Bohoo is a popular online retailer. Photo / Getty Images
Bohoo is a popular online retailer. Photo / Getty Images
Falsified wage records, no signed contracts of employment, buildings in deplorable conditions" and workers unpaid "for seven weeks", and that was just in one Boohoo factory out of many in Leicester that were found to be operating in appalling conditions.
A factory audit discovered repeated examples of non-compliance with minimumwage requirements as well as safety breaches in the retailer's supply chain. Still, there's nothing like a "modern slavery" scandal to boost sales.
Boohoo hasn't just shrugged off the devastating exposé of its working practices from top QC Alison Levitt; by the look of its latest financial figures, you would think the whole sorry affair never happened.
Half-year profits up 51 per cent, from £45.2m to £68.1m (NZ$88m to NZ$133m); turnover at £816.5m compared to £564.9m the year before; customer numbers up by a third to 17.4m; and the number of items per basket was 10pc higher.
Incredibly, in a period where Boohoo faced serious allegations of mistreating its workers, the chain reported record trading.
True, these figures cover the six-month period to the end of August, meaning they pre-date the publication of Levitt's damning report. But her investigation was announced at the beginning of July. Besides, it's not as if the allegations were new even then, nor when the Sunday Times published its report a few days before.
The Boohoo share price shows consumers aren't too concerned about how their clothes are produced. Image / Telegraph
Concerns about conditions in the Leicester rag trade stretch as far back as 2010. Fears about the fast-fashion trade specifically first surfaced in 2015. And Boohoo was among several retailers accused by Channel 4's Dispatches in 2017 of paying below minimum wage to factory workers. MPs raised similar concerns that same year and again in 2019.
The only conclusion to make, then, is that consumers couldn't care less about how their clothes are produced, where or by whom as long as they are dirt cheap. For all the talk of socially conscious consumers demanding exemplary standards, Boohoo's experience suggests otherwise: just look at its share price.
There was no boycott, outraged customers didn't flock elsewhere. On the contrary, the response was to buy even more of Boohoo's clothes than before. I am reminded of a recent conversation with the boss of one of Britain's most ethical retailers who readily conceded that his own approach had limits.
The thrust of it was this: ask customers if they want organic, free range, grass-fed beef, and more often than not the response will be an enthusiastic "yes". But ask those same people if they are prepared to pay a couple of pounds extra for that same meat, and you will get a different answer.
How telling that Boohoo can pledge to make "substantive, long-lasting and meaningful change" without fear of jeopardising its highly lucrative business model. Levitt's recommendations can be implemented "without impacting lead times or financial expectations", it said.
Which begs the screamingly obvious question: why didn't it act sooner? Well, when customers are happy to turn a blind eye, is it a surprise that companies are willing to do the same?
Of course companies must be held to account and suspected acts of corporate wrongdoing investigated thoroughly. Exemplary standards of governance are the bedrock of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. But consumers need to take a long hard look at themselves too.
TSB really is banking differently
"Many of our competitors are savagely cutting branches and taking services away from communities. We are not in that business," TSB proudly announced back in 2013.
Well, it can finally climb down off that high horse because it is certainly "in that business" now. Up to its neck in fact because it doesn't come much more savage than 164 branch closures, or a whopping third of TSB's total estate, plus almost 1,000 jobs to boot.
And what of "taking services away from communities"? Well, if you're elderly, disabled, or live in an isolated part of the country, fear not because TSB has got your back. Closures have been carefully selected to ensure that "94pc of TSB customers can travel in 20 minutes or less to a branch", so just the 40-minute round trip then.
Easy peasy if you're 90 years of age, frail, and live on your own in a small, rural village like my dear grandmother. Not only that but the new network "will have an average of 17,000 customers per branch, which remains below the UK average", so full marks for making another ruthless cost-cutting exercise sound like an act of charity.
Still, at least customers will have no problems banking online with TSB. Its digital prowess has been "bolstered" by a tie-up with IBM and a new online chat function. How much difference that will make to a bank best known for one of the biggest IT blowouts ever witnessed remains to be seen.
When it says "our customers are banking differently", does that mean elsewhere?
Canadian cash will tempt G4S investors
Canada's Gardaworld has gone hostile with a 190p-a-share takeover bid for G4S. The security giant has rejected the approach on the basis that it comes at a "critical inflexion point in the execution of the company's strategy".
That would be the same strategy that had left the share price drifting below the 252p-a-share level that boss Ashley Almanza inherited more than seven years ago.
A bump in its offer to something closer to the pre-Covid share price, which had bounced between 200p and 215p since the start of the year, will surely be enough to tempt long-suffering investors.
