Digital Platform, Spatial-Digital Fix, and the Reconfiguration of Apparel Production Networks

This article proposes an analytical framework of spatial-digital fix to explain how emerging online platform retailers utilize digital technologies to fix their crises in backward and forward value chains—both digitally and spatially—and their subsequent positive and negative impacts on various actors in production and distribution networks. By applying the analytical framework on Shein (an emerging online fast fashion retailer originally based in China), we demonstrate how it utilizes spatial-digital infrastructures to fix various crises/shocks across the entire value chain, from the fashion design and procurement to supply chain management through its in-house algorithmic systems, fostering an ultra-fast rate of capital accumulation. Beyond the inherently crisis-prone nature and the corresponding dark sides highlighted in the literature, we focus on the dynamic processes of capital accumulation and the corresponding fixes that lead to darker (negative) and brighter (positive) sides in various actors, from the constant pressure on cost minimization to synergistic intersections between emerging digital fast fashion retailers, subcontractors, and suppliers in the production networks. Moreover, these spatial-digital fixes are temporary and give rise to new shocks due to their inherently crisis-prone nature, from intellectual property lawsuits to labor and environmental issues. This article complements the conventional case of a race to the bottom among subcontractors by highlighting a continuum between the brighter and darker sides of Shein’s fixes and their disruptive effects on the power relationships and value distributions between incumbent fast fashion retailers, emerging online retailers, and other actors in apparel production networks.