Why I Almost Ditched Fast Fashion for Chinese Suppliers (and What Happened Next) Let me set the scene: I’m standing in my apartment in Portland, Oregon, surrounded by three cardboard boxes that smell faintly of plastic and warehouse dust. It’s 9 PM, I’ve just finished a 12-hour shift at the vintage boutique where I work part-time, and I’m about to unbox my first direct-from-China order. This wasn’t a casual Alibaba scroll—I’d spent weeks researching, comparing suppliers, and convincing myself I wasn’t making a mistake. Two months earlier, I’d been scrolling through Instagram, seeing the same Zara blazer on three different influencers, and something snapped. I thought, I can do better.…