and its byproducts (e.g. dye discharges in water from factories).
Well, clothes that survive years of wear and wash are not so easy to be found. And sustainable clothes that you can buy at your local shops are incredibly expensive and the resulting quality is still meh.
Fast fashion is on the rise since people don't want to spend big money on clothes that are almost comparable to the ones sold by fast fashion stores, but just with a big label on it.
IMHO the big blame isn't on consumers or on fast fashion stores, but on the competition, that lowered their quality, raised their prices and expected to make profit from this strategy.
To close the circle, people buy cheap things, including clothes, because their purchasing power hasn't scaled up like inflation, but in many countries the purchasing power has dropped (example: Italy, where salaries are stuck to the 1990 levels)
> I fail to see how society in general is benefiting from it.
Humankind as a whole is not benefitting from this. It’s a net-negative. It’s a loan with future generations as collateral, one that those whom are responsible for this never intend to repay.
Every time I see these comments of yours, I can't help but laugh. Using slaves to make clothes? Come take a look at China; you're trapped in the cocoon spun by the West Media.
You think you're living in an open and free society, yet in reality, you're immersed in lies. Yesterday, I saw a news report on YouTube that shocked me, and what was even more shocking was that the video had zero comments underneath it.
Refer to https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=xgJgKCIN-kw&ab_c...
But it is comparatively easy to get a "good" bar of chocolate, they are usually marked as "free trade" or something like that. With clothes, there usually is no such indicator.
There is an extremely thin, but important line between the exploitation of your labour force and using litteral forced labour provided by the government. Both things are despicable, yet they are not really the same.
I don’t have a citation for it, but supposedly returns are a significantly worse environmental problem, not just with these transcontinental shipments. At least with Amazon or Shein or whatever, the packages are shipped as a semi-efficient unit, even for the last mile of delivery. However returns are driven by individual vehicles to the return site, not necessarily in the original packaging, but perhaps, hopefully, bundled up to some degree back to the seller.
There's a street market here (Spain) every weekend and one of the vendors has taken up selling what I presume are Shein returns. It's just tables full of Shein bags with clothes in them.
> I fail to see how society in general is benefiting from it.
I am sure the same can be applied to many situations, including numerous one you (and I) are engaging. It just depends how much moral grounds you would like to project to feel better.
What is actually benefiting society? There is likely slightly more than one answer to that.
These products are beyond bad for the environment. Maybe something somewhere in their storefront is legit okay, but over production and spam products is a terrible strategy for a longterm business model.
> I am wondering if those ultra-fast-fashion is sustainable
It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. The grand scheme of things being something like 70 million new passenger cars being sold each year. Now that's a lot of future trash.
The goals of individuals and society are often at odds with each other... So I wonder why you assume a random webshop should/could have a positive effect for society.
As I understand it this all comes down to the insane framework of the Universal Postal Union, which has been discussed here before [1][2], which seem to limit how much a postal service can charge another member postal service, which results in a huge tax-subsidized advantage.
This is no longer the case. They have bypassed the postal system in my area entirely. My packages in a major US city are delivered via courier. Epacket type shipping you are referencing takes like 1-2 months while their privately arranged transport took 6 days from order to my door.
In theory the stuff they send should go through customs, but they practically DDoS the system by sending the 20 things you ordered in 20 packages, all marked below the price that would warrant a customs declaration - no matter the actual cost of the item.
The customs over here would've had to hire a significant percentage of the whole population just to manage the packages...
I've never had a single AliExpress package be held at customs and I've been ordering stuff from there before it was cool.
No, Universal Postal Union was revised to combat this. This did give a temporary minor price hike on AliExpress, but it's effect in terms of limiting packages send seems like nothing now.
> Shein drops up to 10,000 new items on its website daily, for all sizes and tastes. The retailer doesn't make these clothes in large amounts; it produces a few hundred and orders more only if enough people start to buy them. Once they do, it can turn a design into a garment in as little as 10 days.
This is the kind of take that is all too dismissive of China's textile industry.
