Shein: Fast-fashion workers paid 3p per garment for 18-hour days, undercover filming in China reveals
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It is the biggest fast-fashion company in the world, making billions of pounds by unveiling thousands of new designs on its addictive website every day and selling them cheaper than anyone else.
Now the first undercover investigation into factories supplying Shein, the Chinese retailer loved by millions of young women in the UK and around the globe, has exposed the disturbing experiences of workers making its clothes.
Garment manufacturers in China are often working up to 18 hours a day, being paid as little as 3p per item, with no weekends and only one day off per month, a Channel 4 team has found.
This treatment of workers – who are fined two-thirds of their daily wage if they make a single mistake – breaks not only Shein’s code of conduct for suppliers but also Chinese labor laws. The company says it will investigate.
A woman using the false name of Mei secretly filmed inside two factories where she took on jobs producing the kinds of tops that British shoppers can buy for as little as £1.49. The footage has been shared withi ahead of Untold: Inside the Shein Machine, streaming on All4 from Monday.
Women in one factory are found to be washing their hair during their lunch breaks, as they have so little spare time outside of their long shifts. A man who started work at 8am, but is filmed sitting shirtless at his sewing machine after midnight, says he will not finish until 2am or 3am because he needs to complete his batch.
The shirtless man filmed working late into the night in one of the factories (Photo: Zandland/Channel 4)
Asked about when they take time off, one person explains that they work seven days a week, saying: “There’s no such thing as Sundays here.”
The workers in the first factory are paid a base monthly salary of 4,000 yuan (£500) to make a minimum of 500 garments a day. To earn a living wage, many stay late into the night to earn a commission of 0.14 yuan (2p) per item. Their first month’s pay was also withheld. Those in the second factory have no basic pay, instead receiving 0.27 yuan (3p) for each item they produce.
One of the workers revealing how they are granted no leave or weekends (Photo: Zandland/Channel 4)
The tiny wages may help explain why Shein was valued at $100bn in April and can sell dresses for £2.49. The company is even advertising a 1p “flash sale” of homewares beginning on Sunday. Its publicity-shy founder, tech expert Chris Xu, is thought to be worth £5bn.
Environmental campaigners argue that Shein is also worsening the throwaway culture of clothing being shipped halfway around the world but only worn a few times – if at all – before being discarded.
One of the Shein garments made in the Guangzhou factories that were filmed undercover (Photo: Zandland/Channel 4)
Many Britons aged 35 and over, especially men, will still never have heard of Shein. Even some fashion industry insiders remain unsure of how to pronounce its name, saying “Sheen”, “Shane” or “Shine” – it is in fact “She-in”, having originally been called “She Inside”.
It shot to prominence during Covid-19 lockdowns, boosted by its popularity among young users of another Chinese company that grew quickly in 2020: TikTok. Fuelled by people sharing videos of their latest “#sheinhaul” of purchases on the social media platform, Shein’s share of the UK fast-fashion market was just 3 percent at the end of 2019 but now stands at 16 percent.
How Shein’s website targets shoppers with ‘dark patterns’
As well as its “hyper-trendy” designs, cheap prices and prominence on social media, a key factor of Shein’s success is how its aggressive website makes shoppers feel hooked.
Digital-marketing expert Andy Woods, co-founder of Rouge Media, explains in Untold: Inside the Shein Machine how the company displays countdowns for time-limited deals to create a “feeling of jeopardy” among shoppers afraid to miss out on bargains.
The Shein homepage (Image: i screenshot)
Woods says Shein is “head and shoulders” above other fashion brands in the number of “dark patterns” it uses online. “These are behaviours on the website that force you into actions that you might not choose yourself,” he explains. “Data is making marketing like a loaded weapon.”
Shein was contacted for comment by the documentary makers but did not respond on this matter.
Data published on 6 April by The Business of Fashion showed that in the year to date, Shein had launched 314,877 separate designs in the US market, compared to 18,343 in the same period by Boohoo. This relentless onslaught suggests customers have more than 3,000 new styles to potentially view every day.
