Web Excursions 2021-09-20
The Shady Labor Practices Underpinning Shein’s Global Fashion Empire
[The] investigation has found that Shein uses a range of troubling practices to ensure it can produce clothes quicker and cheaper than the competition — tactics that leave thousands of Chinese workers vulnerable to exploitation.
Many of Shein’s manufacturing suppliers cut costs by subcontracting orders to small workshops located inside rundown “handshake buildings”
— residential blocks so densely packed together, locals joke that neighbors in different towers can almost touch each other.
The firm started out as an e-commerce outfit based in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing in 2008,
which focused on exporting made-in-China wedding dresses to the Western market.
In 2012, it adopted the name SheInside.com and expanded into a broader range of women’s apparel.
The turning point for the company came three years later,
when its founder — Xu Yangtian — decided to reinvent the business as a fast-fashion brand.
He shortened the company name to Shein and
shifted its headquarters from Nanjing to Guangzhou — China’s leading clothing manufacturing hub.
There, Xu hired a team of in-house designers and built up a large supply network among local factories.
This allowed Shein to identify designs trending in the West and
produce similar items ready for export in just a few days —
a model now known as “ultra-fast-fashion.”
even Shein sometimes isn’t sure exactly where its outfits are made.
Shein [is commonly referred to by its suppliers] as Zoetop Business Co. Ltd.,
a Hong Kong-registered company owned by Shein founder Xu Yangtian.
When orders arrive, the supplers’ staff often have to work 15-hour shifts to finish everything before the deadline.
The lead times for Shein’s orders are normally just seven days,
whereas other clients usually allow two weeks
“Shein called us recently and reiterated that we shouldn’t share any company information with outsiders, as a lot of business spies are out there trying to copy Shein,” one factory owner said.
Shein’s network of subcontractors continues to expand.
Its suppliers are increasingly subcontracting orders to lower-wage parts of China,
such as the eastern Jiangxi province
The network even extends as far as Liaoning province in northeast China
Many of Shein’s fast-fashion competitors refuse to work with so many small-scale manufacturers
The more subcontractors there are, the harder it becomes for them to police labor conditions within their supply chains, he added.
Shein stopped directly recruiting workers for its logistics centers two years ago and now uses dozens of dispatch agencies to hire new staff.