How ultra-fast fashion brand Shein exploits workers and gets you to buy more, according to new documentary

Welcome to the world of "ultra-fast fashion," where technology, marketing, customer manipulation and manufacturing come together to get you to buy more. Chinese retailer Shein is the world's leading ultra-fast fashion brand and has made billions as an online retailer. But cheap clothes and endless style come at a cost.

In the documentary Inside the Shein Machine, reporter Iman Amrani investigates Shein to uncover the truth about how this notoriously secretive brand became a global juggernaut. The film looks at how the company is able to add 2,000 to 10,000 new styles to its site every day and how its tech keeps us shopping, and Amrani sends an undercover investigator into Shein factories to follow the rumours of harsh working conditions that exploit workers.

"I want to understand how, despite these criticisms, Shein has managed to seduce shoppers like you and me," she says.

More tech company than fashion brand

Shein might seem like any other fashion manufacturer on its surface. But the documentary suggests that the brand, launched by search engine optimization specialist Chris Xu in 2015, actually has more in common with a tech company than a retailer.

What makes Shein unique is its use of data. Unlike other brands, it doesn't look to traditional fashion calendars for trends. Companies like Zara use their traditional fast fashion model to get runway looks onto store shelves shortly after being seen. Shein however, scours trends on social media and its massive stash of internal customer data, using AI to determine what products to produce.

In this way, Shein has completely bypassed the fashion system. Instead of following the predicted trends, it looks at what customers are buying and needing now. "This machine operates on a completely different level," marketing expert Andy Woods says in the film.

When it comes to its site, Shein pulls out all the stops to make you buy more. In the documentary, Woods identifies several "dark patterns": tricks websites use to get the user to perform actions they didn't intend to, which are used extensively in e-commerce. Some examples include fake scarcity (is there really only one item in stock left?), fake popularity ("hot" items) and fake urgency (timed offers).

In 2022, the Fdration romande des consommateurs (FRC) and Swiss watchdog Public Eye conducted a study about shopping and manipulation. It looked at 15 online retail giants including AliExpress, Amazon, Asos, Zara and, of course, Shein, to identify how many of them used the 20 most common e-commerce dark patterns. Shein topped the list, using a whopping 18 out of 20 tricks. Hop on Shein's website and you'll see these tactics immediately: prompting users to sign up for accounts and buy more to get a discount, making cancellation difficult, storing tracking cookies without asking.

Those lessons from the tech world have helped Shein become the world's fifth largest private company with a valuation of $66 billion US. In 2022 alone, it generated $23 billion US in revenue, and according to the Wall Street Journal, Shein has plans to increase that revenue by 40 per cent in 2023.

Influencing influencers to sell their products

With Xu's tech background, it's not surprising that Shein also has a robust online marketing program. The company uses social media and search ads, influencer marketing (involving "micro-influencers" and celebrities) and affiliate programs to reach its audience.

Shein's social media platform of choice is TikTok, and if you're a user, you've probably been served up a Shein haul in your feed, where fans of the brand un-box their large purchases and try them on for their viewers. These influencer-fans aren't always getting paid, but Shein is smart by encouraging its users to do the advertising on its behalf with the hope it will get them more followers or lucrative brand partnerships in the future.

"The influencers are working hard promoting clothes, dreaming of big paid deals," Amrani says in the documentary. "But what they don't know is what is going on behind closed doors at factories like the ones Shein uses."

Shein operates an "on-demand" production model according to Peter Pernot-Day, Shein's global head of strategy. The company identifies products they would like to sell and partners with smaller garment producers to create small batches of the product (from 10 to 100 pieces). Shein then posts the garment on their site to see how well it performs. If sales of the product are good, Shein arranges a contract with a producer that can create the garment on a much larger scale.

Inside the Shein Machine shows what the working conditions are like at one of these small producers and the results aren't pretty.

Undercover footage reveals harsh working conditions at two Shein suppliers | Inside the Shein Machine

12 months ago

Duration 2:00

An undercover investigation reveals the very long working hours at clothing manufacturers that supply online retailer Shein. From docking pay for mistakes, to withholding pay, this undercover reporter poses as a worker to discover if if the rumours were true. Watch Inside the Shein Machine on CBC Gem.

In an effort to counter stories of worker exploitation at their suppliers, Shein recently flew in a group of influencers for a curated tour of a production facility in Guangzhou, China. But the trip quickly became a PR nightmare. The creators saw massive backlash when they posted about their experiences, with many social media users accusing them of uncritically praising working conditions at the facility.

Still, it doesn't seem to have slowed Shein down.

What's next for Shein?

Shein is rapidly expanding. It's opening distribution facilities outside of China and closer to its customer base, like the 170,000-square-foot warehouse that opened up in Markham, Ont., in 2022. It's seeing the rise of apps like Temu and is expanding to become an Amazon-style marketplace.

Shein also isn't satisfied with having an online presence. It's making moves into the physical world, hosting pop-up shops across the U.S. and partnering with Forever 21, which could see the brand being sold in brick-and-mortar stores soon. And as this juggernaut grows, the entire industry will be watching to see if it works to clean up its practices.