By Mimosa Spencer
PARIS (Reuters) -Protesters bearing “Shame on Shein” placards gathered outside a Paris department store on Wednesday as the online fast-fashion retailer opened its first shop amid fierce criticism of its low-cost business model.
After queueing for hours, dozens of shoppers filed into the 19th-century BHV department store in the city’s Marais shopping district at 1 p.m. (1200 GMT), as several riot police officers brought in to shield the store looked on.
Shein’s store, which occupies 1,000 square metres on the sixth floor of the BHV and has created 50 jobs, has caused uproar among politicians including Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, as well as retailers who say that Shein’s business model has an unfair advantage and has eroded French high streets.
Shein on Wednesday tried to show it can positively impact French retailers by offering shoppers an opening-day deal – whatever shoppers spend at Shein, they get as a voucher to spend at other shops within BHV, valid until Sunday.
The first shoppers to enter the store browsed rails of Shein clothes including jeans for 27.99 euros ($33) and a black fake leather jacket for 42.49 euros.
SGM SEES CHANCE TO BRING SHOPPERS BACK TO STORES
Shein, which sends cheap dresses and jeans from factories in China direct to consumers in 150 countries worldwide, was approached to set up a concession by Société des Grands Magasins (SGM), which is hoping the launch will attract a younger clientele to its struggling BHV department store and bring benefits thanks to its ecommerce expertise.
“Every day, we’re told that physical stores are dying. Every day, we’re being told that thousands of jobs are at stake, that the French textile industry is dying, and these same critics are not the ones offering us solutions,” SGM Chairman Frederic Merlin told BFM TV. “I believe that without innovating, the future honestly doesn’t look bright.”
SGM will use the BHV name for its seven regional department stores, five of which will also host Shein shops, after ending a franchise agreement with Galeries Lafayette, which also publicly criticised the Shein partnership.
FRENCH GOVERNMENT HEIGHTENS SCRUTINY OF SHEIN
France has been especially robust in its reaction to Shein, and could ban it from advertising in the country under a planned law to rein in “ultra-fast” fashion that specifically targets platforms adding more than 1,000 new products a day.
“We’ve been fighting this fight against Shein for two years and to see this brand set up in a historic building … that symbolizes (the) French textile industry, it’s an unacceptable provocation,” said lawmaker Anne-Cécile Violland, who spearheaded the fast fashion law.
The discovery of child-like sex dolls on Shein’s website has fuelled further outcry, with France’s finance minister on Monday threatening to ban the platform if it sells such products again. Shein said it had sanctioned the sellers and implemented a full ban on sex dolls.
The size of Shein’s business in France is not known and the company did not reply to Reuters when asked about its revenues in the country, but according to its latest “transparency report” required by the EU under regulations on large platforms, Shein had 27.3 million average monthly users in France between February and July.
SHOPPERS CHECK QUALITY OF CHEAPER CLOTHES
Queuing outside Shein’s new store, IT worker Yuting Yu said she had come to browse.
“Right now, with the economy going down, people don’t have the money to buy good things.”
Retiree Chantal Piot, 68 said she was tempted by Shein’s low prices but wanted to check the quality by seeing and touching the clothes in person.
However, French government spokesperson Maud Bregeon said in an interview on Cnews that while good quality clothing was sometimes too costly, everyone had an individual responsibility for “overconsumption of clothing”.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Mimosa Spencer, Michaela Cabrera, Dominique Patton, Helen Reid, Inti Landauro, Lucien Libert; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
