Consequences of Fast Fashion - The “Fair Price” of Handmade Items

Quick and Cheap

Fast Fashion is a term referring to the trend of fashion industries, where the hottest trend changes rapidly, and items are used less frequently before they are considered out-of-trend. Notable characteristics of fast fashion are that they are oftentimes cheap and suggest a wide variety of new products in a short period of time. 

What makes it so cheap?

People often focus on the cheapness of fast fashion products, but its cruel downsides are not so explicit. Fast fashion businesses consider these factors: rapid change in fashion trend, high demand for new products, and countless target markets that will increase their profit. This means that the business should produce new items on a big scale, and cut costs at the same time. Unfortunately, to do so, most big fast fashion businesses choose to use human labor in other poor countries where jobs are scarce and expected wage is low, often exploiting human rights and placing their workers in unethical, hazardous workplaces. Despite such cruelty, businesses won’t stop using and exploiting human labor, because it helps them cut their prices, and customers won’t care, because prices are low. 

“I can buy this in Shein for $2!”

Amongst small business owners operating on Instagram, the quote “I can buy this in Shein for $2” is indeed infamous. Shein is also a fast fashion brand, where they sell tens of hundreds of new items every month at ridiculously low prices. Like what mentioned before, such low pricing is available due to their exploitation of human labor and mass-production. While ethical issues surrounding such fast fashion brands are well recognized, the harm and even hatred that small business owners receive, especially those who sell handmade items, are not spotlighted. 

Handmade items often require hours of patient and delicate work to finish a product, and it is rightful for the owners of handmade small businesses to sell their items at an appropriate price. This appropriate price should include costs for material, labor, marketing, CS, and many other factors that the business owners manage. 

Sadly, most handmade items are now replicable due to advancement in technology and machinery, resulting in big corporations producing the same item through machines that cut costs and effort, and enabling such businesses to sell the product in low prices. 

Now, let’s consider the two very similar products, one made by hand and one mass-produced by a machine. Consequently, the price for machine-made items will be cheaper. What’s bad about this is that it makes customers compare the prices of similar items, without considering the time and effort taken to accomplish a product. This may lead to disputes between small business owners and customers, potentially causing conflicts that may threaten the business’ existence in the market.