Online retailer Shein has pledged to “cooperate fully” with French judicial authorities after an uproar over it selling childlike sex dolls, and said it was prepared to disclose the names of people who bought them.
The controversy comes as Shein is set to open its first bricks and mortar store in the world, in the prestigious BHV department store in central Paris tomorrow.
“We will cooperate fully with the judicial authorities,” Shein’s spokesman in France, Quentin Ruffat, told RMC radio, adding the company was prepared to share the names of those who have bought such dolls.
“We will be completely transparent with the authorities,” he said.
“We will put the necessary safeguards in place to ensure that this does not happen again,” Mr Ruffat added.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened investigations against Shein, and also rival online retailers AliExpress, Temu and Wish, over the sale of sex dolls.
The probes were for distributing “messages that are violent, pornographic or improper, and accessible to minors”, the office said.
The investigations were launched after France’s anti-fraud unit reported on Saturday that Shein, a Singapore-based company which was originally founded in China, was selling childlike sex dolls.
French media published a photo of one of the dolls sold on the platform, accompanied by an explicitly sexual caption.
The pictured doll measured around 80cm in height and held a teddy bear.
Mr Ruffat described what had happened as “serious, unacceptable, intolerable,” and explained the sale of the dolls to “a malfunction in our processes and governance”.
Yesterday, Shein announced it was imposing a “total ban on sex-doll-type products” and had deleted all listings and images linked to them.
France’s high commissioner for childhood, Sarah El Hairy, denounced the dolls which she called “paedophile objects that predators unfortunately sometimes use to practise before moving on to abusing children.”
Mr Ruffat said he and “the entire Shein brand” shared her concerns.
“We will be delighted to discuss these issues with her, these issues of paedophile crime, which are too serious to be ignored,” he said.
Finance Minister Roland Lescure had warned he would move to ban the company from the French market if the items returned online.