Would you accuse the Seattle coffee industry that can roast and drop ship a custom bag of coffee in under 3 days of running on slave labor? Would you accuse the California software industry that can produce an MVP web app over the weekend of slave labor? No, of course you wouldn't. But we do that for China because we assume that it's still the world's sweat shop rather than the world's most sophisticated manufacturing hub.
China is the Silicon Valley of textiles (and it's the Silicon Valley of many other manufacturing industries). Chinese factories that generally pay better wages that afford much better conditions than other textile hubs and can pump out high quality products very quickly. Luxury clothing brands depend on China and generally not a lot of other textile-producing countries for their best quality items.
What Shein, Temu, and AliExpress are actually doing in the market is streamlining the overseas shipping process to cut down delivery times that used to be unreliable and take months with poor tracking and changing that to a generally reliable 8-12 business day shipping infrastructure.
Making the assumption that these websites only sell landfill-bound junk is an assumption that a competing business will make at their own peril. The way I see it, canceling my Amazon Prime subscription and moving most of those purchases to AliExpress has resulted in lower costs with equal quality.
I'm not saying that Shein's quality specifically is any good, but if you haven't been paying attention, clothing quality at mainstream Western stores like Walmart, Target, TJ Maxx, Ross, Zara, H&M, etc, isn't really much if any better than the low end no-brand stuff you find from China.
No, I'm pointing out how you misunderstood their comment as an attack on all Chinese industry, when it was criticism of specific firms in a specific sector.
I didn’t take it that way because there was nothing about the criticism specific to one firm. I might be wrong there but that’s how I choose to interpret it.
To me it seems odd that the statement “they have free slave labor” would be considered to be specific to one firm.
Thank you for providing something concrete. The original comment seemed like hyperbole to me, and now I’m leaving here better informed.
I do think this senate report is a little bit butthurt that their own regulations and trade agreements have enabled the business model.
It seems like it would be trivial to block out platforms in violation of US law via pressure by payment networks. That’s where I’m confused at the level of inaction given that this report includes a screenshot of a product page in violation. Visa and Mastercard can get Pornhub to vet their “suppliers” but they can’t do the same for Temu? They don’t even need a court order to do this.
The Western media has made it a constant meme is the problem.
The reality is the next generation of hard-tech and pretty much everything innovative in materials and manufacturing is coming out of China.
Like we are hearing a whole bunch of nonsense now about rare-earths and how China is nearly 100% of the supply of several along with processed graphene etc.
But what that story is missing is the less sophisticated stuff they were able to massively revolutionize also.
For instance most Western media declare the Belt and Road program a massive failure without looking at it's impact on things like nickel. Indonesia is now one of the worlds biggest suppliers because they a) banned export of unprocessed nickel and then lent hard into the BRI borrowing from China and allowing Chinese operated mines to setup their own processing there. As a result more of the value add is captured in Indonesia (the whole goal of all of this) and now Indonesia is one of the biggest supplies of nickle pig iron and stainless steel.
How is this possible when giant (and heavily experienced) Western mining companies in places like Australia (which also have vast nickle reserves) were both established and ready to expand? Well that comes down to tech and expertise. China was able to design and build a new class of nickle smelters that were 2-3x as capital efficient as the Western equivalent plants in Australia.
What impact did that have? Well a giant reduction in the price of nickel of course as Indonesia went from nearly no output to over 1.8M tons.
There are tons of other examples, especially in anything related to the next generation of energy. Solar, batteries, nukes, all the inputs for the above like polysilicon etc.
The Chinese are fucking good at this stuff and pretending they just copy and do stuff cheap is not only a massive disservice to the Chinese engineers that make this happen but also a dangerous mistake if you want to go into business competing with them.
That's exactly what I am thinking about, thanks for the insights. I am sure there are hundreds if not thousands examples like this with probably as much impact. See their massive investments in nearly any underdeveloped region of the world.
100% of everything on my body right now and ~80% of everything in my wardrobe is made of the highest quality materials I can afford by US or EU labor, often by a unionized workforce.
The only non-US things I own tend to be shoes (Italy, Spain) and jackets (UK). Or gifts.
YES it does cost more. But here's the thing: I have fewer, nicer, things that last longer and I almost certainly spend way less annually than someone buying $7 shirts from Shein or Walmart clothes.
