Fast Fashion Brands, Zara And H&M, Are In The Mire Of Law.

In a new book released in Sweden, H&M wrote in Burma.

The factory employs only 14 to 17 years old children, who work 12 hours a day.

This practice has violated local laws and international labour conventions.

On the other hand, some consumers in the United States accuse it.

There are price deception.

The customer, called Attorney Mark Geragos, said that many of the products of Zara were covered by the US dollar price tag on the corresponding euro price tag.

Most of the Zara products are priced in euros, but after they become dollars, there is a problem of pitional charges.

"We estimate that a product is between $12 and $15, and by inference, the company may have overcharged more than $1 billion."

Geragos's reasoning is rather rough, but he can see that he is very angry.

After the incident, H&M and Zara will inevitably start active pr.

If we recall, it is not difficult to find such cases.

It seems that brands are very normal. They extend from the production stage to the selling stage, and almost run through the entire production line.

Fast fashion industry is undoubtedly fierce competition, the central idea is a "fast" word.

Once, Esprit was known as China's fast fashion pioneer. But when brands such as Zara and H&M entered China, Esprit was more than half a year's time since it was designed to go on the shelves.

Under the competition, from Zara, H&M to Gap and Primark, the brands in the industry are constantly pursuing the following goals: fast loading, price friendly and able to reflect the trend culture in a timely manner. Fast speed depends on strong execution of production, supply chain and channel. The price close to the people means that the brand needs to reduce the cost as much as possible, and the pursuit of the trend culture will make more and more fast fashion companies unable to focus on original creation.

It is easy to see that in recent years, Zara, which is moving on to the top fashion brand, is the best in carrying out these goals.

But unfortunately, with the increase of profits, more moral and legal dilemmas are exposed.

Fast fashion brands are facing more and more different kinds of lawsuits. The most common offense is labor law, race related regulations, intellectual property protection law, environmental protection law, and even animal protection law.

In June 2015, the US branch of Zara faced a claim of $40 million for its former employees.

The plaintiff, Ian Jack Miller, was the general counsel of Zara USA Inc.. He pointed out that companies often violate the human rights law and labor law of New York and New York, and there are racial discrimination, wage discrimination and the implementation of innocent retaliation in their work arrangements.

Zara products are also seen as anti Semitism with Nazi markings.

H&M is not much better.

The problem of the black heart factory that it existed was aroused when it entered the Australian market, because at that time, it was the only fast fashion retailer in Australia who got cloth from Kampuchea. At that time, the workers in the Kampuchea clothing factory could only get the minimum wage standard income, which could only reach 25% of the local people's living wage.

Fast fashion brands are also often complained about being unfair to consumers.

Or last year, Zara was accused of racial discrimination against consumers in a research report hosted by the popular democracy center.

For example, if a suspicious customer enters the store, he or she may be labeled with "special order". The salesperson will confirm the customer's orientation through the wireless headset, then a clerk or manager will follow the consumer.

Of the 251 respondents, 43% said they were not aware of this, while 43% of the other 57% said that African American customers could be labelled with special labels, while the rest could be Latino consumers and whites.

The problem is that Zara does not have any definition of "dubious".

In the next day, Zara was taken out of the first 6 figures of the customer's credit card by the consumer's receipt for the purchase of the product, which violated the American fair credit report bill and Zara faced a collective action of $1 million 600 thousand.

After the incident, Zara gave a "possibility" compensation plan: if the disclosure is true, people who shop in Zara stores in the United States from December 17, 2014 to April 27, 2015 may get some compensation.

But in all litigation, IPR is probably the most frequently touched area of fast fashion brands.

Because of the new speed, the inspiration for many brands can only be copied.

Of the plagiarism scandals of fast fashion brands this year, the largest group is probably over 20 artists who collectively accused Zara of stealing their designs.

Tuesday Bassen from Losangeles is an illustrator. He sent a comparison map on the website, claiming that Zara misappropriated his creations.

At first he did not find it, but he had 100 thousand fans on Instagram. Fans found that they were very similar.

Subsequently, Bassen's friend Adam J Kurtz made an image comparing the works of Zara and 12 independent artists, including Kurtz herself.

This move directly encouraged more artists to join in the "whistle blowing" campaign.

This is not a new problem of fast fashion brands. In fact, fast fashion "imitation" has a long history. Almost all of them are built on "big reference" and occasionally add some other brand elements.

American teenage apparel retailers such as A ropostale Inc and CONVERSE have gone overboard to H&M.

By now, the way of imitation has evolved to "copy" independent artists. This "changing the soup" is still a common problem in the industry.

Kurtz mentioned that his clothing works in 2015 were also used by the brand Bershka of Zara parent's Inditex Sa group.

Francesca 's's new pin is exactly the same as the one designed by two artists.

A few days ago, Forever 21 had just been sent to court by Emily Oberg, the founder of Complex editing and Sporty&Rich, because Forever 21 was too much like "Smart&Pretty" and "Sporty&Rich" printed on the chest position of a white Hoodie.

Prior to that, Forever 21 had been involved in up to 50 litigation related to property rights, accusing many well-known brands and designers such as Anna Sui, Gwen Stefani and so on.

{page_break}

In the face of accusations, there are too many cases of losing fast fashion brands.

Brands also seem to have always been determined to apologize and improve. Apart from paying fines, they often introduce some improvement measures.

In the last two cases, H&M responded very quickly to the negative impact of publishing of Modeslavar, claiming that the brand discovered problems in the early 2013. It has asked the cooperative factories to formulate more stringent measures to examine the identity of job seekers. Once it is discovered that any factory is not up to the standard or fails to comply with the international general rules, it will be accountable to it.

In the face of the price tag fraud, Zara said: "we promise to be pparent, honest and ethical to our precious consumers and be proud of them.

Even if we want to take legal proceedings, we are looking forward to taking full precautions.

These statements, like all previous statements on racial discrimination, did not reveal the true enforcement measures and the detailed rules for follow-up supervision.

What is more regrettable is that these lawsuits will soon be forgotten by the public.

The real thankless is the disadvantaged artists. Bassen once wrote on twitter that she spent 2000 dollars on writing a lawyer's letter, which is too expensive, and the lawsuit is not necessarily won.

On the contrary, even with so many lawsuits, fast fashion brands do well in business.

In the big legal battle, the loss of fast fashion brands is not worth mentioning in the face of profits. It is reported that the brands spend tens of millions of dollars on the fines each year, while the profits of Zara have risen by 20 billion in 2015, and the gap between the two figures is huge.

In the face of those who are endowed with unfair treatment, consumers are more willing to indulge in "crazy shopping".