The backlash grew so big that many of the influencers deleted their posts. After the news got out last week, some mocked the influencers and suggested they were being led on by Shein-saying the company was showing them a model factory that didn’t accurately reflect typical conditions. They weren’t even sweating,” Destene Sudduth, one of the influencers invited, said in a TikTok video.īut if the influencers were impressed, other social media users clearly weren’t. Honestly, everybody was just working like normal, like chill, sitting down.
“I expected this facility to be so filled with people just slaving away, but I was actually pleasantly surprised that a lot of these things were robotic. Throughout the trip, at least according to the videos shared and the captions, the influencers were wowed with the clean and modern factory, the robot-filled assembly line, and the “honest” conversations they had with workers there.
Where did these influencers go? According to social media posts, they went to an unnamed supplier factory, a Shein “innovation center” in Guangzhou, and a distribution center in the nearby city of Zhaoqing. They have varying numbers of followers, ranging from as few as 30,000 to over 1 million. But in June, Shein invited six US fashion and beauty influencers to visit China and tour its facilities. Shein executives seldom talked to any media, in China or in the West. Until recently, the company has been known for its secrecy. Apart from the universal sin of fast fashion-the overproduction and overconsumption of disposable clothes-Shein in particular has been accused of working with sweatshops, copying indie designs, and even sourcing cotton from government forced-labor programs in Xinjiang. Have you shopped on Shein? I have, a few times, and I’m not really proud of it. And to respond to accusations of terrible labor conditions, the company is now inviting US influencers to its operations in China. The once-obscure Chinese fast-fashion website has become increasingly mainstream.
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