no matter how you pronounce it xi'an shine sheen whatever you're probably familiar with
this fast fashion company since it's the biggest in the world but are you aware of
how they came to dominate online fashion or the several controversies they've been in let's get
into it xi'an was founded in 2008 in nanjing china by chris zhu originally it was more of
a drop shipping company sheehan launched his first website in 2011 branding itself as a
company that mainly sold wedding dresses but would sell other women's wear too they mostly
sold clothing in europe and used targeted ads on facebook and pinterest to attract customers
at the time online shopping was starting to become popular but it hadn't reached the boom that it
would in the next decade by 2015 the company officially rebranded from its original name
she inside to justian which was meant to give the company a shorter and more memorable name
so it is pronounced xi in as the company grew they acquired some in-house designers to make
shian branded clothing and became more exclusive with their vendors soon the company grew really
popular overseas it became popular in the united states around 2019 and it was especially popular
with younger women sheen became a worthy competitor of some similar online shopping
sites like fashion nova and asos xi'an however has continued to stand out for its cheaper prices
the company receives loads of free promotion on sites like tick tock where users post hauls
and outfits of the day showing off their xi'an fines many of these posts aren't even sponsored
shien does sponsor some influencers giving them affiliate codes that they can post to
give their followers discounts many of the she and tags on tick tock have over a billion views
in addition sheehan uses ads that appeal to one's personal style and previous searches they may have
done on the site to make them more likely to buy the clothing once they see it a second time
2020 proved to be an excellent year for shein with most of us stuck having to shop online and
money being tight for a lot of us she didn't seem like the perfect option by november 2021
the company was valued at 30 billion dollars currently sheena is worth over 100 billion dollars
worth more than h m and zara combined sheen is the most downloaded shopping app even ahead of amazon
internationally it's the most popular apparel site and is the most talked about clothing
brand on tick tock and youtube currently sheen makes up 28 of the american fast fashion market
sheen's business model is to cater mostly to gin z which explains the trendy clothing and
the low price points because of social media and the general interest most teens and young
people have in fashion they're the ones more likely to do free promotion for the brand and
the ones most likely to be influenced by it constantly sharing looks and creating new
trends on sites like tick tock has caused fashion trends to evolve rapidly xi'an has to keep up with
these trends which means producing new clothes all the time producing clothes so quickly and
in such large quantities has led the company to employ multiple unethical practices for the
sake of success while other businesses are slowly becoming more transparent about their production
sheet has become more secretive leading many to believe the company is trying to sweep their more
shady practices under the rug the most obvious problem with xi'an is the poor working conditions
since the company's goal is to always stay on trend production is non-stop it can take as
little as three days from a trend being identified to she in designing a comparable item and listing
it on their site workers are producing around the clock and it's estimated that between 700 and 1000
items are added to the website daily the factories produce over 100 000 garments a day the city of
guangzhou is home to xi'an's headquarters as well as hundreds of unregistered factories out of which
she had manufactures many of its products some villages contain dozens of these small factories
called handshake buildings handshake buildings often take orders to manufacture for multiple
different companies at a time and therefore aren't directly owned by xi'an laborers are subcontracted
to work in these shops cutting costs as they aren't technically direct employees of xi'an
many of these factories don't have any formal contracts with xi'an so there's no protection in
place for the workers sheen claims that they're paying their workers above industry average but
that seems pretty difficult to do if you don't keep track of the amount of employees you have
since you don't even own the factories that they work in the average turnaround for these
factories is 7 days from receiving an order when the industry average is typically around 2 weeks
this leads employees to work up to 15 hour shifts a day in order to meet high demands
on multiple occasions shia has failed to publicly disclose their working conditions something that's
against the law and many places like the united kingdom they're among the few companies who
have received a score of zero for supply chain traceability xi'an doesn't disclose where their
supply chains are how they operate or how their workers are treated other brands that scored a
zero for their traceability include chanel dolce gabbana and fila she and has failed to
comply with several countries required proof that workers aren't subjected to slave-like conditions
australia requires companies of their size to file annual statements with the department of
home affairs and australian border force stating what the company is doing to protect their workers
though sheehan is currently in breach of australia's anti-modern slavery law no financial
penalties currently exist even if they did the company's worth 100 billion dollars so i'm not
sure if fine would stop them worker exploitation isn't the only unethical practice sheehan uses to
keep up with high demand and rapidly changing trends they've been in the middle of multiple
infringement suits for stealing designs from other brands sheen has been accused of copying luxury
brands like gucci and dior creating cheaper imitations of designs that would normally
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars they've also copied prominent designers like marine
sir and rick owens while it's normal for a high fashion to eventually trickle down to the masses
a lot of shien's designs are direct copies they were sued by levi strauss for copying a trademark
jean pattern other brands like ralph lauren and dr martens have also filed infringement suits against
sheen claiming their designs have been copied and that the poor quality of shien's products could
damage the reputations of the brands in march shien was sued by streetwear brand stussy for
producing counterfeit items the items weren't just copied but they bore stussy's name on them too
stussy sued she in for any and all profits that they'd made off the merchandise
sheehan has not only ripped off larger more established brands but they've also been
repeatedly accused of stealing from smaller designers for many of these designers this
puts their business in jeopardy they don't have the money to fight sheen and court and she and
selling their designs for cheaper can crush their business since these smaller designers don't have
the funds to mass produce and mass exploit other people they can't compete with shian's lower
