Entertainment
Amazon launches Shein competitor 'Haul' — everything will cost less than $20
UPDATE: Nov. 14, 2024, 1:36 p.m. EST This story has been updated with a comment from an Amazon rep.
Amazon is launching a Shein competitor, according to a new press release.
With Shein’s skyrocketing sales, it’s easy to see why the Bezos-owned big-box retailer aims to compete head-on in the world of low-cost, trend-driven e-commerce.
Fast-fashion retailer Shein, despite ethical scrutiny regarding its labor practices, environmental impact, and product safety, is a fierce rival in the e-commerce space.
In 2023, it amassed over $32 billion in worldwide sales, indicating a growth of nearly 42% year-over-year. In the same year, Shein secured over $14 billion in sales in the U.S., according to EcommerceDB (ECDB). To put this into perspective, Shein surpassed both Walmart.com and Amazon.com, which had sales between $9 and $12 billion, per ECDB.
“Amazon’s online fashion revenues are now behind both Shein and Walmart,” the ECDB report said.
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Amazon’s new low-cost retailer is called ‘Haul’
Haul, Amazon’s new economical online retailer, will keep prices capped at $20. However, most of the products will be less than $10. Amazon’s press release cited examples of some of these budget-friendly items:
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An necklace, bracelet, and earring set for $2.99
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Two kitchen tongs for $4.99
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An iPhone 16 case for $1.79
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A belt for $1.99
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A three-piece trimmer razor set for $2.99
Orders must be $25 or more to qualify for free delivery — but don’t expect them to be delivered in two days. According to Amazon’s press release, Haul’s delivery timeframe is between one to two weeks.
“Finding great products at very low prices is important to customers, and we continue to explore ways that we can work with our selling partners so they can offer products at ultra-low prices,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide selling partner services.
As mentioned at the outset, the mass production of inexpensive products has faced criticism. For example, Shein’s rapid production model contributes to substantial carbon emissions, according to Wired.
We reached out to Amazon about how it plans to evade these concerns. In response, an Amazon rep said the following:
“Low-priced items are not new to our business and we continue to focus on identifying opportunities to build on our progress toward our Climate Pledge of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. With Amazon Haul, we’ll account for its impact – like we do all of our operations – and work to mitigate it in a similar way.
We constantly work to prevent, manage, and reduce waste across our business, including waste we produce in our operations and customer waste, like packaging and retired products. We aim to avoid waste through innovation, design, and operational efficiencies. Amazon has replaced all of the plastic air pillows from delivery packaging used at our global fulfillment centers with paper filler. Since 2015, we’ve reduced the average per-shipment packaging weight by 43% and avoided a total of more than 3 million metric tons of packaging.”
For now, Haul is in beta and available exclusively through a mobile app. You can access it here.
Entertainment
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Entertainment
BookCon 2026: Authors Rachel Reid, Stephanie Archer talk hockey romance and how it could change the sport for the better
With the fervor of Heated Rivalry, there’s a fierce desire among book readers for even more hockey. On Sunday, April 19, at BookCon, the “You Had Me at Hockey: A Look at One of Sports Romance’s Hottest Genres”, authors Rachel Reid (Heated Rivalry, Game Changer), Emily Rath (Pucking Around), Ngozi Ukazu (Check Please), Stephanie Archer (The Wild Card), and Kate Cochrane (Wake Up, Nat & Darcy) were joined by moderator and fellow author Bal Khabra (Collide) to discuss the rise and continued success of hockey romance.
Khabra kicked off the panel, asking just how hockey became so popular. Ukazu joked that it was as if the genre “escaped containment,” like when the Omegaverse went mainstream, while Reid described the mystery around hockey, saying, “what [the players] are doing seems impossible.” Archer also added that the sport itself is exceptionally hard on the body, and the celebrity around players, especially in Canada, is fun to play with.
But there’s more to the genre’s success than the tropes. “It has to be said,” Rath argued, “that the cornerstone of why this is so popular in publishing is racism.” She went on to say that straight, white women’s voices dominated the romance genre for so long, pointing out that hockey is also the whitest sport. Among major league sports, the NHL is the most predominantly white. In 2022, ESPN reported that 83.6% of league players and staff were white, compared to the NFL, where 25-27% of players are white, or the NBA, where white players make up 17.5% of the league.
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Zooming into the genre, the authors also spoke about the writing process. They dove into the deeper aspects of their work, even the smut. Rath said, “I think the least sexy thing you can ever do is write a sex scene.” A similar sentiment came up during Reid’s Saturday panel, where she described using the sex scenes to further the emotional arc. When readers ask authors if they can skip the spice, Archer says of her own books, “No, you can’t skip the sex scenes. You’re missing so much character development if you don’t go on the journey with them.”
The panel turned to the future, too. Many of the authors write BIPOC and queer representation into their novels, in a genre that often centers on whiteness and homophobia. “We’re writing the world as we want it to be,” Rath said.
Reid has found that there is progress toward a future that these authors and their readers want to see, saying that the NHL is interested in working with them. “People on the inside, they really want to work toward change and want to make this happen.”
With the hockey fandom at an all-time high, there’s a whole team behind these authors ready to drive change.
Entertainment
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