Are fast-fashion shopping apps hurting local economy?

[Helena Yu]

If you can't beat them, join them.
If you're still want to force yourself to sell local product when there's a better choice or cheaper solution from the competitor, don't hope your business will last long.

You need to accept that, the current generation is fast developing, so you must able to catch up with the new trend instead of using conventional/old school strategy.

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[Kelward]

Hello there,


Do you believe that their ridiculously low prices could be hurting the local economy, and why? Have you purchased from them?

I believe that lower price for relatively high quality goods coupled with fast delivery can hurt the local economy, but only a section of it, being the manufacturing and retailing sector, because it'll greatly affect their turnover. The consumers are not affected in anyway, infact they're at an advantage to make choices whether to patronize locally or foreign made products, the government can also benefit in terms of taxations.

I only patronize the locally made products in my country, and we have reliable online stores that does fast delivery.
Even for foreign goods there are Marchants that import them sale and deliver at competitive prices, compared to what you'll pay from from any country online .

[Lucius]

~snip~

I used to order a lot from such sites, but now I haven't ordered anything from China for a long time because the regulations regarding such shipments have changed for the worse in my country, and if I'm not mistaken, all shipments outside the EU are subject to customs and VAT, and some other local postal costs. In other words, such ordering has become quite unprofitable considering that there are local stores and those in the EU that import such goods from China in containers and then sell them at retail prices that are sometimes even competitive with those directly from China.

When you look at today's products for wide application, most of them come from China, Turkey, India or Pakistan, and even those products that are declared as coming from the EU are actually mostly produced outside the EU.

Unfortunately, the EU or the US cannot compete with the price of labor in China or India, and recently I watched a documentary that revealed that prisoners are used for some jobs in China - and that is practically free labor.

[itorai]

Should the country tax those shopping sites if they hurt the local economy?

I don't really see them hurting the local economy but people today prefer them since it's more convenient already since the covid, they are the ones serving the public. And they have cheap prices too which even if they hurt the local economy, they will not hurt the pockets of the shoppers.

Yes, I agree with the term "the buyer is king" indeed if we are sellers we should serve consumers who will make purchases as comfortably and safely as possible, they are the ones who decide, not us. So I think we as sellers have to be more observant and tenacious in responding to market demand.

[Rruchi man]

Do you believe that their ridiculously low prices could be hurting the local economy, and why?

It will not affect the local economy because majority of people still buy from local vendors. The prices of fast-fashion shopping apps are low, but together with other additional fees, taxes and delivery, the price will almost be the same as the one sold locally by vendors here so it is discouraging to most locals who are not vendors that buy in bulk, but just want to buy a few things for personal use.

Have you purchased from them?

A few times in the past, but not recently because I tried to buy a tech from the US, It was affordable, but additional fees and taxes have increased. I compared the price with what the local vendors offered, it was not so different. I opted for the local vendors, because it was also pointless to wait for days for delivery when the total cost is not less.

[Ultegra134]

I used to order a lot from such sites, but now I haven't ordered anything from China for a long time because the regulations regarding such shipments have changed for the worse in my country, and if I'm not mistaken, all shipments outside the EU are subject to customs and VAT, and some other local postal costs. In other words, such ordering has become quite unprofitable considering that there are local stores and those in the EU that import such goods from China in containers and then sell them at retail prices that are sometimes even competitive with those directly from China.

When you look at today's products for wide application, most of them come from China, Turkey, India or Pakistan, and even those products that are declared as coming from the EU are actually mostly produced outside the EU.

Unfortunately, the EU or the US cannot compete with the price of labor in China or India, and recently I watched a documentary that revealed that prisoners are used for some jobs in China - and that is practically free labor.

That's the strong point of Temu and something that they have completely taken advantage of: their warehouses are in the EU; from what I've noticed in the parcels, it must be Bulgaria, and you're not subject to any import taxes. A large number of products that were also bought directly from China, mostly through Aliexpress and Banggood, also went through customs in Hungary or Amsterdam and arrived like they were initially sent from an EU country. Chinese vendors have found loopholes for pretty much everything nowadays.

God!!!, there is so much garbage on Temu that probably hurts everything in the world not just local economies
- first that thing needs to travel a lot to reach you, pollution
- those things are made without any concern for the environment out of the cheapest and toxic plastics, again pollution
- sweatshops with the cheapest unqualified labor, near slavery
- they break so easily you will need to buy again a better on, repeat the whole thing
- more garbage in the dump as you throw it out a month after buying it, again polution

I and a lot of my older friends , talking about 40+, we've learned out lesson first with Turkish products that were so cheap in the 90's then with cheap Chinese things, the moment you don't buy from a westerns brand that makes things in China then you're going to buy something that breaks the next day.

