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A French activist group is planning a legal attack on Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein, with the intention of costing the company €1.25 million.
The group, which goes by the name The Good Goods, intends to cut Shein down a peg for its human exploitation, immoral production methods, use of toxic substances in its products and anti-competitive practices.
“Its production methods and the disposable nature of its clothing are a threat to the environment, made possible thanks to a system of human exploitation and a commercial strategy so aggressive that it appears to be anti-competitive practices, notably that of pricing excessively low,” said The Good Goods in a petition on Change.com.
“Its model is incompatible with sustainable development of the fashion industry and life in general.”
Alongside the attractive pricing, Shein dominates the market through a brute-force marketing strategy where it pays Google high amounts of money to ensure its results rank high in search, according to the activist group.
Now, The Good Goods plans on using that marketing strategy against the fast-fashion giant, rallying people to up the company’s advertising cost without it resulting in any profit.
“Every time you click, the brand is charged an amount by the search engine called the cost per click (CPC). For example: for 100 people who click through at a CPC of 0.25¢, the acquisition cost is €25 for 100 potential customers and becomes profitable if the people who buy accumulate at least €25 in purchases,” said The Good Goods on its website.
“On the other hand, if 100 people click but none buys, Shein loses €25 … Perhaps you can see where we’re going with this.
“We’d like you to click dozens of times, without buying, at the same time.”
The Good Goods hopes to amass a force of 500,000 people, made up of its own community, those who sign the Change.com petition and close circles.
If each of those individuals clicked on an ad 10 times, at a rate of 0.25¢, Shein would lose €1.25 million, which would end up in Google’s hands.
“Of course, giving millions to Google is not ideal either ... We do not intend to ruin or significantly enrich any of the brands with this operation, but rather to generate a new wave of indignation towards the model of ultra-fast fashion, relaunch the petition and the call to the government for concrete and quickly undertaken action,” said the activist group, adding that protestors are welcome to use other search engines like Qwant, Ecosia, and Yahoo.
The attack was scheduled for between 5pm and 10pm on Wednesday, 20 December, likely in Central European Time (CET), meaning the attack has already occurred.
The fallout from the attack is yet to be observed, nor whether the group reached its target of 500,000 troops.
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