Boohoo scandal unravelled – the billionaire Kamani family behind the UK fast-fashion online retailer accused of paying workers US$4 an hour
Camera-shy founder Mahmud Kamani may have stepped down, but wife Aisha and sons Umar and Samir hang with celebrities and set Instagram alight – now the family behind the US$4.3 billion fast-fashion retailer are being called up for accusations of worker exploitation
The rise of the Kamani family is frequently described by the British tabloids as one of the UK’s great “rags to riches” tales.
Mahmud Kamani, the patriarch of the family, is the 55-year-old billionaire behind Boohoo, the UK’s fast-fashion clothing company that has achieved explosive growth in the past few years and is considered to be one of the few retailers to have dodged the retail doom and gloom.
Kamani, who is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country and has worked his way up the UK’s rich list to be worth just more than US$1 billion, started his career by selling cheap clothes to market stallholders and high-street brands in the UK, including H&M and Primark.
He went on to set up Boohoo with co-founder and designer Carol Kane in 2006, with the idea of cutting out the middle man and selling directly to customers online.
If I wanted to be famous it would be very easy for me to do that … but I want to be respected for what I do
From the start, Boohoo’s business model was based around being ultra-fast and ultra-cheap; around 3,000 new styles are added each week across its core brands with an average price point of US$17.
The human cost of its fast and cheap business model has come under intense scrutiny after a Sunday Times investigation found that workers in factories making its clothes in the UK were being paid as little as £3.50 (US$4.37) an hour.
The company is now investigating this report and said that these factory conditions were “totally unacceptable” and “fall woefully short” of its standards.
Here we get to know the wealthy lifestyle of the key player’s behind this scandal-hit family empire.