EAGLE-eyed shoppers have unearthed a hack that will help you pick up Zara pieces for over £40 cheaper.
Content creator Toni Tone has revealed how she uses her phone camera to find identical items to those in the shops… for a fraction of the price.
The self-styled “online big sis” took to TikTok in a now-viral video to talk about the shopping secret.
To demonstrate it, she went shopping in Zara and picked up a pair of pearl heels priced at £49.99.
Toni then “ran” a photo of the shoes through the AliExpress app and found identical styles being flogged for as little as £12.
AliExpress is an online retail platform owned by the Alibaba Group, a Chinese multinational conglomerate.
It is famed for its cheap prices, as a number of sellers on the platform are wholesalers who are able to pick up products for pennies.
“In the search bar of AliExpress, there’s a camera icon,” Toni explained.
“You can actually take pictures of anything you’re holding, which it scans, or you can upload pictures.”
The content creator scanned three pairs of Zara shoes, two of which retailed at £49.99, and was able to find versions on AliExpress for as cheap as £12.
“This is fast fashion for you,” she said.
“I’m not gonna pretend like it works perfectly.
“I tried it with a few of the clothes I like and there were similar things on AliExpress, but they didn’t look all that.”
And it’s not just Toni that was aware of the well-kept shopping secret.
“I’ve been doing this, particularly with House of CB dresses,” Ziyanda Zee Khathwane quipped.
“I don’t do it with Zara though because I generally find it reasonably priced.”
AliExpress started off as a business-to-business buying and selling portal.
The company has since expanded to offer business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer, as well as payment services and cloud computing.
It is a safe website, with millions of users worldwide.
It runs websites in a great many languages, including English, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian and Indonesian.
The online shop also provides customers with full refunds on products that never turn up — and those arriving late or damaged.
“I do this with EVERYTHING that I can tell isn’t super niche, unique or high end,” Helena Rubinstein echoed.
“Because materials and quality matter too.”
Another commenter even suggested that the shoes and bags on AliExpress are made in the same warehouse as Zara ones.
“So, it would actually be the same item,” she alleged.