So, buying trash made of the worst possible materials by slave labor is a choice unless you are the poorest of the poor in which case you, and only you, get a pass.
If everyone who didn't make minimum wage spent more consciously instead of just gulping down cheap Chinese goods like a hungry hungry hippo eats marbles and shopped locally economies of scale would make higher quality products available to everyone.
Even relative to other manufacturers in the same areas, Shein's quality (I don't pretend to be specifically informed re labor) of materials is "utter garbage".
This isn't really true tho. Shein ads over 10k of items every day, appearantly, and other than most shops they have many reviews on most popular items. It's kinda easy to pick the exact quality you are looking for as you have more or less unlimited choice.
That feels like a rude stereotyping that is dismissive of the buyers. Maybe not your thing but no need to get judgy about it. The buyers know what they are getting.
They choose to buy Shein for their own reasons - a good practice is to assume people have good reasons (maybe other reasons than the quality or reasons that you don't understand).
Oh! That was actually not intended to be dismissive of the buyers. It isn't my thing, as it happens, but I more mean that "even relative to other textile companies in China, Shein has a reputation for the lowest quality raw material/workmanship".
As you say, "people know what they are getting", and that's fine.
… it's nearly $300. Pants on that site are $400–$500. That's expensive.
A cheap Temu hoodie, by comparison, would need to make it a single year, maybe only 6–8 months, to have equivalent lifespan / $. (If priced at $25, or like $15.)
part of the reason that shein and temu is gaining is that some manufactures are moving away from China. This leaves huge capacity in manufacture to be filled, which means it is cheaper and faster for shein and temu.
Question for HNers who have bought clothes on Shein: do the clothes have tags saying where they're made, and what they're made from? If so, what are both?
(Commodified clothes are a pet fascination of mine. The fact that we've gone from spending 15% of our annual income on apparel to 2-3% in just over a century is astounding[1]).
Briefly looked at the wife's side of the closest. First article that I stumbled upon with a Shein tag was a long sleeve blouse: neck tag labeled made in China, material tag (inner botton-left) labeled 5% elastane, 95% polyester.
There's a $1.8T global textile market out there and the best cherry-pick you could come up with to whine about is the micro-plastic residual of a single woman's laundry day?
It's not about a single woman's laundry habits, it's about how one person's habits represents the habits and by extension culture of everyone who does laundry.
This is a refreshingly optimistic take about the current state of fast fashion. For all the lack of quality and waste consumers are still coming out ahead by a huge margin.
Technology and scale made it so that boot story actually comes out in favor of the person buying and replacing cheap boots.
I think you maybe read a little too much optimism into my fascination :-)
I think fast fashion is pretty awful, all around. Clothes are cheaper than ever (great!), but we're also buying more, lower-quality, more wasteful clothes than ever.
(One of the things that fascinates me about this trend is how bimodal the apparel market is: a reasonable but naive assumption is that economies of scale would also lower the cost for clothes made from nicer textiles - especially when manufactured in the same locations - but instead anything that's "nicer" than low-weight cotton gets a quality tax.)
I'm thankful there's been a bit of a Renaissance in accessible well made garments. Mostly cottage. Or maybe I just didn't know where to look before.
A few pairs of darn toughs, ridge merino base layers and well made denim will last you a decade. Also unless you're exercising in them hardly needs any washing. Just doesn't smell. Ymmv
Can't imagine wearing all that polyester and acrylic crap. Doesn't feel good, doesn't look good, doesn't last, and yeah microplastics.
There were some comments here not so long ago in a related thread about the enshittification of either (cannot recall) furniture (compared to ikea) or household appliances (why a 1950’s fridge may still be working while one from 5 years ago is already dead). The bimodal sentiment/comment was also applied for those markets, as a complaint of why couldn’t there be some midrange stuff for ecologically-conscious but luxury-adverse people.
The “conclusion” was that people looking for the cheapest stuff are going to inevitably buy at the cheapest end, provoking a race to the bottom for manufacturers. People who like brands, quality, or status will go to the high end, independent of price, creating incentives for the companies to just sell things more expensively for a higher margin. There just wasn’t (according to the comments) enough market mass (nor business interest) to cater for that middle spot that ironically so many of us are looking for.
