To ask you to swerve Shein & Temu

Oh my God you cannot possibly be that thick. Surely not. Surely you know what a wall of text is? My goodness. How embarrassing for you.

I just added a couple of silver necklaces to the cart (well I say silver 😅) in your honour. I wasn't sure about them, but for your sake I'll bite the bullet 😘

At some point during teens/young adult we went from going out and buying something nice, ie one thing, to going out and coming home with hauls. I don't know if thats just me personally.

why?

Yes Mark One, that was another one. Ive lost count of all the names. I mean you couldnt even move stuff along the rails they were that stuffed with basically throwaway stuff. We were heavily influenced by whatever the in popstars were at the time, the films coming out etc.

I think it started in the late 90s, I remember I always used to shop in Topshop and Miss Selfridge and would get maybe one item a month with my allowance. Then a shop called Mark One popped up and we couldn't believe how cheap the clothes were, you could get tops for a few pounds. The quality was absolutely terrible though.

I was a teen in the 80s. Nobody was buying a new outfit for every night out. We were shopping in Top Shop, Miss Selfridge, Clockhouse at C&A, Chelsea Girl. You could not buy clothes in the supermarket. Clothes were EXPENSIVE compared to a hourly wage of £3 as a saturday girl. A new pair of jeans would be a whole week's wages around £25 at the cheapest. if cost of clothing had kept pace, a pair of jeans would still be 8 x minimum wage for a 16 year old, around £50 at the least. And they're not. So today's teens feel comparatively well off, and rather than saving up and buying one top for £20, they are going to these shite merchants and buying 10 tops at £2 each.

I was a teenager in the late 90s and I don't remember anyone getting 10 tops for $50, or doing weekly hauls. The fashion cycle also didn't pump out new products weekly or even daily like Shein now does. You could go to the shops in September and still find the same item there in November. And stuff lasted.

There absolutely was fast fashion/style and beauty products 30 years ago, 60 years ago for gods sake. Throw away nails, earrings, eye lashes, tights would only usually last one wear, that sort of thing. Was no one a teen in the 80s?

I was a teenager in the late 90s and I don't remember anyone getting 10 tops for $50, or doing weekly hauls. The fashion cycle also didn't pump out new products weekly or even daily like Shein now does. You could go to the shops in September and still find the same item there in November. And stuff lasted.

There absolutely was fast fashion/style and beauty products 30 years ago, 60 years ago for gods sake. Throw away nails, earrings, eye lashes, tights would only usually last one wear, that sort of thing. Was no one a teen in the 80s?

Pretty much. I'm highly sceptical of the "it's the only place in existence I can possibly buy things I desperately need to live" argument.

Because "things they need to live" usually turn out to be, taking examples from this thread: manicure sets, advent calendars and stocking fillers for adult children, and beauty bits.

When I was hard up I wasn't thinking about buying any kind of manicure set from anywhere, no matter how cheap. Every penny had to go towards food and the gas meter. There was nothing spare for beauty bits, even if they were rock bottom prices.

I suspect I have a very different idea of hard up to some posters on here.

Clearly nothing urgent then, you just wanted some shite to add to all your other shite

I think the presumption has been all schools with no money are primary and therefore I have been force feeding 5 year olds poisonous lead pencils. I mention pencils as ONE of the things I purchase from Temu. Also I teach GCSE and Alevel - many of whom have their own pencil cases full of Temu purchased stationary!

It’s not nonsense at all. It’s a response to short sighted, over privileged hypocrisy. Your logic works on the basis that the people shopping at these places also have the money to be flying a couple of times a year, running a two car household, buying original designs from the high street etc and are just buying cheap crap because they’re too tight to fork out for the same stuff from the high street. The whole point of shopping at these places is that many people aren’t that same person. If they had the money to be buying better quality stuff with no safety issues and no slave labour/ data harvesting stuff, then don’t you think they would be doing exactly that? It’s like asking someone why on earth they would be shopping at Aldi when they could simply ask F&M to deliver a hamper 🤦‍♀️

You fly twice a year, someone else buys some cheap jumpers from China. You’ve got no moral high ground at all.

FYI, I do. I volunteer at my DCs school weekly, and although they can fortunately afford pencils, I do spend a fair chunk of money helping stock the library and time working with the PTA. I'm not talking out of my arse thanks.

On what grounds?

As many people have pointed out in this thread, many of our more rigorously regulated and tested products are also manufactured in China. So there would be a natural transition from the more exploitative to the more regulated end of the spectrum in response to the shifting consumer demand of eg people buying a plate or a lipstick from Sainsburys instead of Temu. That would improve health and safety in this country and reduce some of the worst aspects of labour in factoriesfor global export. To really improve matters then we would need further pressure to increase supply chain transparency rather than just test product safety, through initiatives like electronics watch and the clean clothes campaign - the industrial equivalents of the fairtrade mark. I used to think that an increasingly connected world would mean more UK consumers would want to try and reduce global slavery, exploitation, child labour and unsafe working conditions, as we can see and hear so much more of what goes on. I find it so depressing and disturbing that instead for some people at least it fuels even more hyperconsumption with even less care for the people in the supply chains.

(Although my main takeaway from this thread is still horror that teachers are giving children lead paint to chew on without their parents knowing as at least I already knew the rest of it…)

Nowt to do with you what others buy.

If they had the money to be buying better quality stuff with no safety issues and no slave labour/ data harvesting stuff, then don’t you think they would be doing exactly that?

Well no. Because data shows that the average Temu/Shein shopper is spending considerable sums on the sites and is not on the bones of their arse financially. And lots of people cannot look beyond the fact things are cheap.