Shein's London stock listing is bad news for all of us (2024)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Ultra fast fashion brand Shein is circling the London Stock Exchange, mooting a flotation of ‘blockbuster’ proportions.

I am devastated.

It’s not as if our capital was Shein’s first choice.

A New York flotation was essentially blocked last year when interventions from US lawmakers and regulators effectively blocked an IPO going ahead amid tensions with Beijing and concerns over Shein’s possible connections to human rights abuses using Uyghur forced labour in the fashion supply chain.

So now Shein is trying its luck in my city. Executive Chairman Donald Tang met with the chancellor Jeremy Hunt and shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, and seems to be dangling the £50billion share flotation as a carrot to revive the beleaguered City.

To roll out the red carpet and talk up Shein as a potential saviour as some are – well, it makes me pretty nauseous.

I’m an avid Shein-watcher. But unlike the estimated 90million users on the Shein fashion app, hoovering up to 10,000 new product drops a day, I’m not buying.

Instead I’m tracking the human and ecological footprint of the Chinese-founded fashion behemoth, valued at $66billion. And it’s not great news.

In 2011 I wrote my first book on the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry, To Die For: is fashion wearing out the world? (spoiler: yes!).

What I learned then was that there is no off-switch for this business model that will take whatever resources it wants, use outsourced low cost labour to turn a profit and increase pressure and disposability to increase revenue.

Speed and volume creates environmental impact. When it comes to fashion’s footprint the world is now estimated to produce over 100billion new garments every year.

Over half of these are now produced from fossil fuel derived fibres, namely polyester.

Left unchecked, the fashion industry could be responsible for over a quarter of ALL carbon emissions by 2050.

I can’t help but compare that to the fact humanity is in the grip of a climate and nature emergency.

Globally, last month has been confirmed as the hottest month on record. Global warming is advancing at its fastest rate since modern records began 174 years ago. We simply cannot afford business models that are taking us in the wrong direction.

Shein, I’m looking at you!

A recent report from environmental group Stand.earth found that in 2023 Shein produced more emissions than the entire country of Paraguay.

On logistics alone, Shein is heavily dependent on air freight (with a far higher emissions footprint than shipping).

According to a recent cargo industry report Shein and rival Temu use the equivalent of 88 Boeing 777 freighters of cargo, filled to the brim worldwide every day.

Clearly I’m not the only one asking questions about the business model.

In 2021 the Swiss NGO Public Eye took a deeper dive into Shein’s main production base in Guangzhou, China. They discovered a number of serious violations of China’s labour laws, including garment workers pulling 75 hour shifts.

A Channel 4 documentary Untold: Inside the Shein Machine found workers paid as little as four cents per garment and working 18-hour shifts.

Naturally Shein refutes many of these allegations. Over the last two years Shein has been on a charm offensive, signing cheques to charitable foundations.

In 2022 it launched EvoluShein claiming ‘responsibly’ sourced polyester.

It has also announced a resale platform to help recirculate pre-worn products beginning in France (coincidentally where legislators are taking a tough stance, recently announcing surcharges of up to €10 per garment for the biggest fast fashion companies).

It will be rolled out in the UK and Germany at another unspecified time, presumably after London welcomes their IPO with open arms.

‘These are the things we are doing but it is obviously not enough; we have to do a lot more, a lot more research,’ Shein Executive Vice Chairman Donald Tang has said.

I’d argue that rather than more research, they need to spew out a lot less product and take their foot off the gas before they drive Planet Earth off a cliff. But that’s where we clearly differ.

As the problem of fashion waste comes homes to roost (dumps of discarded fast fashion clothing from polyester have been found all over the planet, including in the Chilean desert) legislators and policy makers are looking at ways of putting the brakes on.

A London IPO, were it to go through, will supercharge the super sizers, make no mistake.

Because I can promise you Shein has no ‘off’ switch. This is something that the gatekeepers of the London Stock Exchange ought to be mindful of before rolling out the red carpet.

The purpose of listing of course is to raise more capital to go bigger and faster.

According to the Wall Street Journal Shein is already working on opening its fabled agile supply chain to third party brands. The whole of fashion could soon be a Shein subsidiary, and then next?

Dog biscuits, cupboards, cars?

Watch out, the Sheinification of your life is coming.

And that’s bad news for us all.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk.

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