> Technology and scale made it so that boot story actually comes out in favor of the person buying and replacing cheap boots.
If you ignore the externalities. Extending the analogy, the boot story comes out in favor of buying cheap boots AND the persons' grandchildren have to struggle against ecological challenges they did not create and only tangentially benefit from.
Genuine question, how did these companies, Shein and Temu rise so fast? They need sophisticated software, infrastructure, and then logistics to pull these off, and they seem to have done it within 1-2 years. Does anyone know or can point to articles on how these companies pulled these off?
Just because they're new to the US doesn't mean they're new to the game. The e-commerce market in China is ferociously competitive and both companies cut their logistics teeth there.
Temu is an offshoot of Pinduoduo, a massive Chinese retailer that was founded in 2015.
Shein was founded in 2008 and started retail in Europe in the early 2010s.
You have Mercari (Japan), Rakuten (pan-Asia), Coupang (Korea), Shoppee (ASEAN), Lazada (ASEAN), Flipkart (India), Myntra (India), Daraz (Pakistan), Haraj (Gulf states), etc on along with known players like Amazon.
E-commerce is way more cutting edge in Asia than in North America tbh
> Spread across a tremendously diverse set of cultures and languages, but a much bigger market for companies that grow there.
It's more so the fact that Asian countries still have low margins manufacturers with little to no overhead.
I can open a garments or shirt factory with minimal overhead anywhere in Asia, but if I tried opening a Maquiladora here in the US, I'd be facing a 10-20 year federal sentence like those guys who brought Thais illegally to the Garment District in LA in the 90s.
All I need is 10 sewing machines, 10 semi-skilled laborers, some consistent electricity, and a bit of cash to pay off the local labor inspector. I def can't do that here in the US anymore.
Maybe it was an exaggeration, but in the 1980's I heard that Hong Kong when factory owners kept full accounting for A/C costs but wages got lumped under "other expenses"?
Went to Bali many years ago. GoJek App - you could get almost anything done on it. Order in food, get your medicines, go book a taxi - you name it, it did it. The convenience was fantastic. While everyone was all up in arms about Uber, this was next level. Probably not super slick to the nth degree, but hellishly functional...
Is the software that sophisticated? And are the logistics new? Or are they building something that has already been done multiple times? If the suppliers are the same and they are just marketplace, it might only become marketing effort.
Just like Twitter/X - you don't need 85% of workforce leeching off resources in western companies. Turns out if you cut woke, diversity and sorts from your corporate documents (or rather do not introduce it), lots can be done in short period of time.
Not saying working in chinese companies is great - 996 is no joke, but results are speaking out for itself.
Not sure what is the point of your comment, you likely missing the point, perhaps involuntarily.
Every platform out there is suffering from AI generated "content", that's not news, and X is not any different. It has nothing to do with laying off 85% of useless staff.
I buy a lot online from Austria. Amazon.de is essentially an abstraction over AliExpress. The products are largely the same. The only difference is if you want to wait 30 days and maybe have to pay import duty or not.
Really annoying too. A few years ago Amazon.de was great for buying stuff just not available in the Netherlands (Germany has a much larger market for people doing various crafts at home, and some home improvement products are a lot cheaper there if they are German-made), but it has really slipped. We have Amazon.nl now too, and it sucks just as much with vague listings and it seems to be mostly resellers.
As someone who is living in a poor ex-USSR republic, unexpected benefit of Temu and Shein is that average working class folks can afford good looking clothes.
Let's say you have two options: (a) costs X, lasts for Y (b) costs X*3 but lasts for Y*5 - then you still get more value for money with option (b). The tricky thing is of course that it's hard to tell how long something will last, but generally if something is very cheap, it's unlikely to be of high enough quality.
Does anyone know of platforms similar to Shein or Temu that I can trust not to be made with slave labor? I've found that they are a great way to get more interesting designs than what I can buy in local stores but I don't want to avoid exploiting people as much as I can.
