The dispute comes in the week Shein opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in Paris, highlighting the contrast between its fast fashion business model and the boutique approach of many European brands.
The new store, which takes up space in the BHV department store in the Marais district of the French capital, triggered protests from environmental groups who argue the mass-production of low-cost clothing is increasing waste and hurting the planet.
A protester is removed from Shein’s global first store opening in Paris.Credit: AP
The French junior minister for digital platforms, Anne Le Henanff, also called on the EU to punish the company, in a joint letter with Finance Minister Roland Lescure.
Le Henanff took to social media on Thursday morning in France (10pm AEDT) to say that fraud investigators had identified the sale of the sex dolls last week and notified public prosecutors.
“In parallel, an investigation is underway to severely punish the sellers and buyers of these products,” she said, according to a translation of her post on LinkedIn.
“They face sentences of up to five years and a €75,000 [$133,000] fine.
“With Roland Lescure, I have written to the European Commission requesting that an investigation also be launched at the European level … We will see this through to the end.”
EU official Thomas Regnier told the media the sale of the dolls was “extremely concerning” and the EU did not want the products being offered to customers.
The investigations and media attention come at a sensitive time for Shein, which has been seeking to go public on the London or Hong Kong sharemarket after posting enormous growth in global sales.
Now based in Singapore, the company was founded in Nanjing in China in 2008 and is estimated to have an annual revenue of about $US45 billion ($70 billion). Its name comes from its original brand, SheInside, and is pronounced “she in”.
Activists in the Marais district this week urged customers to avoid the Shein store because they said the company used forced labour and contributed to waste.
Shein has responded by adopting policies against wasteful packaging and modern slavery and insisting it support human rights.
But the company’s assurances have not swayed the French ministers, amid growing media attention on the investigation.
French ministers visited the Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris on Thursday to demonstrate the authorities were halting millions of Shein packages arriving by air. The government said it was blocking 200,000 parcels to ensure they would be examined by customs officials.
The EU designated Shein as a “very large online platform” in April last year because it had more than 45 million monthly users from EU member nations. This brought the company under tighter regulations due to its size. Shein has since estimated it had 145.7 million monthly active users in EU member states over the period from February last year to July this year.
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