What is the philosophy and marketing of the brand?
It's always a good idea to go back to the concept of fast fashion to grasp a brand's major goals and determine whether they're sustainable. When we talk about fast fashion, we're referring to an industry that makes and sells large volumes of clothing designs that are designed to mirror current fashion trends at extremely low prices.
SHEIN is perhaps the best example of a brand that promotes a quick fashion-oriented mindset among all brands that overtly emphasise qualities such as affordability and trendiness. The Chinese internet store, which was founded in 2008, is one of the fastest-growing enterprises adopting this business model. SHEIN has 23,3 million Instagram followers alone, and it is thanks to social media platforms that the company has been able to grow at such a rapid rate. Influencers and celebrities helped spread the word, encouraging Generation Z to shop at a brand whose slogan is "Everyone can experience the beauty of fashion." SHEIN not only satisfies the 'cheap' aspect of a typical fast fashion company by selling apparel at shockingly low rates, but it also satisfies the 'quick' aspect of a typical fast fashion brand by offering items at frighteningly low prices.In addition, it is the best example of a 'quick' brand. Every week, the corporation adds thousands of new things to its website, reinforcing the notion that more is better and making garment shopping insanely easy.
Is the Brand's Clothing Price Justifiable?
One of the most distinguishing features of fast fashion firms is how they attract customers by offering exceptionally low costs. While it may be the most enticing feature of all, and it is undoubtedly the reason why so many people all over the world prefer to buy apparel from such businesses, we should always inquire why prices are so low and how the firm can afford it. How does it manage to generate a profit while covering the costs of garment workers, the manufacturing process, and transportation?
Primark is a great example of a low-cost fast fashion brand. The Irish multinational store and England's top-seller sells trendy garments at incredibly low costs, encouraging customers to buy a large number of items only to abandon them after a few wears and return to buy more. This method alone produces massive volumes of textile and fashion trash. The only way the fashion behemoth can keep its costs low is to sacrifice other aspects of its business: Primark does not spend as much money on marketing as some of its competitors, such as H&M and Zara, and by keeping to retail sales rather than providing an e-commerce platform, the company is able to save money that would otherwise be spent on marketing.Packing, shipping, and giving customer service are all things that come with operating an online website. While this makes Primark a "less fast fashion" business, it still encourages overconsumption, which adds significantly to the company's large environmental footprint.
Cheap pricing are also warning signs to stay away from quick fashion brands; low prices are often a clue that something is wrong behind the scenes, such as terrible working conditions or ecologically unfriendly manufacture. Mistreatment of workers is a common cause of low-cost apparel production. Fast fashion firms are frequently linked to violations of basic worker rights, such as a lack of safety regulations, low pay, and long working hours. Some have even called the fast fashion industry a "modern form of slavery." Primark, for example, has been at the centre of numerous scandals involving harsh working conditions, with factory workers concealing desperate letters inside their clothing to expose abuses and slave labour circumstances. The American way of lifeForever 21, the apparel retailer, has also been embroiled in labor-related scandals. The US Labor Department, for example, discovered in 2016 that the corporation was paying factory workers as little as USD$4 an hour, well below the legal minimum wage.
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Is there a risk that the brand will produce more than it can sell?
Textile waste and overproduction account for a large portion of the emissions produced by the fast fashion industry. While the main cause of overconsumption is large-scale clothes production, which allows businesses to offer products at reduced prices, the biggest concern associated with excessive manufacture is what corporations do with unsold goods. They are frequently destroyed, a process that firms appear to favour over selling them at deeply discounted prices once they have outlived their usefulness. According to Fashinnovation, doing so would harm their reputation and uniqueness. "Recycling necessitates sorting and separating the clothing, which necessitates more labour and hence more money." As a result, since the primary purpose of fast fashion companies is to make money,To make money, they've found that ruining clothing is the best and cheapest option.
Nike, Urban Outfitters, and H&M are examples of firms noted for making more than they can sell and discarding unsold clothing carelessly. The latter generates 3 billion clothes on average each year, with a large number of them going unsold: in 2019, the company created over USD$ 4,1 billion in unsold items. However, the Swedish multinational clothing firm, which is also the world's second largest fashion retailer, is on a quest to become more environmentally friendly by encouraging and enabling the recycling of old items. While H&M's method is a start in the right direction and may eventually reduce the company's environmental impact as well as pave the Fast fashion label that, like many others, makes more than it can sell and encourages excessive consumption.path for other fashion behemoths to follow, the underlying problem remains unaddressed. an H&M
Is the brand putting what it preaches into practise, or is it attempting to greenwash?
Understanding whether a company's sustainability promises are more than simply a marketing tactic is another critical aspect of determining which fast fashion firms to avoid. Having a sustainable clothing line does not imply that the company is environmentally conscious. When firms spend far more time and resources marketing their sustainability plans than actually implementing them, this is known as greenwashing. Fashion behemoths frequently spread false information to encourage consumers to assume they are ethical or appreciate transparency by disclosing information about their emissions, only to forget to establish explicit targets to reduce them.
According to a study conducted by the Changing Market Foundation in 2021, 59 percent of all promises made by European fashion manufacturers are false or misleading. Despite the fact that many firms are investing millions of dollars on sustainable projects, the vast majority of them still rely on synthetic fibres made from fossil fuels. H&M, which has lately invested millions of dollars in recycling facilities throughout the world and has its own 'Conscious' line, is really concealing factual information about the materials they use to make their clothes. One such 'Conscious' collection, for example, was discovered to include 10% more synthetic fibres than its fast-fashion counterpart. Primark was also at the top of the list of brands with a lack of openness when it came to their green claims. SHEIN, on the other hand, comes in first place for being the least transparent fast fashion retailer.brand in terms of sustainability, because it does not disclose any information about its production, supplier chain, or business impact.
How to Stay Away from Fast Fashion Brands
The aforementioned brands, from Zara and Primark to Shein and H&M, are just a few of the world's most influential fast-fashion retailers. The list, on the other hand, goes on and on. While it may be relatively easy to spot them, avoiding these fast fashion firms and resisting the urge to purchase into their trendy and incredibly affordable collections is more difficult than it appears. However, if we truly want the industry to reform and contribute to the battle against climate change, we as consumers must reassess our choices and recognise that our actions have repercussions; and it can all begin by choosing more sustainable and ethical products over fast fashion firms.