> According to data aggregated by Cargo Facts Consulting, Temu ships around 4,000 metric tons a day, Shein 5,000 metric tons, Alibaba 1,000 metric tons and TikTok 800 metric tons. That equates to around 108 Boeing 777 freighters a day, the consultancy said.
Instagram has it too. It's smart on the side of the social network. Rather than linking to your linktree you can run the store on your page directly (for a cut). Because sellers want the additional reach they're willing to typically create a second/third shop in your ecosystem rather than just having Shopify/Etsy.
I can't imagine how heavily their product line was subsizidized. I mean, about 1 year ago I bought pretty decent shoes for, literally 4$ for a pair and no shipping charge!! Naturally I bought like 5 pairs, seizing the opportunity. Oh and gloves for 2$, neck scarfs for 2$, etc. the prices are going up now. I'm sure they've figured out I'm no longer a new customer so prices are higher now but still competitive with alternatives.
Have a browse on Alibaba and check out what the products cost at the factory gate. I was recently in the market for a cover for my car, and I found the exact same model that retails for $200+ locally for $2 (two). Shein is just cutting out the middle man.
It seems like a lot of local companies started selling this 'cheap bullshit' at super high profit margins. They won't be around long once people catch on to the game.
No, Shein is not just only doing that, they have everything happening in a single village. From designing to production is just across the street, so everything is done fast and cheaply.
They don't need to be subsidised if they are cut the labour/material cost to a level that just keeping the upstream factories/workers at a miserable but alive stage.
It’s amazing how early Dealextreme was on this, though as a business, their success was based on exploiting the Universal Postal Union rates for China along with the de minimis tariff threshold. Shein and Temu are also exploiting the latter, but have much more sophisticated operations around logistics, supply chain, and spinning up thousands of new, high mix, low volume SKUs a day, along with an insanely efficient marketing machine.
dx was basically a dropshipper, so sometimes it could take a week for your item to be gathered up. Then it was usually 2-3 weeks from China for me in Canada. de minimis threshold didn't matter so much when they declared everything as "toy - $5".
I'm surprised they got the dx.com domain name: must have cost them quite a penny. All dead now.
Dunno about Shein and Temu, but I think Aliexpress at least charges sales tax for US purchases nowadays.
US Amazon is heavily dropshippers nowadays, especially for clothing. Reverse image search usually finds the same item with the same image on AliExpress for half the price.
The advantage used to be Amazon'd ship it to you in a couple days, but I'm getting a lot of 30+ day arrival estimates there too now.
Worry not, the Amazon situation is just as crappy here in Europe, across all product categories (that I use).
They sneakily removed the "Sold by Amazon" filter a while ago too and I'm not sure why. It's the only indicator that gives me any amount of confidence in the product quality these days.
The problem for Amazon as well is as their QC and race to the bottom progressed, it becomes harder to justify using them. Unlike the vendors they undercut, they can't play the sympathy/"support local"/"support your favourite producer" card. So I know many people who are splitting their buying habits between niche-specific retailers for the few types of products they really care about actually getting quality out of, and Aliexpress for the rest.
Yeah, and then you get the product in like 2 weeks. Who has that kind of patience? Amazon's main product is "get this stuff to my door by tomorrow" and it works super well.
Shipping/fulfillment costs are simply far more expensive than most people assume. If you buy a $15 item on Amazon, Amazon keeps about half of that. The seller still has to pay for the entire process of getting it to an Amazon warehouse.
Air freight China to US is very roughly $3/KG. Assume T-shirts (as a light weight good that is going to trend lower price), at an ASP of $5 and weight of 150g. A $30 order (Shein minimum for free shipping) is going to be 6 shirts at 900g for a cost of $2.70. Surepost/Smartpost tier delivery is $5 or lower; even retail-available services would be $7. In comparison, Amazon FBA for 2 shirts at $15 each would charge $7.16 for fulfillment. At December rates, they would also have charged $5.1 in platform fees, which was reduced to as low as $1.5 now due to this competition. That's $12.26 in fulfillment cost for the Amazon order of 2 T-shirts, compared to 6 T-shirts shipped China to US door for $8.70 est.