prices like many of these designers 23 year old tracy garcia was unaware her designs were stolen
until an instagram follower sent her a link to the she and ripoffs tracy creates unique silk
camisoles under her small business transformations by tracy not only are her designs unique they're
also sustainably made she sells them on her etsy shop as well as the patterns to create them
according to tracy sheehan hires employees to peruse social media sites for inspiration
aka creative designs that they can copy alexia a black owned indie brand has also accused sheen of
copying their exact design and color scheme for a crochet top the original top is handmade in
nigeria and sells for 330 dollars while she and's rip-off sells for only 17 the designer explained
that it can take days to knit each top and with the intricate design it's easy to understand why
sheen is so notorious for copying smaller designers there's a tag on take top called she
and stole my design on it small designers expose sheen's theft and urge others to spread the word
in some cases if the pressure is enough she in takes down the design a boycott sheehan tag has
also become popular on tiktok to bring to light both the theft from small brands as well as the
exploitation of workers sheehan's only response on this matter is maintaining that they respect
designers intellectual property and that they do their best to rectify legitimate complaints
xi'an doesn't only steal designs but a lot of the images they use on their sites to sell the clothes
many of the images on sheen's listings are just taken off of people's social media
whenever they've posted themselves wearing the item or something similar
in some cases the person is wearing a designer item and she and copies it
but then they still post the person wearing the original item on their site
influencers have spoken up about this saying that they never submitted a picture to xi'an
or gave she and consent to use their images it all just goes back to she in cutting corners and
outsourcing almost everything which really just means i'm stealing other people's work and their
content putting these types of pictures on the website also misrepresents a lot of their clothes
often people think they're getting a higher quality garment than what they really are because
of the better quality of the pictures sometimes there's the complete difference between the color
of the item the fabric or the cut entirely some of the items come with ripped seams or seams missing
or the fabric with tear with little wear a lot of the garments that look fitted in their image
were completely shapeless and unwearable once people opened them and tried them on
sheen has also been involved in controversies regarding culturally insensitive designs
in july of 2020 xi'an had an item called greek trim fret carpet listed on their site
shoppers realized the design looks similar to muslim prayer rugs and the insensitive designs
include muslim iconography like the kebab the most sacred place in islam after the outcry she had
released an official statement offering an apology and announcing the listing would be removed less
than a week after this fiasco sheen was blasted over the internet for selling a necklace with a
swastika pendant sheen apologized by saying that it was intended to be a buddhist swastika though
that may be the culture where it originated it's universally known that the symbols no longer used
publicly because of its association with nazis again they removed the item from the site the
following year she enlisted a phone case with what appeared to be a white police officer drawing a
chalk outline around a handcuffed black man sheen claimed the phone case was designed in support of
black lives matter and to honor victims of police brutality like mike brown this still didn't sit
well with people and sheen eventually announced on twitter that they removed the case from the site
they also admitted that they'd never even gotten the original artist permission to use their
artwork when the artist was made aware of his work being stolen he explained what the original
intention of the work was and he asked sheehan to donate any money they made to black lives matter
aside from how they make their garments sheen has also been under fire for how some of them
are packaged customers have posted viral videos of bugs and insects being inside of their clothing
i'm never buying from shine again w two literally just got it out of the package
bro what the my cheeks are literally with chills right now what the [ __ ] is this [ __ ]
i'm oh i'm gonna move out bro what the [ __ ] they're crawling on me now what the [ __ ]
she unpackages most of its items in clear branded zipper bags meaning that anything
inside the bags would have gotten there whenever they were packaged it's not hard to imagine that
the majority of these factories where the clothes are made aren't super clean in one case a customer
unpacked a shirt and when she did bugs fell out of the folds of this shirt she tried to
contact sheen's customer service but was only able to reach a bot at first sheehan eventually
said that they would investigate the issue but it seems that nothing came of it in another case a
customer claims to have found blood on the lining of a bathing suit that she'd ordered from sheehan
she reached out but her claim wasn't handled because according to xi'an they followed strict
hygiene measures another unsatisfied customer took to tick-tock to post a white bikini she'd bought
that had mysterious stains on the bottom when she opened it it's clear that sheehan isn't an
ethical company by any means still it's extremely hard to see a cute cheap outfit and look past
other people being exploited especially when we're so far removed from where a lot of our
clothing comes from it's even more difficult not to order when it seems like xi'an is the only way
to affordably keep up with ever changing trends since the clothes are so cheap we're convinced
that they're disposable and that there's really no consequence for continuously buying more
you can't even go on social media without seeing a post from or about shein i'm sure if
you're someone in your 20s or younger you either know people who've ordered from xi'an or you've
probably even ordered from chiang yourself i don't want this video to come off as overly critical of
people who shop at xi'in and i'm definitely not going to add like i haven't ordered clothing from
sheen and for a lot of people fast fashion are the only affordable and size inclusive options
we all want to wear cute clothing and fast fashion is typically what's most affordable for younger
people so while fast fashion is unethical it's not always necessarily fair to blame consumers however
i do think it's still important to be conscious of how she and other fast fashion companies operate
because it affects more people than just the consumers and hopefully it can inspire us to
make more ethical choices about where to shop in the future if that ever becomes more feasible
for us let me know down in the comments if you've ever had any negative experiences with xi'an and
what they were and like if you reached out to them did they handle it did they ignore you but anyways
if you enjoyed this video be sure to like and subscribe and i will see you in my next one bye