DECODING SHEIN’S SUCCESS: HOW IT STAYS RELEVANT IN 2024

It is an undisputable fact that SHEIN is one of the biggest companies in the global fashion industry at this present moment. The app for the store is the most downloaded clothing app in the world, its market value increased to 47 billion USD, and in the last fiscal year of 2023 its total revenue doubled to 2 billion USD. On social media platforms like TikTok, SHEIN is the most popular brand on the fashion hauls genre, which garnered around 4.8 billion views, and on which SHEIN appeared on 42% of them.

Despite its undeniable and growing popularity, and perhaps because of it, SHEIN has received strong criticism for its corporate practices. A clothing, shoes and accessories company that adds around 6000 new items every day, and that charges an average price of 10 USD per item, must make revenue somehow, and in the case of SHEIN, it comes from saving on labor and supplies. Recent calculations point out that a worker in the Chinese sweatshops that act as vendors of SHEIN earns 0.04 USD per each item they make, thus earning about 322 USD monthly after working up to 75 hours per week with only one day off a month (a livable monthly wage in China is 900 USD).

Also, since most of the items sold in SHEIN are made from oil derived fabrics (nylon, polyester, rayon, acrylic fabrics), they are the clothing version of use-once-and-destroy plastic cups: they rarely last over one or two washes. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the brand had one of the lowest scores on the FTI (Fashion Transparency Index) due to the poor working conditions of employees on its factories and the dire environmental consequences of its overall production.

In independent, sustainable and vintage fashion circles, the mere mention of the word SHEIN can generate uncomfortable reactions, as it is considered immoral, almost criminal to support a brand with such questionable practices. However, in comparison with the millions of SHEIN customers, these circles are usually small. How come such a sketchy brand is still so successful, and it doesn’t seem its popularity and sales will slow down anytime soon?

One of the most common answers to this question is that brands like SHEIN make fashion trends accessible to the masses that usually wouldn’t be able to afford them, but statistically speaking this is false. Latest USB reports indicate that the average SHEIN consumer in North America, their largest market, is a 25 to 34 years old woman who earns around 65.300 USD per year (60% above the average income for women in this region) and spends about 100 USD in fashion items every month. In other words, people who buys frequently from SHEIN could, money wise, purchase fashion items in other shops. Why do they choose SHEIN then?

Actually, people buying at SHEIN do so for two main reasons: comfort and convenience. Not only it is much easier to buy online than to go to a brick and mortar shop to try the product in person, but SHEIN has an advantage that many other brands, both in fast fashion and in designer brands, do not possess: a huge variety of sizes, including larger sizes that are virtually impossible to find otherwise. The SHEIN Curve line, which specializes in extra large sizes, is one of the most successful of the brand and very popular among parts of the general population that, even if they can afford more expensive brands, because of their body type they simply can’t fully access them.

You don’t even need to be clinically obese to have a hard time finding clothes that fit you perperly. Clothing sizing everywhere, especially in womenswear, has steadily changed since the 90s, and what used to be a size 2 back then is a size 8 now and vice versa, depending on the brand and the region of the world where the garment was made. Under such circumstances, options like SHEIN are the most practical for many when they have nothing to wear.

On the other hand, and even if we are very much preoccupied with having clothes made in an environmentally friendly and decent manner, such ethics are far from being massive at this present moment in time. Most people will choose what is the quickest and most convenient way every time, and if this means buying at SHEIN (regardless of how immoral we might think it is), that is what they will do without thinking much of it. That is just the logic of capitalism, and the human condition of wanting to fulfill our needs and desires in the fastest and easiest way available.

That is why, in the immediate and also in the not so far future, fast fashion brands such as SHEIN will most likely stay relevant and popular in the fashion industry. At least, until the industry as a whole makes consistent, mass efforts to offer alternatives that are sustainable, inclusive and respectful of the infinite variety of body shapes and sizes of consumers, and that are monetarily and aesthetically satisfying and feasible.