The above is generous to Amazon. 6 shirts for $5 each on Amazon would cost $22.98-26.58 to sell, and they have an array of additional fees.
It also ignores FBA freight costs - sea freight and duties/tariffs that D2C air avoids due to de minimis. On the other side, I'm ignoring fixed/semi-fixed platform costs and pick/pack costs; I have no idea what that costs in China, but it has to be a tiny fraction of the cost in the US.
I seem to remember reading that international postal unnions classify some countries, including China, as developing nations and getting subsidized air traffic conditions. Thus everyone else is effectively paying for their ability to ship goods worth only a few cents.
I think this might be what you are talking about? Back in 2019 Trump issued an ultimatum (one of many) to the United Postal Union to get fairer rates for this in particular. It seems to have stuck so they're not quite as cheap as before.
Here’s the real question: what can an American sell to Chinese people? History is full of businesses that took off because someone took advantage of very low cost shipping caused by empty return legs. Sushi went from an expensive delicacy in Japan to common man food because the planes that brought their electronics to the US were going back empty and our fisheries took advantage. Fiji water got popular because Fiji imported a lot and exported nearly nothing so sending boats full of water out was very cheap. Etc.
The only thing I know of right now (I am sure there are lots I don’t know) is chicken feet, which is basically where all the profit is in the chicken industry.
Surely we HN users must be able to think of something we could ship to China cheaply!
Americans do quality control and reliable contractual law which is actually really valuable.
The Chines can buy other Chinese goods sold in the US with some degree of assurance to quality standards and minimal supply chain fraud. Without that expensive high tech devices will fail due to pervasive fraud in the supply chain. China can try to crack down on such fraud but that is really hard to do effectively, much easier to ‘outsource’ quality control with normal business incentives.
The US isn’t the only country with quality control and the standards have degraded, so has the reliability of contract law has also degraded. So this ‘service’ may not be maintainable long term. For example, Amazon to me is now a faster and more expensive Alibaba, I cannot rely on Amazons quality control or reviews. It would have been so easy to algorithmically ensure quality but less profitable and Amazon chose the option with more profit.
In Australia there are faux grocery stores where people (often Chinese nationals) film themselves buying groceries to send to China. Is called ‘daigou’. Things like baby powder and alcohol. For one I would never drink alcohol in China, a friend almost died there from drinking fake beer. The idea of using sewer oil for cooking still makes me gag.
I think they’ll keep getting better at fraud and it’ll be harder and harder to avoid. The world seems to be increasingly corrupt and the general population does seem more amenable to fraud than even 10 years ago so I do worry that quality standards will slip to the point that we’ll have our own ‘tofu-dreg’ projects. Australia already has problems with poor concrete standards for high rises and I expect this to get worse over there.
I think the author was thinking of things we can sell in China that would take up cargo space on a plane so that freight planes carrying cargo from China didn't make the trip back empty - they'd have American goods to sell in China.
Yes, the US can sell a lot of things, but are these physical items created here to take up cargo space? Sure, Microsoft makes a lot of video games and software, but we're probably not literally shipping Xboxes or video games from the US to China. Yes, the US might be selling that, but it probably isn't using cargo space for return flights.
You seem to have quoted, but then forgotten about, the word "sell". It needs to be things China both wants, and is willing to pay for. Everything in your list is either "already available for free", "banned by the party", or "Why? US patent law does not apply in China".
This is why we in the business world do something called "Marketing" and "Branding"
An Oppo or LibrePhone might be a peer substitute to an iPhone a neckbeard on HN, but an Apple iPhone is still a luxury good.
Sell goods with a strong brand cache and they will continue to sell like hotcakes.
You will be skewered for using a knockoff.
Conversely, this is why Temu and Shien do well - why should I spend $20 at Uniqlo or $40 at GAP on fast fashion when I can spend $10 for the exact same thing on those Apps. It comes from the same factories in China and Vietnam anyhow
>Conversely, this is why Temu and Shien do well - why should I spend $20 at Uniqlo or $40 at GAP on fast fashion when I can spend $10 for the exact same thing on those Apps.
