The Long Read: How Shein Beat Amazon And Reinvented Fast Fashion

Uniqueness to the masses

Last year, Julia King, a 20-year-old student and influencer from Texas, noticed the popularity of tiny 1990s- style knit vests . She found one at a thrift store , then resold it for $22 on Depop after posting the look on social media. About a month later, one of her followers saw that an obscure, now-defunct Chinese website called Preguy had used her photo to sell its own replica of the vest — something she, of course, hadn’t given her consent to.

Copies of the vest soon began appearing on countless other sites, including Amazon, AliExpress, Walmart, and Shein, with King’s photo already Photoshopped. Eventually, retailers began using their own photos of the product, but the surreal feeling was still there: the vest, which had originally been a unique vintage find, was now available for everyone to buy, plucked from social media and thrown into the global e-commerce machine.

Over the past decade, thousands of Chinese manufacturers have begun selling clothes directly online, bypassing the retailers that traditionally sourced their products from the country. Equipped with English-language social media profiles, Amazon accounts, and access to flexible supply chains, they have accelerated trends and filled closets with tons of dirt-cheap goods.

The results showed how Chinese clothing companies have evolved to meet the desires of online consumers while changing their shopping habits. This has become fertile ground for the rise of Shein, a company that sells very cheap, very fast fashion.

10 Thousand New Items Daily

Shein is now one of the world’s largest fashion companies, but little is known about its origins. It’s been reported that the retailer started out selling wedding dresses, but company representatives deny this. Today, Shein sells everything from homeware to pet supplies, but its core business is clothing aimed at teenage girls and young women—a generation whose tastes are shaped by Instagram and Pinterest.

Shein’s products are not intended for Chinese consumers; they are sold for export. According to Bloomberg, the retailer’s sales have grown to $10 billion by 2020, up 250% from the previous year. In June, the company accounted for 28% of all fast fashion sales in the US — almost as much as H&M and Zara combined. The company’s rapid growth has caused a number of controversies. Many designers (including young and little-known ones) have accused Shein of stealing their ideas, and Levi Strauss and Dr Martens have gone to court to protect their intellectual property.

In addition, human rights activists and journalists have found evidence that $11 bikinis and $7 tops were made by people working in harsh conditions, while environmental experts have found that the items are often worn just once and thrown away.

At the heart of these problems is an aggressive business model . Shein employs some 6,000 Chinese factories, connected by proprietary software that collects near-instant feedback on which products have taken off or flopped, allowing it to instantly place new orders or scrap unsuccessful designs. Designs are also created using software: some are original, others are based on existing products. According to Rest of World, the company added between 2,000 and 10,000 new products to its app every day (!) between July and December 2021.

Shein vs Amazon

Ironically, Shein’s success may have been helped by another retail giant, Amazon. Since 2013, the latter has been aggressively recruiting Chinese manufacturers to list on its platform. As Chinese sellers joined Amazon, Western consumers gained access to hundreds of thousands of new, low-cost products, from kitchen utensils to chargers.

But Amazon’s partnership with Chinese manufacturers eventually began to deteriorate. Customer complaints about counterfeit and dangerous products from China were damaging the company’s reputation. Sellers themselves weren’t entirely happy with the platform, which required them to follow specific rules and charged high fees for warehousing and shipping orders. Growing discontent among Chinese sellers helped Shein, which lured them to its platform. But Shein didn’t just compete with the American retailer: It joined it, selling thousands of its own products on Amazon.

“Amazon created a craving for online shopping, taught [Americans] how to shop online, and created a habit,” says Allison Malmsten, a market analyst. “  Shein recognized that and decided to optimize .” Rather than imitate Amazon, Shein grew and brought the characteristics of China’s gamified online marketplace to the rest of the world. Online shopping in China has become a form of entertainment, featuring livestreams, flash sales, and pop-ups that keep consumers constantly browsing for the latest products. Shein has used similar components in its own space, including a points system that rewards shoppers for shopping, reviewing, and playing  mini-games .

