To ask you to swerve Shein & Temu

[DoNoTakeNo]

This Christmas?
I know it’s mainly a cost thing but if it’s achievable, can people possibly manage with less stuff?

Shein/temu goods are almost always flown over here. How else do people think they are getting here from China so fast? I believe they do now have some UK warehouses, so presumably (hopefully) that stock is sea freighted.
Of course most UK retailer's stock is sea freight.

Who has a 'haul' mentality? Don't think I've seen anyone claim that.. & I see that no-one else has volunteered info that they don't have a car / fly / get nails done.. Glass houses?

I've tried explaining to this poster that Temu and Shein transport goods by sea. Flying goods is more expensive than sea freight, so it figures these budget marketplaces are going to ship rather than air where possible. Temu seems similar to Amazon in that they have 'local' warehouses from what I can gather from their website. I would presume they sea freight in bulk to local warehouses in this country rather than flying individual hairbrushes from China each time someone makes an order.

That's not facts

I work in import so I'd say I have a much better idea than most of the people on here that just watched a documentary.

Carry on though my dear, you're doing great.

Sorry but that's delusional. Do you know how many different things Temu sells? You seriously think they have every item stored in every country they sell in? Of course not. They don't even claim to. They fly stuff from China.

Ok. Educate me then. If you work in import should be easy for you to correct me. Tell me how carbon efficient air freight is.

Exactly.
This and forecasts.
There's actually train freight from China to Europe now too. Then onwards from there. It was a massive breakthrough in servicing Europe from China, but it doesn't fit the Netflix narrative so no-one ever looks at that.

Of course they do, it would be madness and completely inefficient as a business to fly each order over as its done

The issue is that there are unofficial warehouses in other businesses which take the goods in, sometimes peoples homes.

You don't want to be
You are looking for a gotcha
I am not responsible for educating you
I don't care if the conversation moves on, my point was valid.

True. However surely it is more likely that products made to hit as low a price point as possible will use the cheapest options- typically these are exploited labour (think children, Uyghurs [sp?]) & physical inputs that don’t hit regulatory safety requirements (alternative chemicals that may be more flammable) or aren’t finished to an acceptable standard (eg rough & sharp edges).
So if a toy, for example, is genuinely made to a British or European standard then all the above will be prevented.
Retailers have responsibility to audit their supply chains; many have a Modern Slavery policy on their websites.

Why? All these retailers purchase from them and charge double the amount.

This piece of 2023 report from Our World in Data website shows some basic information on carbon footprint of alternative forms of transport. I think for the purposes of proper comparison we can exclude the option of walking to the distributors warehouse

If you say so. But I'm obviously not going to take your word for it based upon nothing.

China has also had its little mitts in African railways.

Hauls have been around for ages, sadly. Just look at the thousands of YouTube videos which are often thinly-veiled ads and pry on people's fomo. People keep adding more and more unnecessary items in their basket cause it's cheap so why not, and because of commodity fetishism. People want more stuff, newer stuff and buying more becomes a hobby when places like Temu sell you gadgets to solve a problem you didn't even know you had.

It’s not a new thing though or exclusive to those sites.
I worked at Next for a while and day one of the Next sales was madness! People spending thousands on items after queuing all night. Grabbing armfuls of clothes,
I think the problem is, many on this thread have seen the social media haul posts and assume we are all doing that when many, many are not.

@ninjahamster I remember those Next sales in the 90s & 00s - utterly insane! I never understood how crazily people bought anything they could touch & always felt so much sympathy for the staff who had to deal with them all.
I don’t think PPs believe you’re grabbing hauls like that just for the hell of it.

Thanks!

Yes the sales were totally bonkers. Up at 4am on Boxing Day so the store could open at 5. Everything set up so beautifully and within an hour it was like a tornado had ripped through. People would grab all these clothes off the rails then go to a corner to sort and leave the stuff they didn’t want on the floor. The behaviour was atrocious.

Blimey!!

Bloody hell, that sounds like black Friday behaviour in America, not British behaviour!

I don't get nails done, only fly when visiting my parents once every few years, I have to have a car though, there's no public transport to my workplace and its too far to bike (and too dangerous to bike really, especially in winter, as its 80kph windy hilly country roads) but until a couple of years ago I walked or biked everywhere.

A little more narrative may have been helpful given that people need to feed their kids and manage on less and less money.
I buy on Temu because I make silver jewellery. If I order the tools in the uk they cost 4 times the amount. I’m trying to keep my costs low so I can pass those savings onto customers. If I buy everything from the uk I have to charge customers more. It’s as simple as that!

It’s either Temu or SHEIN, or Amazon who cost twice as much.
I don’t mind waiting.

Most clothes I buy are from Vinted. I don’t fly or drive.
Markets are global. Please tell me an alternative - department stores are dying.
Even if I do buy from a uk brand it’s often made in china and the same polyester quality!!

I don't have a car, or fly, or get my nails done.

This is the point I was trying to make about green guilt. Noone is living a 100% ethical/carbon neutral lifestyle, however hard we try or might want to. Ninjahamster was getting a hard time by some posters for buying a few clothes from Temu a couple of times a year, when it sounds like she's already living life with a relatively low carbon footprint (not travelling much, never flown on a plane) not buying excessive amounts of stuff.

We can all do what we are able to within the circumstances life has dealt us; there's no need to assume those who make different decisions to us are wanting to watch the world burn and be rude to them. Personally I don't buy lots of stuff, primarily because I'm tight with money and want to retire asap (hairbrush is older than me, probably around 50 years old), I have 'fast fashion' items I still wear that I bought 20 years ago. Never been on a plane because my parents live in this country and travel doesn't interest me. I walk or get the train everywhere because I hate driving. If my clothes no longer fit/got worn out, Mum moved overseas, the trains stopped running, of course I'd have to make different choices.

I make my living on selling 'unessential' hobby products to people, so if those people stopped buying stuff, I'd go out of business. It would be hypocritical of me to question whether someone really needed to buy a particular item. I'm sure plenty of us have jobs which require developing or selling goods and services which aren't life or death essential.