This isn't quite true: Uniqlo only sells their own designs. You may think Uniqlo's and Temu/Shein's stuff is basically the same cheap crap, but the designs really are different. AFAICT, Shein's business is copying other higher-end brand stuff and making it in various different factories, whereas Uniqlo (along with its sister brand, GU) designs its own stuff that's really popular in the Japanese market.
Whoa. I knew we made a lot of it, but didn't realize it was our top export there. I'm surprised (thought it'd be services or some such). Thanks for sharing!
Right. I’m wondering if a strong marketing push could make Chinese people love something they don’t already that we have a lot of. Food is definitely a thought, it’s perishable so air travel would be preferred.
> Surely we HN users must be able to think of something we could ship to China cheaply!
Well, first, I assume by ‘we’ you mean the US, since not all HN users are from the US.
That being said, we do ship to China, but those products don’t require an empty airplane. It’s the software, especially the open source ones, that China needs. Hardware-wise, China may be ahead of the rest of the world for various reasons, but software-wise, it’s still lagging behind. And this is not just a Chinese market issue. Remember, even Japan until recently had a majority of users who used IE!
Complex, novel goods with high r&d costs like passenger aircraft. The fact is they can mass produce almost anything for themselves and very few western companies can stay competitive there for very long unless they have high brand affinity(think european leather goods, iPhones, etc)
Why are you assuming the plane returns to China empty after dropping off your package? Global delivery networks are very highly optimized. Spare capacity gets filled fast.
Edit: judging by https://u.osu.edu/nopaylean/ractopamine-free-facts-info/ the US is going backwards: "Effective for the 2022 Fair, the use of ractopamine is no longer banned for use in the Fairfield County Jr Fair Swine Show"
Within the EU we tend to call this the Brussels effect. Where high standards affect the standards of trading partners even when it’s not required in those countries.
> Soybeans were the nation's top export to China in 2022 — in fact, the US exported nearly twice as much value in soybeans as it did any other product. The legumes were 11.6% of overall US exports to China
Except apple none of these even is a US brand. And apple doesn't produce there. We (Europe) actually export plenty of random and luxury stuff to Asia, the question was about the US
For most consumer goods, there isn't value manufacturing in the first world. Margins are too low. That kind of manufacturing is itself leaving China. Most Temu products are Made in VN ime
I've written more than enough about this in previous comments so read those.
If some low karma commenter (not you pkulak) wants start a flame war about this they can piss off
In my opinion Temu and Shein are examples of Chinese companies picking up shitty western business practices and taking them to their logical conclusion. Amazon already resembles AliExpess thanks to hundreds of drop shipping "brands" - Temu just consolidates all this activity. Western "fast fashion" brands already exploit and abuse cheap foreign labor, Shein just shaves down the margins. None of this is really new, Temu and Shein just take a little less margin for themselves than the hundreds of small drop-shippers operating on Amazon or companies like The Gap so they can compete on price.
I agree that this is, broadly-speaking, bad, but it has also been going on for a long time. Before Amazon, WalMart was hocking cheaply made stuff and driving mom & pop shops out of business. The one positive here is that Temu/Shein are much more explicit about what they are. It's one thing to spend $5 on a pair of shoes made with child labor. It's entirely another to buy shoes made under similar conditions for $100 because of marketing/branding.
I tell my mom the same about Amazon (sans the CCP thing), but it's hard to argue someone out of very cheap stuff that arrives the next day.
It gets easier every time some piece of shit arrives that's not as described, or is incredibly low quality - but it also gets drowned out by all of the "good enough" stuff that arrives as well.
Yeah. It’s hard to argue with convenience. And yes Amazon is not much more than a western front for the same shitty products you can get directly from China. The way the system is gamed with fake reviews and SEO it makes honest businesses hard to compete. In some cases it’s even hard to find stuff on Amazon if you already know what you’re looking for!
Chinese child labourers have better conditions than the Bengali slaves and indentured servants who produce all my other clothes. I think I'll upgrade to Shein as a moral advantage.
You are seriously naive, or dishonest. In China, you can’t own land - you lease it. In China, corporations must have a CCP representative. All roads in China leads to the CCP.
Besides meaningless attempt to offend, what is your point? Have you ever been to China?