And before somebody says a thing about how good chinese phones like Huawei were, the thing is none of the component were actually produced in China, even when claiming to go full domestic, only 53% of the phone is made in China , up by 17% 3 years ago.
https://www.vietnam.vn/en/huawei-mate-60-pro-su-dung-47-linh-kien-trung-quoc/

Buy quality, even if it's made in China buy some made under western quality rules.
As for exactly your thing, when the backpack breaks, buy a brand one, go for Osprey for example, I have one for 14 years, yeah it will cost you 4 times more but It will never let you down, stuffing it to the max that you think it will blow like a pinata and still keeping up.

That's true, and it's not only a quality issue, but the apps themselves promote overspending. Look at Temu's slogan, "Shop like a billionaire," because everything is so inexpensive that you can pretty much buy a ton of stuff for a minor amount of money. This leads to purchasing items that aren't really necessary and are probably going to be thrown in the garbage sooner or later because we never actually needed them.

Thus, it's not only a financial situation but an environmental one as well. Pollution occurs during production and transportation, only for them to end up in the garbage.

[Captain Corporate]

If used right, this could be a way to make it even better for most people, and you could make a lot more profit. It doesn't hurt the small scale business model, but it might hurt the bigger ones. Back in the day, the biggest places got the most customers because the customers would all have to go there, so small shops wouldn't get as much customers and wouldn't make all that much money. However, if we are talking about online, then we are talking about all places having equal chances, obviously a company that makes 10 thousand shirts will get it cheaper than a company that gets 100 of them, but at least we could say that the playing field is a bit more level in this case.

[darkangel11]

I think that they're only hurting the buyer who doesn't know the quality of the product before buying and they sell very cheap stuff because they know it won't be worth it for the buyer to return it. You buy a $10 product with free shipping, but returning it will cost you $5. Nobody is going to bother returning it and waiting for the refund... They'll either live with a flawed item, try to fix it, sell it locally as damaged (sometimes for parts), or throw it away.
I know people who were trying to get cheap versions in China and what they got broke after a few weeks or months and they had to buy the same product once again.

[Balmain]

Especially after Covid, shopping applications such as Amazon and Aliexpress, which are cheaper, have started to be used much more, and users are forced to choose the more convenient one. When you buy a product from a local seller, it is definitely more expensive because it costs much more than e-commerce, so local sellers try to sell the product more profitably. It may harm the country's economy, but if countries set the right tax, I don't think it will be much of a problem. While e-commerce has progressed so much, it will be difficult for local stores to make more money than e-commerce unless they have a lot of extras.

[Pokapoka124]

I have had multiple cases of  ‘what I ordered vs what I got’ from shopping from online stores and I’m done with ordering stuff online. I would rather walk into a store and get what I want. I use the prices on the websites as a comparison tool when bargaining prices in physical stores, of course one cannot expect the prices to be the same, we have to consider the rent and manpower that goes into running a physical store. All this cost are added to the price of the product. But at least I’m sure of what I’m buying.

[serjent05]

It hurts, but also creates some jobs on the side if you think about it. Here in the Philippines, online shopping apps are more preferred nowadays than people going to the malls to buy stuff. This demand increased the number of delivery men needed to deliver the packages. In turn, it created a huge job opportunity to the people, which will then have their salaries spent back to the local economy to provide the needs of the family. For the first part of the equation, it may seem that online shopping apps are hurting the local economy, but the packages have to be delivered somehow, and that's where the riders come in, and get paid for their service.

I am curious, on what way online shopping apps are hurting the local economy?  All your stated are pros of online shopping apps.  As far as I know this apps connects merchants and buyers so the merchants are getting exposed way more than just renting a place on a shopping mall.  I do not think that it is hurting the local economy but rather hurting the rich people who owns establishments for commercial purposes since with online shopping apps, merchant don't need to rent an expensive place in order to show their merchanise.

[dothebeats]

If you can't beat them, join them.
If you're still want to force yourself to sell local product when there's a better choice or cheaper solution from the competitor, don't hope your business will last long.

You need to accept that, the current generation is fast developing, so you must able to catch up with the new trend instead of using conventional/old school strategy.

Exactly. There are a lot of clothing retail stores here that are big and are the go-to places for fits and clothing, but since the advent of online shopping apps, they have since shifted to live streaming their products and getting orders from viewers and that works pretty well for them. One such place even moved to a smaller location, but are active in Facebook and TikTok live with over a thousand viewers everyday. Their social media accounts already have over 30k likes and if that doesn't scream a good business decision to you then I don't know what will.

Brick and mortar stores will still be there for a long time, sure. But with the comfort and ease of access that online shopping apps offer, it's hard to overlook the fact that everyone is already shifting towards the digitization of everything. 