Iman Amrani, the journalist who led the Untold investigation, tells i: “By combining its knowledge of tech, data and social media with being a fashion brand, it has created this juggernaut, this beast within the industry. It’s absolutely huge compared to other fast-fashion brands. High-street names like H&M and Zara don’t really compare.”
She explains: “While other fast-fashion brands also use cookies to track what you’re doing online and chase you around the internet, Shein ups the ante so much… As somebody says in the documentary: it knows what you want before you know that you want it.”
Shein is one of the most popular fast-fashion retailers for young women shopping on a budget (Photo: David M. Benett/Getty)
The low pay for Chinese workers, allowing the firm to undercut other fast-fashion companies and drive the sector’s prices even lower, is considered to be one factor in the recent struggles of its British rivals. Manchester-based Missguided was forced to enter administration earlier this year due to a financial crisis that left suppliers fighting to survive, as revealed by i. Boohoo’s market value has fallen 87 percent in a year and last month it announced a 10 percent fall in revenues for the six months to 31 August.
Iman Amrani, who presents the documentary, says: “It’s a scramble to the bottom. If somebody cuts a little bit more off the price or the cost to make something, they are beating you… When you look at Boohoo Missguided, Pretty Little Thing, or any of these websites, they’re basically all selling the same thing – my little sister will argue with me over which one has got the better quality clothes, but what they are really competing on are production and price.
“Every one of them is competing with each other, regardless of where their factories are or where their business is based. For the people looking at their screens in Newcastle, Scarborough, Scunthorpe or wherever it doesn’t matter where the clothes were made, they’re just thinking: ‘That one is £12 and that one is £13.’”
Workers in the two factories supplying Shein feel under severe pressure to meet their targets (Photo: Zandland/Channel 4)
The documentary is the first of the new eight-part, youth-orientated current affairs series Untold from Channel 4, shows how Amrani met a contact in the UK with extensive experience in revealing how sweatshop workers are treated in China, where 15 million people work in the fashion industry.
The contact arranged for “Mei”, one of the journalists in his network, to infiltrate the Shein supply chain in Guangzhou, a southeastern city with a population of 14 million. Having seen what she discovered, he says: “I have been doing investigative stories in China for 15, 16 years – still [they] exploit workers like dogs. Basically, it’s worse than years ago.”
They must both remain anonymous for their safety, and the team has not disclosed which factories they filmed inside to protect the workers, whose faces have been blurred.
Iman Arani led the Untold: Inside the Shein Machine investigation (Photo: Zandland)
Amrani tells i: “We had to be incredibly careful. It was nerve-wracking for everyone involved… Knowing the consequences could be really high, it was really scary. Somebody is putting their life on the line to do this.
“I’ve reported in lots of countries and I was in a place very recently where I was followed by the secret police, but I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for this undercover reporter. She did an incredible job.”
Shein also makes clothes for men, but women are their biggest market (Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty)
The company’s own sustainability and social impact report suggest it is aware of problems within its supply chain. Out of nearly 700 suppliers, it audited in 2021, it found that 83 percent had “mediocre” or “poor” performance and needed “corrective action”.
This included 5 percent with “poor” performance, with more than three “major risks” – and 12 percent that were “very poor”.
Shein’s own assessment of its supply chain in its most recent sustainability report (Image: Shein)
The Untold investigation backs up findings from interviews by Swiss researchers last year. Campaign group Public Eye found that some staff at six suppliers in Guangzhou were working 75-hour weeks. Shein said it had “immediately requested” the report and would “initiate an investigation”.
There have also been concerns about the safety of Shein’s clothes for consumers. High levels of lead and other potentially hazardous chemicals were found in Shein products by an investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s consumer watchdog Marketplace last year.
Lead can damage the brain, heart, kidneys, and reproductive system – but one jacket for toddlers purchased from Shein contained almost 20 times the amount deemed safe by Health Canada. Shein said it would remove the products in question from sale, cut ties with the suppliers involved and conduct chemical safety tests.
Shein’s stolen designs
Shein “scrapes” social media to spot clothing styles and trends that are becoming popular and then orders its own versions.
