Ultra-Fast Fashion & How It Became Such A Rage
So what is ultra-fast fashion? Think of it as fashion, but cheaper and faster. Ultra-fast fashion brands essentially are just that—ultra-fast. With faster production cycles and incorporating trends in just days, these brands make it a point to bring the latest and the hottest to customers with lightning speed.
One of the most popular ultra-fast fashion brands in the fashion space right now is Shein. The Chinese clothing brand was recently valued at a whopping $100 billion in a recent funding round, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. This move makes Shein one of the most valuable private companies in the world. The ultra-fast fashion brand ships to numerous countries and adds about 3000 styles on an average, each week. In the US, Shein now does more in sales value than both H&M and Zara.
So how does Shein do it?
While a lot of Shein’s success, much like most other ultra-fast fashion brands, comes from the hype and haul culture on social media platforms like TikTok, a lot is also thanks to the speed at which consumers can get their hands on an ongoing trend. “Shein uses AI to scrape social media- Instagram, TikTok, especially and I believe, just the internet at large, for any kind of fashion trend. So let’s say that three years ago these big poufy sleeve dresses were really popular, like the Selkie dresses. I’m sure that Shein was able to pick up on that, like immediately and make a ton of imitations of that dress,” says journalist and chief correspondent at Business of Fashion (BoF), Lauren Sherman, on BoF’s latest podcast episode from their series, The Debrief. “Shein is able to make its lead time as quick as three days. Rather than having a couple of its own factories, it works with a network of smaller factories. Shein is located in the same city as these factories in Guangzhou, China. Because of the proximity to their factory partners, Shein can further decrease their lead time,” adds Sherman in the episode.