After coming under fire by a French consumer watchdog organization over the weekend for selling child-like sex dolls, Shein has said that it has removed all of the products and is investigating the matter.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control referred the matter to\u00a0public prosecutors. France\u2019s Economy Minister Roland Lescure\u00a0told a media outlet on Monday that he would seek to ban Shein<\/a> from the French market if such incidents happened again.<\/p>\n Per French law,\u00a0should illegal content\u00a0such as child pornographic materials not be removed within 24 hours after being notified by French authorities, authorities can have service providers and search engines block access and delist the site.<\/p>\n A Shein spokesperson said Monday afternoon that the \u201cproducts in question were immediately delisted\u201d as soon as the company became aware of these serious issues. \u201cShein maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward any content or products that violate our platform policies or applicable laws,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n The fast-fashion platform\u2019s \u201cMarketplace Governance\u201d team is investigating how these listings \u201ccircumvented\u201d its screening measures and is conducting a comprehensive review to identify and remove any similar items that may be listed on the marketplace by other third-party vendors, according to the spokesperson.<\/p>\n \u201cWe take this matter extremely seriously. Such content is completely unacceptable and goes against everything we stand for. We are taking immediate corrective actions and reinforcing our internal controls to prevent this from happening again,\u201d\u00a0the spokesperson said, without providing any specifics about preemptive measures.\u00a0\u201cWe are also reiterating to all teams the importance of rigorous listing checks and preventive measures to ensure full compliance with our policies and applicable laws.\u201d<\/p>\n Founded in China in 2012 and now based in Singapore, the\u00a0ultra-low-cost e-tailer sells most of its goods via the Shein app and has distribution in 150 countries.<\/p>\n A handful\u00a0of protesters were photographed by the media Monday standing in front of the BHV Marias department store in Paris, where Shein is planning to open its first freestanding\u00a0store globally. As of Monday, an online petition in opposition to Shein\u2019s plans to open there had more than 115,660 signatures.<\/p>\n The\u00a0DGCCRF and Shein <\/a>have crossed swords before. In July, the\u00a0watchdog group issued a fine of 40 million euros on the fast-fashion specialist\u2019s subsidiary Infinite Style E-commerce Ltd. for engaging\u00a0in deceptive commercial practices such as misleading claims about price reductions, including offering customers \u201cdiscounts\u201d which didn\u2019t exist. That followed a 10-month investigation that started in October 2022.<\/p>\n In a separate matter, Shein initiated an investigation in September after\u00a0the\u00a0likeness of Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson last year, was featured on Shein\u2019s site. Asked about the status of that investigation, the Shein spokesperson didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n More from WWD<\/strong><\/p>\n Best of WWD<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for WWD’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After coming under fire by a French consumer watchdog organization over the weekend for selling child-like sex dolls,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,75508,175701,8162,112511],"class_list":{"0":"post-547195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-french-authorities","12":"tag-pornographic-materials","13":"tag-shein","14":"tag-spokesperson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115488294791175933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}