The Kamanis celebrate new year with Adam (left), brothers Umar and Samir, and, on the right of picture, mum and dad Mahmud and Aisha.
The Kamanis celebrate new year with Adam (left), brothers Umar and Samir, and, on the right of picture, mum and dad Mahmud and Aisha.
It has no High Street shops and few people over the age of 40 will have even heard of it. But online fashion retailer Boohoo is instantly recognisable to teenagers and twentysomethings everywhere.
And thanks to its remarkable ability to replicate celebrity fashion trends in a matter of days, it's one of the most extraordinary British success stories of recent times.
The brand has humble origins on a Manchester market stall but it is now worth £2.6 billion ($4.6b) - almost five times as much as Debenhams - after the shares surged tenfold over the past two years.
Its up-to-the-minute styles and pocket-money prices - it offers figure-hugging bodycon dresses for as little as £3 and shoes at £4 - have seen sales rocket to £283 million last year. Boohoo boasts more than five million devoted customers in 200 countries.
By last year, this extraordinary growth had netted the Kamani family behind the company a £732m fortune and continuing stellar profits are now believed to have taken them north of £1b.
It has brought them a gilded life of fast cars, exotic travel and celebrity hobnobbing their own customers could only dream of. It's a lifestyle the younger members of the clan are happy to flaunt online, which in turn promotes the brand.
Here, The Mail On Sunday charts the rise and rise of Boohoo, a brand fast leaving the traditional High Street in its dust.
BOO WHO?
It doesn't take a genius to work out that cut-price clothing stores such as Primark have boomed over the past decade.
But fashion wholesaler Mahmud Kamani, 52, realised what was happening earlier than most.
Umar Kamani posted this Instagram picture on Father's Day last year of his parents Mahmud and Aisha.
He also spotted the astonishing opportunities created by the growth of the internet.
In 2006, he and designer Carol Kane - now joint chief executive -set up an online retailer that would deliver their own branded fashion at rock-bottom prices. They started small, with just three staff in a Manchester warehouse.
Their big advantage was that they could use local contacts in the rag trade - more than half of their garments are still made in Britain - to rush the latest fashion trends on to their website in weeks.
Their designers pore over social media and celebrity websites and rush budget copies of outfits worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande and Rihanna on to their 'shelves' within a crucial two-week window.
Boohoo also deploys an innovative suck-it-and-see method, ordering small quantities of new lines to test a design on their customers, before ramping up production of the favourites.
Traditional High Street retailers manufacturing in the Far East may have lead times running into months, by which time they risk being out of date in an increasingly fickle - and disposable - market.
Boohoo has adopted a canny word-of-mouth marketing strategy that taps directly into its target audience. It uses hundreds of bloggers and celebrity 'influencers' to shout about the brand on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, some of whom are willing to work for a few tops and a slice of pizza, according to Kane, 50.
Boohoo fans and advocates include girl band Little Mix, Towie star Amber Dowding and singer Tallia Storm.
Today, Boohoo has a workforce of 1,415, with teams in Manchester, Burnley, London, New York and Los Angeles. Employees enjoy free yoga and Zumba classes in the in-house gym. A core team of 20 designers and hundreds more outside the business churn out a new collection each week.
Boohoo uploads as many as 120 new pieces on to its website every day. It sells 50 dresses every minute across the Boohoo group.
Unlike 'grown up' competitor Asos, Boohoo sells only its own labels. British distribution is handled from a massive warehouse in Burnley, which holds more than 29,000 pieces of clothing and will expand to 1.9 million sq ft next year.
Boohoo also owns a majority stake in PrettyLittleThing, a younger, brasher version set up by Mahmud's son Umar Kamani, 29, and has recently acquired Los Angeles-based Nasty Gal, giving it dominance of online fast fashion.
The philosophy is simple. "Girls don't wear the same dress twice," Umar said recently. "They want a new item every week. We make sure she can afford it."
MEET THE KAMANIS
Theirs is a story of rags-to-riches or, rather, riches-from-rags.
The family originated in Gujarat, India, where Mahmud's father Abdullah went to school with Mahatma Gandhi. Abdullah moved the family to Kenya, where many Indian families had prospered under the British Empire.
Mahmud was born there in 1964, but four years later the Kamanis were forced to flee to Britain by increasing unrest and draconian employment laws that favoured native Kenyans.
They settled in Manchester, where the entrepreneurial Abdullah sold handbags on a market stall to feed his family, before investing in property and founding wholesale textile business Pinstripe, where Mahmud worked, using family connections in India to source garments.
By the early 2000s, the firm was selling nearly £50m of clothing a year to High Street names such as New Look, Primark and Philip Green's Topshop.
Today, Abdullah, 81, still goes to the office daily. Mahmud has the same drive, saying: "Some people like golf, others like football. I like work." Mahmud's other two sons, Adam, 28, and Samir, 21, are also in the family business.
Umar Kamani poses on his Rolls-Royce Dawn in Beverly Hills.
Umar was a self-confessed playboy before his father got him to knuckle down by helping launch PrettyLittleThing, promoted by the likes of Kim Kardashian's half-sister Kylie Jenner.
Adam lives in New York and concentrates on the family's property business, while Samir works on the BoohooMan label.
Boohoo's astonishing success has brought the family a lifestyle a world away from most of their customers.
Abdullah bought his first Rolls-Royce more than 30 years ago and Mahmud drives a £350,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom. Umar has a fleet of luxury vehicles, including Lamborghinis and Hummers.
Mahmud's impossibly glamorous wife and the boys' mother, Aisha, 51, does not work for the company but certainly enjoys the trappings of wealth.
When she's not shopping on Boohoo of course, she's snapping up items from Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Fendi stores on Hollywood's glamorous Rodeo Drive.
In the past year she has been seen wearing designer accessories such as a £1,440 backpack by Louis Vuitton and Gucci trainers costing £645.
Umar, Adam and Samir also like to show off their extraordinary wealth. In April, they were pictured boarding a private jet to the hipsters' favourite Coachella festival in California, before popping up in Las Vegas.
They've enjoyed trips to Cannes and St Tropez - flying between the two by helicopter - and hung out with rapper Snoop Dogg at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.
The family saw in the new year and celebrated Samir's 21st birthday on the observation deck of Singapore's exclusive Marina Bay Sands hotel, where suites costs upwards of £3,638 per night.
