Real-time dopamine fiends
TikTok and fast-fashion are interconnected, both feeding our desire for cheap and quick distractions. But a ban will only lead to the emergence of something bigger.
Hi. Unfortunately there is no accompanying podcast to this article this month. I’m exhausted 🙃 but I’ll be back in your ears next month.
The talk of TikTok's possible ban in the US is giving Cold War 2.0. Whether you're a user or not, it affects us all. The US is trying to assert itself as the world’s superpower again. It has the biggest economy in the world but China is close behind (World Bank, 2023).
When we look at America’s beef with TikTok, we can look at the thing that matters to them the most; money. TikTok is a Chinese-owned platform that took 22% of the video ad market against Meta’s 16% and Youtube’s 13% last year (Omdia, 2022).
It must hurt for the US to see a Chinese-owned company triumph over its pride and joy in Silicon Valley.
I imagine it’s like when you see your crush making out with someone at the Blue Light Disco after you’ve shared your maths homework with them.
Life is just one power struggle and slow Nickleback song after another.
TikTok’s Impact on the Fashion Industry
TikTok’s ban will impact the fast-fashion industry, which relies heavily on the platform’s lighting-fast trend cycles to inform consumer buying behaviours.
TikTok has been a lifeline for the fashion industry since it grew by 15% YoY in 2021 (Statista, 2022). Its growth and stickiness can be attributed to COVID when people needed a space to express themselves freely without the influence of the family and housemates they were locked down with.
Younger generations were able to say goodbye to Dad’s iPad photos at the Port Douglas Seafood Extravaganza. If it was boring and too basic to be ironic, it didn’t make it into the TikTok sphere.
TikTokkers have used fashion as a way to express their unique personalities, creating 'aesthetics' that represent their individual styles like:
Coastal grandmother
Dark academia
E-Boy
Cottagecore
Blokecore
These aesthetics have become mainstream trends, and fast-fashion brands quickly produce and sell products to keep up with them. They have the power to keep products popular for extended periods, adding to the already existing seasonal demand.
For example, the 'Coastal grandmother' trend led to a 66% increase in searches for 'linen pants' (Business of Fashion, 2022). We can see that the trend spiked, but we can also see that it has added additional growth to the already existing seasonal demand for linen pants.
The most successful trends typically only last for about 90 days, and brands that can quickly and cheaply produce, and sell products during this time are the ones that are seeing the most growth (Business of Fashion, 2022).
Enter Shein
In 2019, hardly anyone had heard of it. In 2022 it was named the most popular brand in the world, and the most Googled clothing brand in 113 countries (Hypebeast, 2022).
In Australia, Shein is the number one online fashion website followed by The Iconic and David Jones (SimilarWeb, 2023). It has the largest market share for fast fashion in the US, at 28%, and has been valued at $100 billion (Wired, 2022).
But Shein isn’t fast fashion; it’s a real-time fashion brand. And this year it is preparing to go public.
Traditional brands looking to continue their digital revenue growth in the post-Covid economy should examine Shein's successful digital commerce model. But this isn’t a catchy boardroom mantra of “Shein model or die”. It’s “Shein, and we still die”.
Shein’s Real-Time Commerce Model
Shein has a unique real-time retail model that uses a consumer-to-manufacturer model, with multiple mini production-line companies stationed around the world, reducing the time from design to production from 60 to 7 days.
It uses software that connects directly with Google Trends and social listening programs to identify trending items and create new designs within a week.
Shein also uses analytics to forecast demand and display products before they are completed to inflate demand, creating scarcity and making consumers want more.
And that’s only the backend. On the front end, Shein takes advantage of the social media validation that the dinosaurs (sorry, not sorry Meta) created.
