Italy hits Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein with 1 million euro fine over "false" claims on product recyclability, environmental and social responsibility
Italy hits Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein with 1 million euro fine over "false" claims on product recyclability, environmental and social responsibility
reuters.com
Italy's competition authority (AGCM) imposed a 1 million euro ($1.16 million) fine on China-founded online fast fashion retailer Shein on Monday for misleading customers about the environmental impact of its products.
It is Shein's second financial sanction by a European competition authority in little more than a month, after France fined the company 40 million euros on July 3 over fake discounts and misleading environmental claims.
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AGCM said the environmental sustainability and social responsibility messages on Shein's website "were sometimes vague, generic, and/or overly emphatic, and in other cases omitted and misleading."
Shein's claims on circular system design and product recyclability "were found to be false or at the very least confusing", and the green credentials of its 'evoluSHEIN by design' collection were overstated, the regulator said.
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AGCM said consumers could be misled to think that the collection was made with materials that are fully recyclable, "a fact that, considering the fibres used and currently existing recycling systems, is untrue".
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The Italian regulator said its overall assessment was influenced by an "increased duty of care" falling on Shein, "because it operates in a highly polluting sector and with highly polluting methods".
For reference, wikipedia says Shein made some 32B USD (ie. 32.000 millions) in 2023.
I'm sure they are concerned about the possiblity of paying Italy's 1.16M fee (or the French 40M one), but... we should really tailor fees to companies' revenues if we want them to matter.
You've confused revenue and profit. They had 32B revenue, not profit. Google estimates their 2024 profit at 1B. In that light, France fined them 4% of their annual profit, which is pretty damn hefty.
I did mean to suggest fees should be tailored to gross revenues.
I should however have used a less ambiguous expression than "Shein made some 32B"... sorry about that.
To be as clear/explicit as possible, I don't mean to say each country should fine based on global revenues: of course they should only consider the revenues generated in that country.
In the case of Shein and Italy revenues could be around 2 billions (I got this figure from a blog post so take it with due caution) so the 1.6 million fee would be less than 0.1% the revenue.
Note that trying to determine from the outside how much of a company's profit "comes from" a specific country is basically impossible (which I guess is why digital service taxes consider gross revenues rather than profits).
4% on profits is hefty? I don’t know, if I had to pay 4% of my earnings that year, I wouldn’t be too concerned…