Chinese sellers are making a ton of money on Amazon. According to EcomCrew, around 63% of all merchandise sold on the massively popular online retailer is manufactured in China.
While browsing for products on the site, you may have noticed that an item you’re interested in, let’s say a phone tripod, pop up in several listings on the site. Based on the images you’re seeing, it’s the same phone tripod in every image, but under different company names and slightly varying price points.
That’s probably because many of these items are all produced in the same facilities and manufacturing plants in China and are just repackaged and re-branded under different company names: like the tripods listed above don’t have any differences between the “Ubeesize” and “Aureday” offerings.
TikTok user Bri (@bri4nn4.mp4) believes that these identical listings just don’t begin and end on Amazon, but that they extend to discount online retailers as well. This means customers are more than likely paying significantly more money for the same product just because it’s featured on Amazon.
In her viral clip, Bri claims that she found the exact same sweater that’s retailing for $44 on Amazon on Shein for less than a third of the price at just $14.
She displayed the identical items in a viral TikTok that’s accrued over 1 million views as of Sunday morning.
@bri4nn4.mp4 tell your friends #amazonfinds #sheinfinds ♬ original sound – bri4nn4
“Get in loser, we’re exposing Amazon,” she begins her clip. “So I decided to order this sweater from Amazon, I saw some girl wearing it, thought it was super cute, it was $44 on Amazon. It was like OK that’s fine and then I read the comments and some people were like you know this is actually pretty thin material for $44.”
Inspired by the product critiques in the comments section, Bri says she investigated the product further. “So I decided to do some digging, and I reverse image searched this sweater and I ended up finding it on Shein and I thought I’d be finding a dupe of what was on Shein,” she says.
Bri then holds up two nearly identical-looking sweaters on camera and urges viewers to try and guess which one was purchased from which website.
“If you think that you’ve noticed a difference between these sweaters: no you haven’t,” she says. “If you think that this is the Shein one, it’s not, this is the Amazon one.”
She believes that the more expensive Amazon variant was of a poorer quality than the one she purchased from Shein.
She then shows off more “evidence” by displaying the tags of the sweaters on camera. The Shein variant has a small black tag that reads “Shein” on it, whereas the Amazon sweater appears to have the same exact tag, except that it’s been cut.
“Looks to me like the Shein tag has just been cut off,” she says.
Bri claims that as a result of her experiment, she doesn’t intend to keep the Amazon sweater and will be returning it. She ends her video with a suggestion on how folks can quickly do their due diligence when shopping for products online by using a handy Google feature.
“Just goes to show you reverse image search all of your items before you buy them on Amazon because somebody is probably upcharging you a ton of money,” she concludes.
One viewer seemed shocked that more people weren’t already privy to this kind of information, writing “How did y’all not know this stuff?”
Someone else said they’ve noticed that the cost of clothing items on Amazon has gone up in recent years. “Also Amazon hauls aren’t even cheap anymore,” they shared. “Not much cheaper than Abercrombie. It’s insane to me that no one is talking about it!”
Another person said that they’ve noticed several Shein items on Amazon and that they’ll always opt to wait a bit longer to receive their products from Shein instead.
“I always see clothes I find on Shein on Amazon randomly. I’m like yeah, no I’m gonna buy on shein and just wait like a week or two to get it,” they wrote.
Shein doesn’t necessarily make it a secret that its items are sold through Amazon, either: the clothing manufacturer has a dedicated store on Amazon’s website. However, due to the percentages of sales that Amazon takes for selling items on its online marketplace, retailers like Shein can afford to offer their products cheaper when customers order directly from their websites.
Shein isn’t the only website where people regularly find cheaper listings of the same Amazon products: various Temu offerings are on Amazon going for as much as three times the price, like this plastic Parmesan cheese grater Olive Garden fanatics are purchasing.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Amazon, Shein, and Bria via email for further comment.
