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?

And do you think people having gifts (which you could get from other places, or get fewer) is more important than not using slaves?

Yes I don’t buy shein already and don’t intend to.
I only buy known brands from amazon and presumably they pass the safety laws here 🙂

How many would you like? All major retailers have websites. Then there's websites like Etsy and Faire, or you could always Google local business in your town. Or you can do vouchers for places if your budget is strict. You can buy good quality second hand books for cheap from Abe Books or World Of Books. You can look at the eBay pages for charity shops like Cancer Research. You can look at Vinted.

In short, if you really wanted to avoid using slaves, you could. You just don't give a crap and are happy to have an enslaved child make your child's Christmas gifts.

They get very few anyway. COL means we are struggling. I don’t work. We have a mortgage to pay, bills to pay, food to buy.
Wouldn’t I love to shop in Waitrose and buy organic locally sourced produce? Yes of course.

Yup because that’s the only two options, isn’t it? Waitrose organic, or Shein/Temu.

ffs.

I mean I don’t like either of them but yes you’re unreasonable. People can do what they like based on their budget.

You realise there are more options out there beyond Waitrose or Shein, right?

Vinted is pricey, Etsy is REALLY pricey.

I do buy second hand books if we want them. I pick up clothes off free sites.

Etsy has a huge range of price points.

Vinted is cheap as chips 😂 I sold a t-shirt on there today for £1.50. How much cheaper do you want???

Of course. FFS. Our food is bought in Aldi and my husband goes at knock down time.

The point is, money is really, really tight. If you’re not in that position, you cannot understand.

That’s brilliant. I never find items that cheap in my size. My daughters use Vinted quite a bit though.

I can’t help but judge well off people who buy this cheap unethical stuff. I get if you’re desperate but like the link posted shows many well off people buy from Temu etc. The issue is there are people who don’t consider the choice behind the purchase. It’s not like they think about the poor safety standards, slavery, funding an authoritarian country etc and think it’s worth it, it just doesn’t come into their mind at all. It’s just about the bargain.

If money is really, really tight then why in the name of all that is holy are you buying non-essentials like advent calendars and stocking fillers (your words) for adult children?? Just don't. They're adults. They're old enough to be told "Look guys, we don't have a lot of money this year, let's not do presents."

Wouldn't consider using either of them.

Thank you to those who have posted in support of this - obviously it’s overall safety standards (lead, sharp edges etc) and exploitation plus product quality.
It certainly wasn’t a comprehensive list, clearly there are other purveyors of cr*p out there - unsurprisingly I’m no fan of theirs either.
I hadn’t seen any other threads on this, if I had then I’d not have started this one (excuse me for insufficient thread research 🙄).
Shop where you want, @EchoedSilenceet al, it’s nobody else’s business what you do with your money, after all. Happy Christmas.

Brexit actually does have something to do with this. UK’s safety legislation is derived from the EU rules. They are pretty much back to back. What we don’t have any more is the same testing regimes. Previously the testing of products was a shared responsibility through the EU, more was done because more were available to do it. Now we have to test these things ourselves. How much resource do you think our Government puts in to that? It isn’t any more than they used to, and now we have much more to test.

Because I want to.

And we get to the bottom of it. You're not using child slaves because you have to, you're using them because you want to, for complete non-essentials.

"It makes me uncomfortable" my arse.

There are fucking tons of free clothes out there. People literally dump them by the bag full.

What did you need so urgently out of interest?

There is enough clothes already in existence to clothe the next 6 generations.

I think everything i own comes from temu.

Oh my! You think only cheap stuff you buy from China involves slave labour. That’s funny.

The thing is, unless you are buying handmade local artisan items, most things you buy online or in mainstream cheapish high-street shops are just as bad in terms of being made abroad in sweatshops. Most of us are struggwith a cost of living crisis and although we'd love to buy everything local and hand made, it's just too expensive. So if I'm buying foreign made sweatshop clothes I'd rather pay as little as possible for them.

Well yes, lots of charity shops don't even take Shein stuff. A lot of this is a mindset shift of the last decad where people "need" so much stuff. I read somewhere that an average US household has 300,000 items in it and I bet the UK isn't far behind.

My DC got a partybag full of temu stuff once and after writing with the pen that was in it, their hand was yellow as the dye had rubbed off. It smelt weird too. It all went in the bin immediately