You can’t own land anywhere, “ownership” is rather a government own construction and related paper. If tomorrow government in any country decides they need your “owned” land, they will take it.
I honestly think a lot of hate against fast fashion is from the fast fashion brands that still do brick and mortar stores.
H&M has all interest to have us think their clothes are somehow less crap and therefore it's ok to pay 5 times as much and have WAY less to choose from. Same for any brand really except very few clothing brands that follow a different approach.
Edit:// To the downvoters. What's the difference between H&M and Shein other than the price and Sortiment size? I simply don't get where we draw the line.
> Edit:// To the downvoters. What's the difference between H&M and Shein other than the price and Sortiment size? I simply don't get where we draw the line.
Do you have a study that actually compares to H&M? This seem to focus only on Shein and doesn't answer the question.
I don't see why the same factories, using the same work force and the same base material would lead to different toxicity. A little Google foo also confirms that H&M doesn't have a positive image for their Green washing and fake eco labels either.
It's the same level of quality.
Including toxic waste, child work, forced labor and all.
It is easy to see that there are two brands here, H&M will have to succumb to pressure from the west or their physical shops will die, Shein doesn't as they are having a feast on Gen Z's attention economy.
Who will be easier to get beaten into the less horrible business to the earth?
Actually there are those semi awkward clips where shein invited a few western influencers to show them their green, safe and happy factories not to long ago.
Ah, that’s really disappointing (although not a surprise, really).
I know they took some heat in 2021 for calling out Uyghur labour, but I suppose actually riding it from their supply chain is too difficult and too expensive.
> I honestly think a lot of hate against fast fashion is from the fast fashion brands that still do brick and mortar stores.
No. The concept of fast fashion is the problem. The slave and child labour, carelessness about environmental effects both during production and transport, poor quality clothes that release microplastics and need to be replaced much more often because they last a month. The whole thing.
> Edit:// To the downvoters. What's the difference between H&M and Shein other than the price and Sortiment size? I simply don't get where we draw the line.
Why do you need to draw a line? This was your premise and your assumption that “a lot of hate against fast fashion is from the fast fashion brands that still do brick and mortar stores”. It does not match my experience at all, or what is in mainstream media.
But at the current state of things people draw the line somewhere fictional and blame fast fashion while wearing fast fashion.
There is no indicator that shein is either worse or better than H&M or Adidas. All acting really hazardous to their environment and using forced labor.
There is literally no number I can find that would even suggest that H&M or Adidas are doing less bad to the environment.
Adidas might has a durability standard that makes it more worthy but that's not true for Zara, H&M, Shein and all other non sporty fast fashion brands.
And don't get me started how many 'luxury' brands use the exact same production chain.
> Why do you need to draw a line?
I worry because people hate on each other while all doing the exact same shit. Most people can't afford fair fashion at the current market. Many who could afford it still choose to buy bad brands. This is where we need change, not blame shein but happily buy fake eco from h&m and think this is somehow better.
> But at the current state of things people draw the line somewhere fictional and blame fast fashion while wearing fast fashion.
Indeed. Part of the problem is that nobody wants to spend money, so cheap clothes seem like a good bargain. We just don’t see the real cost because we have really poor estimates for how long these clothes will last.
That’s typically something that needs to be solved by regulation as the people by themselves won’t turn away.
> There is literally no number I can find that would even suggest that H&M or Adidas are doing less bad to the environment.
Definitely! Now, there are differences at the edges, like old-school retailers using less harmful transport modes than plane and contributing to local communities through their physical presence (jobs and taxes). But yes, the core issue is the same.
> This won't change the market to the better.
Yes, people are getting squeezed and disposable income is not improving. Blaming them for buying cheap stuff so they have some money to do something nice is counterproductive and reeks of elitism.
Shein and Temu shipping all through planes.
Without being a super eco-conscious person, I am wondering if those ultra-fast-fashion is sustainable. I am sure some of those products are great. But the amount of trash that it would generate is staggering.
It feels like it is a massive transfer of trash from one country to the rest of the world... done in individual packages... sent by plane. I fail to see how society in general is benefiting from it.