Temu, Shein killing the market for Dutch second-hand clothing

Companies that empty the textile bins can no longer get rid of their stock. The rise of super-fast fashion through companies like Temu and Shein has made new, if poorer-quality, clothing accessible to countries that used to buy second-hand clothing discarded by the Dutch. The war between Russia and Ukraine also plays a role, the Association for Textile Recovery (VHT) told NOS.

“Chinese companies like Shein or Temu have now also gained a foothold in African countries,” Lennert Vermaat of VHT told the broadcaster. Much of the clothing Dutch people discard used to end up in these African countries. “But ultrafast fashion companies now produce their clothing so cheaply that people who used to buy second-hand clothing can now buy new clothing more cheaply. As a result, the used clothing market is completely outcompeted.”

At the collection and sorting company Sympany in Assen, the bales of textiles are stacked up to the ceiling. The company has nearly 2 million kilograms of collected clothing and nowhere to send it. “This is much more than before. Normally we can sell all the collected textiles quickly, but nobody wants it anymore,” director Charles Graft told NOS.

He blames the political unrest in the world. “A very large part of our sales went to Russia and Ukraine, for example, but those countries have disappeared as options due to the war.”

Graft has also noticed a decline in the quality of discarded clothing due to cheaply made products from Shein and Temu. “The clothing we receive is increasingly made of very thin fabrics, which are already damaged after wearing them a few times. We can no longer sell them,” he said. Recycling them also proves challenging “because the fabrics are of such low quality.”

According to Vermaat of the trade association, the textile collection industry in the Netherlands is quickly approaching the point where it will have to stop collecting textiles. VHT hopes politicians will intervene to support the sector and implement more regulation on fast fashion.

Sympany will not stop collecting textiles yet. The company has rented some extra storage space. “But if the stocks continue to increase and the scenario arises that we can no longer collect the textiles, then that means that we will eventually have to burn them. That is something we do not want.”

He’d like consumers to visit Sympany’s warehouse so that they can see what happens to their cast-offs and maybe become more aware of what they buy and throw away.