Micro-Influencers
Shein uses an enormous amount of micro-influencers on TikTok to promote their products (Wired, 2022). They give free products and discount codes to teenage girls around the world, who then post TikTok videos about their #sheinhaul. It’s a flywheel that taps into the world of teenagers, where you live and die on the sword of social status.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
56% of Australian females aged 15 to 25 said that they would leave their job or education to become an influencer so being given the opportunity, especially by a brand as big as Shein, is the ultimate social currency (News.com.au, 2022). Additionally, 90% of consumers trust product recommendations from people like them, which makes Shein’s micro-influencer strategy powerful (SEM Rush, 2021).
When you combine this with TikTok's unique virality the unique power of TikTok, Shein is likely to appear on many Australian TikTok feeds, as people spend at least an hour a day on the platform (ABC News, 2022).
Price
In this decade of COVID, burgeoning war, and recession, people are looking for quick and affordable ways to feel happy.
Enter the "joyconomy" - a term that describes the trend of finding joy in small, inexpensive purchases. Shein embodies the joyconomy, with $7 polyester, puffy shoulder crop tops complete with a love heart chest cut-out.
Shein makes Amazon look expensive.
Z-List Paparazzi Culture
Shein makes around 10,000 clothes a day and puts 700 to 1,000 new items on their website daily which produces 6.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. This is 45% more than the target they need to hit to meet the U.N.’s advice on reducing global warming by 2030 (Time, 2023).
This is at extreme odds with the assertion that Gen Z will only buy from brands that are environmentally conscious (Forbes, 2021).
But what’s really more important to the youth? The immediate allure of belonging and social status, or the sea levels rising by 30cm in Australia in 27 years?
The New York Times encapsulated this tension best when they said,
“For every Greta Thunberg and school-skipping climate change protestor, there is another member of Generation Z buying inexpensive clothes on a smartphone”.
When everyday life is captured and shared on Snapchat, in Stories, or TikTok, it is natural to feel like the star of a Z-list paparazzi magazine spread.
To be seen is to exist, and how you exist shows up in what you wear. Wearing a new outfit on social media starts a new cycle of attention and existence - a new reason to post is a new reason for people to like and comment.
Shein Dopamine Fiends
When people see something trending on TikTok and can buy it immediately on Shein, it releases dopamine into the brain in anticipation of a reward. And in the world of e-commerce, the delivery waiting time builds reward anticipation (Psychology Today, 2015).
To balance being constantly seen in something trending while also waiting for a delivery, Shein’s low costs encourages people to buy in ‘hauls’ of 5 to 15 items. The day it arrives in the mail is the peak of the dopamine hit.
#Sheinhauls, where creators share their haul on TikTok, have 4.5 billion views on TikTok at the time of writing. In a cruel and vicious cycle, this trend immediately shortens the lifecycle of clothes, as creators wear the clothes immediately in their content as part of a visual try-on.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Just like Twitter’s survival under Elon Musk, it’s over before it even begins. But the cycle continues as new trends emerge and are available on Shein, allowing people to stay on-trend and continue the rush of being constantly visible.
Being fashionable in the mass extinction era
Last year, the Australian Fashion Council released a report which showed that Australians buy an average of 56 new pieces of clothing every year. This makes us the second biggest consumer of clothing in the world, following the US.
It’s safe to say that the culture of fast fashion has well and truly sunk its teeth into the 1.42 billion tonnes of clothing that we import a year (Fashion Journal, 2022).
If TikTok is banned and real-time retail models suffer, it’s a win for the environment. Right? Unfortunately, consumers are unlikely to change their behaviour.
There will be residual addiction to the personalised entertainment that people were getting from TikTok (Sydney Morning Herald, 2022), and fashion-conscious young people will continue to create, hunt down, and buy trends to reflect their real-time and dynamic identities. They simply don’t know a world without fast fashion, or social media.
Backends will be plugged into Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Trends will be siphoned and garments will be produced to capture them. Media and retail consumption habits will live on.
Trends will move only slightly slower, giving more brands time to produce more garments.
When there’s so much anxiety about the era of mass extinction that we find ourselves in, one more new t-shirt isn’t going to change our fate.
Every week.
For everyone in the neighbourhood.
Right?