Instagram boutiques are selling $16 fast-fashion dresses for $55, and it reveals a major snag in the e-commerce boom

This summer, I bought a few dresses for about $34 each from an online boutique I discovered on Instagram. But when my order arrived, the material felt cheap — the kind that nearly disintegrates in your fingers.

Then I found them on AliExpress, Alibaba's online retail store, for under $10.

My experience mirrored those of people on Twitter who said they purchased clothing from similar boutiques just to discover the same items for a fraction of the price on fast-fashion sites like AliExpress and Shein. I spoke with one online shopper who said she bought two outfits — one for $80 and one for $55 — with Shein tags still attached.

The issue has been pervasive in online fashion, and it's only intensifying as 200,000 more entrepreneurs opened digital storefronts in 2020 than in 2019, according to a report by the National Bureau Of Economic Research. Experts say these business owners dived into the e-commerce pool without a complete understanding of supply chains — from product to platform to customer.