A New Zealand fashion designer is devastated after discovering that global fast-fashion retailer Shein had used her designs and photographs without consent. Sera Lilly, the founder of the Feilding-based clothing brand Friday Flamingo, expressed her frustration over the incident, highlighting how small businesses often lack the resources to pursue legal action for intellectual property (IP) violations.
Shein, the world’s largest fashion retailer, has since “proactively removed” the disputed products from its website and is conducting an investigation. The company assured the Herald that it “takes all claims of infringement seriously.”
Founded in Nanjing, China, in 2008 and with its headquarters moved to Singapore in 2022, Shein’s clothing is largely produced by Chinese manufacturers. Lilly, who has a following of over 120,000, posted a video on Facebook sharing screenshots of Shein’s website. In the video, she revealed that Shein had directly copied two pieces from her Friday Flamingo collection, including her original photographs.
In her video, Lilly said, “Shein has stolen my small business’s designs and photos from my website, and they’re selling them as their own.”
Lilly was “shocked” when one of her followers alerted her to the infringement, and she described the feeling as “frustrating” after seeing her original designs and images used by such a large company without her permission. She added, “Seeing my own FF designs and even my own photos, barely changed, being used by a huge company without my permission was so frustrating.”
The designer, who invests significant effort into creating unique pieces, explained that seeing her work copied and sold without compensation felt like “a slap in the face.”
Lilly also expressed concern that Shein had digitally altered the images to make it harder for her to prove they were stolen. “The changes are so small that it’s clear they weren’t trying to create something new, they just wanted to use my work while making it slightly harder to prove,” she said.
Despite the frustration, Lilly acknowledged that fast-fashion brands have a history of such actions. “In my case, they haven’t just copied my designs; they’ve also taken my original photos, with my photographer’s work, and passed them off as their own,” she remarked, calling it “next-level theft” that made the situation even more unfair.
Lilly suspects that Shein is using “lower-quality materials” to replicate her designs and sell them at a price of $24-$27, which she believes is “misleading” and “damaging” to her brand’s reputation.
While intellectual property is protected in New Zealand by the Intellectual Property Office (IPONZ), Lilly pointed out that pursuing legal action is often cost-prohibitive for small businesses. “It feels impossible to take on companies like Shein without spending a fortune in legal fees,” she said, emphasizing the need for better protections for small brands to prevent larger corporations from taking advantage of independent designers.
In response to the Herald’s inquiry, Shein stated that it “never intends to infringe anyone’s valid intellectual property” and has removed the products from its website as a precautionary measure. The company added that all vendors selling on Shein’s platform are required to certify that their products do not infringe third-party IP rights.
Shein further explained that they offer various avenues for IP rights holders to report potential infringements and that the company would take appropriate action against suppliers found to have violated IP laws. “We also provide various avenues for IP rights holders to report any potential infringements or raise concerns with us,” Shein said in a statement.
The company has an intellectual property notice on its website, encouraging those concerned about potential violations to use Shein’s “online intellectual property complaint portal.” In its statement, Shein emphasized its ongoing efforts to “improve our product review process, including investing in image recognition technology developed specifically to recognize cases of potential infringement and growing our product review team.”
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