Shein vs Zara

One of the speakers in the article, representing Chinese manufacturers, said he applauded what Shein had done for the domestic industry. The company’s ability to successfully navigate a range of challenges — such as heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, a slowdown in the global supply chain, and the ongoing pandemic — was the result of “long-term vision” and smart management.

“A big brand might need a very high-end designer or a person with advanced technology, and even then they might only be able to produce 20 or 30 styles a month,  ” he said. “  But Shein doesn’t have high design requirements. A typical university student can start designing quickly and the result will be high quality.” Software developed specifically for this purpose helps to quickly fill new orders.

Unlike Zara, Shein doesn’t chase trends from the catwalk, but rather borrows ideas from TikTok and Instagram, where the hype around a trend rises and falls with lightning speed. While Zara typically gives manufacturers an order of 2,000 items over 30 days, Shein asks for “just” 100 items in 10 days, requiring factories to be more agile. The pressure to produce clothes quickly ultimately falls on Chinese seamstresses, who produce garments during long shifts in poorly equipped workshops. Overtime is the norm in China. To convince suppliers to join its system, the company had to meet one key requirement: paying on time. This helped Shein win the loyalty of factories and make its orders a priority.

Role Models

There is a downside to working with so many different factories at once: similar products appear all over the internet. Suppliers often sell through multiple channels, so the same clothes appear on Shein, AliExpress, Amazon, and other sites at different prices. Most of these items don’t feel unique, as they are basics or copies of trendy items, leaving consumers worried that they might end up paying more than they would elsewhere.

As a result, communities have sprung up on social media where shoppers share tips on how to find identical clothing for half the price. For example, when a $16 crop top from Amazon went viral, TikTok users discovered that the exact same one was available for $13 on Shein and just $3.83 on AliExpress. This leads consumers to believe that the similar items were made in the same factories.

But test purchases showed that things are more complicated. In September, Rest of World ordered five items of clothing from different platforms (Cider, Shein, Amazon, Halara and Shop-P êche) that looked like imitations of the same products from AliExpress. The items were indeed similar, but most were not exact copies. This suggests that clothing factories in China are extremely skilled at imitating each other and adapting to the same trends. In addition, Shein and other manufacturers use data from  trend forecasts and feed it into design programming algorithms. “In these companies, clothes are designed not by fashionistas, but by engineers,”  sums up one expert.

But test purchases showed that things are more complicated. In September, Rest of World ordered five items of clothing from different platforms (Cider, Shein, Amazon, Halara and Shop-P êche) that looked like imitations of the same products from AliExpress. The items were indeed similar, but most were not exact copies. This suggests that clothing factories in China are extremely skilled at imitating each other and adapting to the same trends. In addition, Shein and other manufacturers use data from  trend forecasts and feed it into design programming algorithms. “In these companies, clothes are designed not by fashionistas, but by engineers,”  sums up one expert.

The Never-Ending Story

In an environment where competitors can quickly copy products, it’s important to stand out through marketing. Shein has invested heavily in ad campaigns with Google and Facebook, multiple deals with bloggers and influencers, and even its own reality show with Khloe Kardashian. It’s paying off: The retailer’s website attracted 150 million visitors in August, 40% of whom came through search, compared to 4% of Zara’s visitors.

Shein’s model has firmly established a new norm. But is it the norm the clothing industry wants? The company has become the poster child for the energy-intensive fast-fashion sector, known for manufacturing with hazardous chemicals that quickly end up in landfills and oceans. In November, the company announced the appointment of a head of environmental and social management and told Rest of World that it was implementing “a water and waste management system across its supply chain.”

Shein is starting to gain followers: In October, Alibaba, which pioneered Taobao-style shopping, launched its own shopping site in North America and Europe, called AllyLikes. It’s like a copy of Shein’s platform, except with far fewer product offerings and pitifully few reviews. But examples like these demonstrate that the fast-fashion cycle will only increase in speed and volume as consumers eagerly consume microtrends—and discard them just as quickly.

“We’re constantly in this race for the cheapest product, and the number of products is only growing,”says Elizabeth Schobert, director of marketing and digital strategy at e-commerce analytics company StyleSage.“  I keep wondering: Will this ever end? ”