But the company is accused by many independent fashion makers of directly copying their designs and selling far cheaper. Among those who have experienced this is Fern Davey, a designer from Bournemouth who founded her Veronica Velveteen brand in 2018, makong high-quality lingerie by hand with existing fabric.
She tells Untold of how Shein had “completely stolen” her design for an underwear set she had priced at £65, which it was selling for between £4 and £7.
After Davey complained to Shein, the product was taken off its website, but she says she never received an email response.
A statement from the company says: “When legitimate complaints are raised by valid IP rights holders, Shein promptly addresses the situation.”
Environmental and business ethics campaigners, including Venetia La Manna, who features in the documentary, arguing that Shein’s business model encourages people to buy clothes they do not need. In one clip, a shopper holds up a sweater she added to an order and explains: “It was actually cheaper for me to get it than not get it, because it applied a discount.”
Although Shein does sell men’s clothes, it primarily targets women. Amrani says: “At every point of the chain, it’s women who are being affected. There are men involved as well, but it is predominantly women who are making the clothes, women whose designs are being stolen, women who are being manipulated and used to advertise things, and then you’ve got the women who are buying the clothes.”
Shein has experimented with physical stores, like this one in Madrid, but in general it is seen as an online-only brand (Photo: Cezaro De Luca/Europa Press via Getty)
With high inflation squeezing people’s budgets, some will argue that many consumers have no choice but to buy the cheapest clothing available. Amrani also recognizes that teenagers looking for youthful styles of clothing can struggle to find ethical alternatives providing the looks they want. Fast-fashion websites also provide sizes for petite and plus-size customers that may be trickier to find elsewhere.
But Amrani says the primary focus of fast-fashion websites is not on selling essentials – it is on constantly feeding people’s appetites for a new look they can wear once and post on Instagram before immediately moving on to the next thing they can buy.
She says: “The cost of living crisis is very important and some people can’t afford to buy clothes. But we’re not necessarily talking about basic clothes here… It’s not about people who are just buying a few items because that’s all they can afford. We’re talking about the lifestyle of buying loads of clothes that you don’t wear, beyond what people need. We’re talking about ‘Sheinhauls’.”
Shein promotes itself using celebrities such as the rapper Saweetie, who has 13 million followers on Instagram and nearly five million on TikTok (Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty)
Dominique Muller, policy lead for the ethical-fashion campaign group Labour Behind the Label, tells i: “Shein has so far only produced the filmiest of due-diligence statements and its code of conduct only scratches the surface of what is needed to be a responsible company.
“Workers in China are denied the right to freedom of association and are thus unable to speak out against poor working conditions and abuses. Labour activists face harassment or imprisonment for showing the real cost of garments made in China.
“It is no wonder that these appalling kinds of experiences have been exposed in the industry yet again. Cheap clothes can only be made with cheap labor and abuse. Fashion companies must do better.
“The fact that products like this continue, despite years of brands’ promises to clean up their act, serves to highlight the urgent need for legislation holding them accountable for their supply chain.
“Shein, like other brands, must develop proper relationships with factories and support them in improving conditions. As a first step, this means paying higher prices for the goods – so workers can get higher wages and shorter working hours.”
US singer Anitta, who has 63 million followers on Instagram, is among the celebrities to have partnered with Shein in the past (Photo: Stefanie Keenan/Getty)
In a statement, Shein says it is “absolutely committed” to its supplier code of conduct, which “complies with the core conventions of the International Labour Organization”. It tells Untold: “Shein engages industry-leading third-party agencies to conduct regular audits of suppliers’ facilities to ensure compliance.
“Suppliers are given a specific timeframe in which to remediate the violations, failing which, Shein takes immediate action against the supplier, including terminating the partnership.” i also approached Shein for comment.
On environmental concerns, the company says: “Shein’s business model is built on the premise of reduced production waste and on-demand production. The average unsold inventory level of the industry is between 25 to 40 percent, whereas Shein has reduced it to a single digit.”
The company says it aims to reduce its carbon emissions by 25 percent.
Untold: Inside the Shein Machine will be available to stream on All4 from Monday 17 October at channel4.com
