DTC fashion brands and dropshipping
publish Had a tough time coming up with a title for this. I don’t even know how interesting it is, just that I went down a deep rabbit hole about it on 2022-12-05.
From Musings on everything else.
The rabbit hole
Instead of a proper article I’ll just write about my experience. In bullets:
In late Nov 2022, I kept seeing this $70 hoodie pop up in my feed from a Japanese styled brand called Kidoriman. I liked it and in December decided to buy it.
Before buying, I checked Kidoriman’s return policy since clothes rarely fit to my measurements:
RETURN POLICY
We love our customers and we want to make things easy for you. We also hope you will make things easy for us too! While we would love to accommodate all returns, for a few hundred reasons we just cannot. To be eligible for a return, the item received must be unused and in the same condition when you have received it. It must also be in its original packaging. We will be responsible for shipping costs and product refunds that meet the following conditions:
- Products with manufacturing defects that make it impossible to use.
- The product or item received is totally different from what was ordered.
- The size shipped out is not the same as the size placed in the order.
- Your item is damaged upon receipt. No need to return the damaged item received. Simply take a photograph/video and send it to [email protected]. Once we receive the photograph/video, we will issue a replacement or refund. Easy, that’s what we like. But remember to send the photo/video in a timely fashion. This is when being late is not cool. Damaged, missing, or incorrect items reported after 30 days from the delivery date will NOT be eligible for a refund or replacement. The buyer is responsible for shipping costs related to returns and exchanges, if:
- The product does not meet customer expectations.
- The selected size does not fit the customer’s body measurements.
- Customer simply wants an exchange for another product or return it.
That’s… weird. This line also stuck out to me as being strange given they’d already stated the same rule before:
We know we all come in different shapes and sizes here. It’s why we strive to make sure that the size you are getting is the right one, so please pay attention … we cannot accommodate returns for incorrect size. We highly recommend getting your measuring tape and rulers out before placing your orders. :)
There’s actually a whole second header for “RETURN POLICY” that restates the jist of the above in a similarly noncommittal, unclear pattern. So what’s going on here?
I googled around to get the internet’s take on Kidoriman. The very first result that wasn’t an ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/findfashion/comments/i010u5/is_kidoriman_legit/
I got bought a pair of their pants for xmas, and although they are nice, i was suspicious of the cotton/linen claim as they feel more like polyester. when i checked the pants themselves, i found no labelling at all, which is illegal in pretty much every country in the world. All garments have to have materials information and care instructions by law.
Yeah, so at this point it’s pretty obvious that the brand is Chinese not Japanese and they’re running an illegal clothing business. Ok, that’s fine. But it raised so many questions in my mind: how does this borderline scam operation work? And how many other untouched Instagram ads do I get for this sort of thing?
How much of direct-to-consumer fashion brands are scams like this?
Honestly idk and I lost interest partway through looking into this but let me wrap up the story.
How does operation scam work?
Dropshipping from AliExpress.
Here’s the same hoodie being sold for $10.80-15.60/unit there (50-2000 order size price).
I guess they just order big, sprinkle a little bit of marketing in (i.e. get some racially-diverse cast of models, give your product a “Japanese sizing” which is two sizes lower than American sizing, …), and sell items DTC using Instagram ads to get customers. I could imagine setting up one of these stores over the course of a weekend hackathon. I wonder how much money even needs to lift a product like this off the ground. It can’t be much.
The real joke of it all
Even after all this I still wanted the hoodie. So I tried buying it and:
Card rejected due to fraud.
Welp. Thus ends my rabbit hole adventure.
TODO: Scrub my address from the photo and make this writing less rambly.