Boohoo is a UK-based fast fashion retailer that also owns PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, MissPap, Karen Millen, as well as Burton, Wallis and Dorothy Perkins. For more details on Boohoo’s social and environmental commitments, see the Remake Brand Directory. 

#PAYUP

While Boohoo is not known to have cancelled orders during the pandemic, it is unclear if Boohoo has agreed to #PayUp for the companies it purchased from Arcadia (Burton, Dorthy Perkins, and Wallis), a company that went bankrupty during the pandemic that never agreed to #PayUp for $100 million orders. 

2-8-21 – Boohoo purchases Burton, Wallis and Dorothy Perkins from bankrupt retail conglomerate Arcadia Group, but does not agree to #PayUp to Arcadia Group’s suppliers, which are owed $100 million. Boohoo doesn’t purchase the Arcadia brands’ stores, costing 2,450 retail workers their jobs.

12-14-20 – As of November, Boohoo has not responded to inquiries from Business & Human Rights Resource Centre as to the status of their orders placed prior to the pandemic. Given the brand’s unethical sourcing practices during the pandemic and their lack of transparency surrounding the status of orders, PayUp Fashion has added Boohoo (Nasty Gal, PrettyLittleThing) to our Brand Tracker.

KEEP WORKERS SAFE

The Keep Workers Safe demand requires brands to ensure their garment workers’ financial and economic safety during the pandemic by signing onto the Severance Guarantee Fund, which creates a social safety net for laid-off workers; by contributing to direct relief for garment workers; and by protecting human rights, democracy, and the right to organize. It’s estimated the cost to ensure a social safety net for garment workers is just $.10 cents more per garment. And yet Boohoo made no additional efforts to Keep Workers Safe during the pandemic, earning the brand a “NO” for Keep Workers Safe.

GO TRANSPARENT

While Boohoo does publicly disclose a list of what appears to be its active tier 1 cut-and-sew garment factories, the company has not committed to The Transparency Pledge and does not supply the level of detail that’s industry best practice, so we have given Boohoo a “NO” for Go Transparent.

In addition to complying with The Transparency Pledge, to receive a “YES” for Action 3 on the PayUp Fashion Tracker, Boohoo must disclose its tier 2 (fabric mills), tier 3 (yarn and fiber mills) and tier 4 (raw materials) suppliers; disclose the wages of the lowest-earning workers at each factory and share audit and remediation reports publicly, and make these findings available to the garment workers in the audited factories.

SIGN ENFORCEABLE AGREEMENTS

The Accord

Boohoo has signed onto the International Accord on workplace safety, which we applaud. The Accord was devised in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, in which 1,134 garment makers were crushed to death in a garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. Today, the Accord is the industry standard for workplace safety agreements, with more than 150 brand signatories as of December of 2021. For their commitment, Boohoo gets a yellow slash under Sign Enforceable Contracts to indicate they’ve met some conditions of this demand. They are also on the positive side of our Accord Tracker.

END STARVATION WAGES

Boohoo has made no public commitment to pay living wages in its supply chain, nor can it demonstrate that the workers in its supply chain earn above poverty wages, earning the company a “NO” for End Starvation Wages.