Between customer expectation and business opacity, the Chinese Shein opened this Thursday ephemeral shop in Barcelona in the most expensive street in Spain, in Portal of the Angel of Barcelona. In a relevant marketing operation, the online fashion firm that is revolutionizing the low-cost fashion sector intends to popularize the brand and increase its weight in the Spanish market through a “show room” or exhibition of products. Its ultra-low prices, below 10 euros on average, have become in the last year a point of attention for the fashion sector and a serious threat to many business models that until now seemed invulnerable. The opening caused queues from six in the morning and customers could see and try on the clothes but not buy them at the time. They received a bag with promotional gifts and discounts for their online purchases.
From openly ignorant parameters of commitments to the environment and sustainability, Shein is an open allegation of compulsive consumerism and a wake-up call to clothing lines that had hitherto large commercial margins. In basics, swimwear and party wear, Shein has no competition. The 100-euro bikini now costs three, the respectable 100-euro ‘cheap’ party dress now has alternatives for eight euros. Full-blown disruption.
The temporary establishment of the farm 15-17 of Portal de l’Àngel will be open from today until Sunday, July 10. Shein opened another ephemeral store in Madrid for four days at the beginning of June this year, with a large influx of customers and without figures or balance on the part of the Chinese company, which refuses to give information to the press about its strategies and objectives. In that store if the purchase was possible. At the end of 2019, the company opened a pop-up store in the Maremagnum shopping center, but that initiative went almost unnoticed.
Shein opened its first physical store in 2018 in New York, to continue with this promotion technique in various cities around the world, mainly in the US, but also in London, Paris or Lisbon. Analysts currently value the company in the order of 100,000 million dollars.
A study of Smartme detected that Shein reaches an already remarkable market share. 62% of Spanish mobile users who bought fashion bought Shein between September 2021 and February 2022. It is the “favorite store for all age groups”, along with Vinted, “positioning themselves as leaders in the online market” quickly. But the products sold by Shein are very low priced, so the market share in value is radically smaller than those percentages.
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The alarm signal has already been unleashed in fashion multinationals such as H&M, the brands of Inditex, Mango, Desigual, etc. The ‘extrem low cost’ market forces all of them to raise prices and qualities, diversify product ranges and take extreme promises of intangibles. The directors of the large fashion multinationals, formerly ‘fast fashion’, admit that they do not compete against a fashion firm, that it is a technological firm, a digital native that can do mischief with its clients’ data. The key to Shein is that the decision centers are next to the factories and that their response to changes in demand is no longer ‘fast’ but ‘ultra fast’, ultra fast. Shipping times from Asia have been reduced and avoid the need for complex logistics platforms at destination. And reverse logistics is almost nil, due to low prices, and is channeled in the event of a purchase error through the sale of second-hand products (an important threat to fashion firms as well).
There is a social consensus that it is neither sustainable nor ethical to change jackets every two days and T-shirts several times a day, but younger consumers welcome the existence of textile brands that offer prices they can afford.
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