[uneng]

Do you believe that their ridiculously low prices could be hurting the local economy, and why? Have you purchased from them?

It's always hurting the local economy somehow, as the money from your countrymen is going to fund someone else's economy. But the point is that the local market doesn't do anything to offer the products you need for an affordable price. Your only alternative is to import from chinese retailers. If you were able to buy the same stuff for affordable prices from local merchants, I'm sure you would do this. However, even the local merchants are importing from China to resell products more expensive and profit a margin over them. Everyone is surrended to the chinese domain in retail market: regulators, governments, merchants, businessmen and customers. You are just a small gear on this big gear.

Now about cheap prices: they are indeed pretty cheap compared to other goods we have access at official shops, however, since they are making profit on quantity over quality, it totally worths for the sellers and the impact over the economy is much extense than someone could imagine at first impression. It's also one of the reasons why China doesn't have interest in seeing the West failing economically. They feed themselves from western prosperity. Without the West importing, China's income decreases drastically.

[poodle63]

I have had multiple cases of  ‘what I ordered vs what I got’ from shopping from online stores and I’m done with ordering stuff online. I would rather walk into a store and get what I want. I use the prices on the websites as a comparison tool when bargaining prices in physical stores, of course one cannot expect the prices to be the same, we have to consider the rent and manpower that goes into running a physical store. All this cost are added to the price of the product. But at least I’m sure of what I’m buying.

there are definitely some people that favour buying thing especially clothing offline rather than online because they just know what they are buying while in using online platform we all know sometime there are some scammy seller that tries to sell clothing thats different from in the picture. but honestly sucht thing can be easily overcome by the fact that there are plenty of clothing stores that opens online that also accept returning stuff if it doesn't seem like it fits to the buyer or they just don't like it.
even electronics nowaday have returning window where you can simply just return the goods even if you don't like it within the window of 14 days and thats such a good thing to have honestly.
the problem about not buying if im not seeing the real thing at this point I can assume already solved, but the fact that buying online thing and returning goods might be such a hassle for people might also be a concern.

[boty]

If you can't beat them, join them.
If you're still want to force yourself to sell local product when there's a better choice or cheaper solution from the competitor, don't hope your business will last long.

You need to accept that, the current generation is fast developing, so you must able to catch up with the new trend instead of using conventional/old school strategy.

Yes, you are right, it is better for us to partner with those who have better quality products, because if we stick with our products with poor quality and also different prices from theirs, of course we will not be able to sell the products we have.
The current generation easily knows new trends so they will choose better ones with good quality.

[0t3p0t]

I don't think it hurts the local economy because they're all being taxed correct me if I'm wrong. The government won't allow businesses specially e-commerce to operate locally without being taxed.

[Manny@11111]

Yes they are hurting local economy because it kills small & medium scale businesses while reducing patronage for big merchants as well. Places like AliExpress are source of purchase for many other international hubs/supermarkets and buying from them directly makes sense because it saves you money.

In China, cost components for running a business is less comparing to other countries thereby making their goods cheaper compared to other economy reason why most of those countries ordered from them to save cost. What you buy from AliExpress is often what you see from most big retail outlets in the US and others

[lovesmayfamilis]

I had the experience of purchasing from the Ali Express online store, but I was not delighted with the quality of the goods they provided. Usually, it looks completely different from what is shown in the photo. But I noticed one significant thing: the Chinese act very quickly, and as soon as there is a demand for one or another branded product, they instantly create a fake, which, of course, does not match the original but is in great demand due to its low cost.
Of course, the addiction to cheap goods is difficult to condemn for those who cannot afford to buy good-quality goods. But people should understand that they pay more expensively because fakes, as a rule, do not retain their service life as original things do.
As for the economy, this is how you look at it. If a country cannot create the required product, then these are shortcomings of the state itself, and the population’s need for it will be met through purchases from other countries.

[Helena Yu]

Exactly. There are a lot of clothing retail stores here that are big and are the go-to places for fits and clothing, but since the advent of online shopping apps, they have since shifted to live streaming their products and getting orders from viewers and that works pretty well for them. One such place even moved to a smaller location, but are active in Facebook and TikTok live with over a thousand viewers everyday. Their social media accounts already have over 30k likes and if that doesn't scream a good business decision to you then I don't know what will.

They just don't want to work in other sector, actually when then online shopping are really in high demand, the sellers will expand their manufacture, so there's a supply for people to work in manufacture. It also increase in delivery, so the logistic company will hire more courier to deliver the overload packages.

So those local sellers can choose to work in manufacture or become courier.

[|MINER|]

In my opinion it is improving the local economy.  Because through these apps, the products of a country are spreading worldwide.  When a product becomes known in the whole world, then its economic demand definitely increases. And if you buy through the app, the price will be a little higher. Except for wholesalers.