Shein is now a fashion empire. With super low prices and an ever-rotating catalog, Shein crushes the competition. The company is now in the Top 5 e-commerce sites in France alongside Amazon, Fnac and other Leboncoin.
A record rise achieved in barely two years for the website. Behind this behemoth of fashion, hundreds of factories producing at a frantic pace, minimizing costs with each operation. A recipe that seems to work, the company’s valuation was recently assessed at around 100 billion dollars.
Inhuman working conditions
But the other side of the coin exists. In a new report, the British media The Guardian reveals that the working and living conditions of workers in Shein’s subcontractors are unsustainable. The brand has just recognized these facts and ensures that an independent audit has just informed it of the abuses of a subcontractor.
In two of these factories, the workers work every day between 12 and 13 hours a day. If this practice can shock, such a rhythm is still authorized by Chinese law. In a speech a few days ago, Shein said he was aware of the problem and said he made improving working conditions his priority.
Change in 2023?
The company is giving its various contractors until the end of the year to comply with Shein’s new internal code. As American companies already do that have subcontractors in the country, factories that do not respect this moral mode will no longer have any contract with the group.
Shein wants to go further and promises to improve the working conditions of employees by investing 15 million dollars over the next three to four years. This money should make it possible to “physically” improve the factories of certain suppliers.
Shein: Unhelpful controls?
Finally, Shein assures in his statement that the number of unannounced checks carried out in companies will be multiplied by two or three over the next few years. These checks are the only way for Shein to know the working conditions of the employees, but very often the group warns the factories of their arrival and a staging is then in place.
Today Shein is highly criticized. The platform has an enormous environmental cost, the working conditions of the workers are more than questionable and the clothes produced by these factories are often stolen from other small designers who have the misfortune to share their projects on social networks.
Despite these criticisms, Shein continues to grow and the company is now the number 1 solution for buying clothes online. Thanks to another Chinese application, TikTok, Shein has even made a place of choice in the collective imagination. Shein clothing fittings are indeed a thousand of the video app, accumulating millions of views every day.
