Resorting to unfair trade practices, fast fashion brands are not just cancelling orders but also refusing to pay their workers in India. A recent example of this is H&M which cancelled orders after a major chunk of it was completed. Most of these fast-fashion brands and companies, and even some high fashion brands, do not have their own factories or ateliers. Instead, a bulk of the manufacturing work is outsourced to India, Bangladesh, and other developing nations where the labor is cheap and raw material is easily procurable.

The factories where the work is outsourced to, is responsible for procuring the raw materials, creating a product, say jeans or a shirt, ship a batch of the finished product to the nearest headquarter of the brand, where it undergoes a quality and check, and then sent across the world. Normally, once the finished product passes inspection, the brands release a majority of the payment. Few brands, do give the factories a token advance, but not all of them. Workers in these factories are barely given the minimum wages. On top of that, most of these factories flout basic safety measures. The workers in these factories often work under appalling conditions, with practically no job security.