RepRisk case study
Boohoo Group

# How the supply chain allegations unfolded

# July 2020

Boohoo Group (Boohoo) was founded in 2006 in Manchester, England, as an online fashion retailer targeting young consumers globally. By leveraging a direct sourcing model that relies on local suppliers, Boohoo quickly evolved into one of the UK’s most prominent fast fashion houses, and its products were being sold to more than 2.3 million active customers in over 100 countries by the time it began trading on the London Stock Exchange in March 2014. As the company continued to acquire well-known brands over the following years, its market capitalization increased from GBP 560 million (USD 702 million) in March 2014 to GBP 4.5 billion (USD 5.6 billion) by the end of June 2020.

Criticisms against Boohoo started to emerge two years after the company went public. In the 2016 Australian Fashion Report, the organization Baptist World Aid Australia gave the company the worst grade for efforts to mitigate risk of worker exploitation in its supply chains. The following year, a supplier of Boohoo was the subject of an undercover investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches, which found widespread underpayment issues and serious fire risk in the garment industry in Leicester, UK. In 2017, Boohoo was named as one of several UK online retailers selling real fur products mislabeled as faux fur following an investigation by Humane Society International UK and Sky News.