In some Chinese live streaming rooms, there are allegedly 100% cashmere sweaters for sale that were found to not contain a single strand of cashmere after testing. This news made it to the top trending searches on Baidu on February 17th. Some industry experts have stated that this kind of marketing practice may involve price fraud.
Recently, due to the cold weather, many live streaming rooms in China have been promoting cashmere sweaters. Cashmere is a relatively precious animal fiber, with an adult cashmere goat producing only 300 grams of cashmere at a time, making the product prices usually quite high. However, the 100% cashmere sweaters being sold in live streaming rooms now have very attractive low prices, drawing in many consumers.
Some live stream hosts claim that the cashmere sweaters they sell are 100% pure cashmere without any synthetic fibers. In rooms selling cashmere pants, the screens are prominently displaying the promotional slogan “100% cashmere,” and sales staff mention that to clear inventory, the price of these cashmere pants is only a little over 100 yuan. Another live streaming room selling cashmere products advertises “genuine cashmere at one-tenth of the price,” with the wash label stating “100% goat cashmere” and a price of 88 Chinese yuan. The sales staff claim that the quality can compete with products priced over 1,000 yuan in the mall.
According to CCTV News on February 16th, a reporter randomly purchased 7 items of 100% cashmere sweaters in Chinese live streaming rooms and sent them to an authoritative testing laboratory in the light industry textile field for testing the fiber content and labeling instructions of the 7 samples.
In a live streaming room claiming to use Ordos A-grade yarn to make cashmere sweaters, the product details page shows “fabric material: 100% cashmere,” and the clothing tag indicates “100% cashmere.” However, the actual fiber content of this cashmere sweater was tested as follows: acrylic 50.0%, polyester fiber 29.5%, viscose 20.5%. Despite claiming to be 100% goat cashmere, it turned out to be a synthetic knitted sweater with not a single strand of cashmere.
Similarly, in a live streaming room claiming “100% cashmere, their competitors use synthetic fibers, ours are real cashmere” for cashmere pants, both the product page and the tag show “100% goat cashmere.” Testing revealed that the actual fiber content was viscose 28.8%, polyester fiber 28.7%, acrylic 24.4%, and silk 18.1%, with no cashmere component.
Additionally, out of the other 5 samples sent for testing claiming to be 100% cashmere, none of them were found to contain any cashmere.
In response, Zhou Hongshui, an engineer at the Light Industry Textile Clothing Testing Department of the Guangdong Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Research Institute, stated: “This time, we received 7 samples, of which 2 contained a small amount of wool, and 5 were pure synthetic fibers, meaning that none of the 7 samples contained any cashmere.”
According to Chinese national standards, products with a cashmere content of 30% or more can be called cashmere products; those with a cashmere content of 95% or more, suspected to have less than or equal to 5% wool, can be labeled as 100% cashmere or pure cashmere.
Many live platforms are selling ordinary knitted garments falsely claiming to be 100% cashmere products, which has already raised suspicions of price fraud.
It is reported that there are still false discount inducements and fake price reductions in Chinese live streaming rooms, all of which constitute suspected price fraud.
According to statistics from the State Administration for Market Regulation of the Communist Party of China, in 2023, 12315 platforms nationwide received 12.61 million online shopping complaints, with the complaint volume for live streaming sales increasing by 47.1 times over 5 years. The China Consumers Association found that during the 2024 “Double 11 Online Shopping Festival,” there were 230,675 pieces of negative information related to “live streaming sales,” averaging 8,238 pieces per day. Complaints about counterfeits, false advertising, and other issues have notably increased.