A shopper exposed a boutique for allegedly upselling a Shein swimsuit for $40, four times the product’s original price.
In a TikTok video, Lauren Harris (@laurharr22) shared with viewers a blue bikini with Shein tags still attached being sold at a boutique. The bikini was priced at $40, even though it sells for a paltry $8 on Shein’s website.
“If your boutique is selling Shein clothes for 4x the price,” Harris wrote in the video’s overlaid text. “At least take the tags off and hide the evidence.”
The video, which Harris shared the previous week, has since gone viral and garnered more than 1.5 million views on the social media platform. Viewers took to the comment section to express similar frustrations with small businesses passing off merchandise from fast fashion companies like Shein and Temu as their own.
One person commented, “THIS is why I hesitate to go to boutiques or small shops I swear every time I pay like $70 for a dress and it’s damaged within the first three uses.”
“All these boutiques I see selling $6 temu slippers for $35-40 has me gagged,” another person wrote, to which Harris replied: “Like I get they need to increase prices to make some sort of profit but like at least do brands where we don’t know how much they really cost.”
“This is why I don’t trust most boutiques,” a third added. To avoid running into this issue, one commenter shared that she does reverse image searches on items she’s thinking of buying from small boutiques and businesses. “This is why I reverse image search online boutique photos,” they wrote. “Most of the clothes are on Shein or AliExpress.”
It isn’t just brick-and-mortar boutiques that have been called out for selling overpriced clothing from cheap, fast fashion companies, but also online boutiques – also known as “ghost stores” or “doppelganger brands” according to Vox – that do the exact same thing on platforms like Instagram.
In a 2021 video, video essayist Lisa Fevral explained that online boutiques such as Cider, Kollyy, Emmiol, and Juicici notably capitalise on trends and relentlessly target consumers with ads. But one simple Google search can show you that these brands all sell clothes from the same Chinese suppliers.
“These companies are clearly targeting young women, but it seems like they’re trying to adjust their language to appear more sustainable or ethical while not changing much about their practices,” Fevral explained to Vox. “There’s no way any company can keep up with TikTok styles and trends unless they are producing a lot of very cheap clothing.”
However, in the retail industry, the practice of ordering wholesale clothing from overseas is commonplace. Whether it's Instagram boutiques or Macy’s, reselling cheap clothing for 200-500 per cent is how many businesses can make a profit. Fashion United describes wholesale as the sale of goods in bulk to other companies, with the majority of wholesalers supplying styles to boutiques, department stores, or online stores, who ultimately sell the goods to consumers.
