photo credit: Ryann Jochum
Shein is the largest online-only fashion firm in the world, according to Fashion United. Internationally, Shein processes around 880,000 orders every day. Almost everyone knows about this online store because of the unusually low price for clothing items. For example, the average price for a t- shirt on Shein is $5, which is half the price of almost any other store. The motive for many consumers to purchase from Shein is the inexpensive and trendy items that come in surplus.
Most products from Shein are from China. This proved to be a problem for shoppers in the United States because USPS briefly stopped accepting packages from China. However, this policy, implemented by President Donald Trump only lasted 12 hours.
“I am very upset when I heard that Shein does not ship to the United States because I like buying cheap clothes,” sophomore Corinne Case, an avid Shein shopper said.
Shein, Temu and Amazon have benefited from the de minimis rule. It allowed them to avoid import duties with packages under $800. These brands leveraged this and shipped millions of small orders from overseas warehouses to U.S shoppers at very low prices according to retail merchandiser.com. This loophole is now shut down so now brands like Shein will face duties on packages which will greatly increase the operational cost and possibly how much consumers have to spend.
“I won’t pay more for Shein because the whole reason I shop there is that it is cheap clothing,” sophomore Delaney Roman said.
The U.S. government’s decision to close the De Minus rule is a part of a strategy to tighten regulations on large foreign e-commerce giants. Many policy makers have found that these companies have had an unfair advantage over American businesses with their cheap goods flooding the market.
“I will have to find other brands to shop from if Shein completely stops shipping to the U.S.,” Roman said.
Without USPS handling delivering for Shein and Temu, they will have to find alternatives, like they will shift to more expensive private carriers like Fedex, UPS, and DHL. The shipping process of Shein is already known to be unreliable, so with these new rules applied consumers’ items will ship even slower than before according to 11Alive.com. “I ordered from Shein. The shipping was OK; it took like two weeks,” Roman said.
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