Shein is the clothing brand that receives the most monthly online visits in the world. Its application is the most downloaded in Europe and it is one of the ten brands with the most ‘likes’ on Instagram.
This Chinese company has managed to sell its products to more than 220 countries (among which China is not included), without having stores, factories, or any production plants. How does Shein work?
The professor of economics at Columbia University, Xavier Sala i Martín, has reviewed the RAC1 Version of Toni Clapés about the innovative tricks that this company follows to manufacture and sell its products;
Sala y Martín explained that Shein “was born in 2008 and made wedding dresses”, but in 2015 “it changed its name and started making dresses of all kinds.” In the same way that happened with Zara (which revolutionized the world of fashion because it changed the way designers worked), Shein “does not use famous designers either”, but the key differential is that they “use social networks to experiment” .
The professor gave an example: “When they make skirts, they produce a couple of units, show them (especially on TikTok) and see people’s reaction.” From here “if it works well, they produce it and if it doesn’t, they throw it away.”
They also use artificial intelligence: “The clothes that appear on you are different from those of another person. They teach you different things depending on your tastes, advertising is much more personalized,” he assured Sala and Martín. For this reason, she has considered that “Shein is a modern version of Zara”, and predicts that “all companies will end up going here.”
The professor of economics at Columbia University has also spoken about the mobilizations of Catalan farmers. Sala y Martín believes that this is a “very serious problem.” Regarding the bureaucracy that they ask to reduce, he explained that it not only affects them but other sectors and that everything is a problem of the institutions: “Europe only creates obstacles, it seems that it has only converted its objectives into regulating for the sake of regulating.” .
Regarding the unfair competition of European farmers with other countries, he considered that “if you force them here to have very high standards then you cannot allow hazelnuts to come from Turkey when Turkish companies do not meet the same requirements.” That is why he stated: “Europe suffers from a problem of hypocrisy that ends up harming European industry.”
“Everything,” he pointed out, “is not the fault of globalization, but rather the fault of the government.” “Globalization is the usual ass,” he complained, although “none of the demands they are putting on the table is about globalization but about the incompetence of governments,” he concluded.
