Instagram and Fast Fashion Resale through Dropshippers

Are Instagram brands just reselling low-quality fast fashion products for a higher price to take your money? This is a question I end up asking myself when I scroll on Instagram and often run across two or more brands trying to sell some sort of bootleg Sanrio/Hello Kitty merchandise that I’ve sworn I’ve seen somewhere else. Usually, I have seen it before from either other brands or fast fashion companies like Shein and Temu. These Instagram brands often have ads, products, prices, and websites that look identical to others, so it is more than likely that these brands are dropshippers selling low-quality fast fashion items for a higher price. When buying through Instagram accounts it is important to look deeper into their website and products. As thoughtful potential customers, it is necessary to make sure our purchases are not coming from a dropshipper reselling a fast fashion item, which means unintentionally supporting fast fashion companies that dropshippers are complicit with.

This begs the questions; what is dropshipping, what is fast fashion, and how are the two connected? Dropshipping is where a seller does not create or warehouse their products, instead they buy them from a third party, which makes the products and keeps the products in their warehouse for them. This third party is responsible for processing and shipping the products to the customer, while the dropshipper is responsible for taking in orders for those items and using the customer’s money to buy the items from the third party. What is common to see with Instagram dropshippers though, is that many of these brands look exactly the same and sell the same products, but they have different prices. Many of these brands just resell products found on fast fashion websites, like Temu and Shein, for a higher price even though it is coming from the same warehouse with the same quality and the same ethical issues. According to Britannica, ‘fast fashion’ is when low-quality and inexpensive clothes that replicate popular high-quality clothes sold in other stores are produced at a rapid pace. Clothes are not the only items made from fast fashion companies. They also create toys, plushies, household items, tools, and much more, often mimicking popular brands.  Instagram dropshippers are connected to fast fashion due to the fact that they get their products from the same factories as fast fashion, and these are the same factories committing many human rights violations. These items are being made in a very unethical way.

The conditions where workers create these items are concerning, sometimes leading to human rights violations. In Fast-Fashion: Unethical and Unsustainable, Lindsey Reid explains that to get their items, fast fashion brands like Temu and Shein often use factories with bad conditions, low pay for workers, and expose workers to unhealthy chemicals in order to cut corners to produce items for a very low cost. There are also concerns about how this affects the planet. Fast fashion product manufacturing creates an abundance of waste, carbon emissions, and toxins, which are released into soil and water. When companies are using these poor working conditions to create mass amounts of items, not only are they violating the human rights of the people working there, but also affecting the health of the earth and the people with chemicals and waste. This is what makes fast fashion so unethical and is why many people refuse to buy from these companies. Thus, when dropshippers resell these fast fashion items, people are still contributing to the support of fast fashion by buying products that are being made in the same unlawful factories with awful conditions harming the people and the planet. 

Instagram dropshippers can commonly be found selling identical items to other Instagram accounts. Bootleg Sanrio merchandise is listed on multiple Instagram dropshipper accounts, but can also be found on fast fashion websites for more than two times less than the prices listed by the Instagram dropshippers. This is a problem because people who end up buying from these brands on Instagram end up spending more than the item is worth, receive an item lower quality than expected, and unknowingly support fast fashion. Here are a few examples of items from the website of @kittykabana on Instagram that were also being sold on Temu and Shein for a lower price:

Here, all the products on Shein and Temu are being sold for nearly $10 more than the original price on the Kitty Kabana website, this can be an indication that this is run by a dropshipper. In some cases, spotting a dropshipping website is easy due to them all selling the same item and being able to find that item on a fast fashion website. Additionally, dropshipper websites are also designed nearly exactly the same. As you can see in these next photos, all of these websites are selling the same few items, but with ranging prices:

These websites shown above all have the same few items like: the Hello Kitty water bottle, Hello Kitty Christmas tree plushie, Hello Kitty pajamas, Hello Kitty boots, and Hello Kitty Birkenstocks.  If you take the time to look closer at the websites, I’m sure you can find more. These products can all also be found on websites like Shein and Temu. It is easy to spot by just looking further into the products listed on Instagram accounts and figuring out where else they are being sold.

Some may say that there is no concern with dropshipping because you still get the item you bought. While it is true you may still receive the item, there are still many downsides. Oftentimes when buying from dropshippers you may experience things like: the item arriving late, being lower quality than expected for the price, and having little to no customer service if the item does not arrive at all. Some customers assume they are helping a small business on Instagram but, these are not small businesses. They are the middleman between you, the buyer, and the companies with warehouses and sweatshops. So, while you may get an item that is somewhat like what was in the image and may be happy with it, you are contributing to these huge fast fashion companies who use unethical ways to create mass amounts of products which are also bad for the environment.

For these reasons, when buying from Instagram brands you should be mindful of the possibility of a dropshipper trying to sell you a fast fashion item at a higher price. When shopping you can keep in mind these three things: are these websites selling the same item as other brands on Instagram? How high or low are the prices? and can you find this same item on a fast fashion website, like Temu or Shein? While some people may still not care, if you personally do not want to support unethical business practices, then do not buy from dropshipper brands on Instagram.