Boohoo’s business model is as cheeky as a bikini paired with chaps

WHEN CAROL KANE co-founded Boohoo, an online fast-fashion firm, with Mahmud Kamani in 2006, “it was just me, Mahmud, a photographer and the model was Umar’s girlfriend at the time,” she says. Umar is a son of Mahmud, who later co-founded another successful web-based label, PrettyLittleThing, and sold most of it to Boohoo. The Manchester-based group has come a long way fast.

Its annual sales have reached £857m ($1.1bn) and it is the highest-valued firm on AIM, the London Stock Exchange’s junior bourse. It has yet to achieve the scale of a Primark or H&M, but it is becoming hard to ignore. On August 6th Boohoo bought the brands Karen Millen and Coast. Disregarding lamentations about the demise of the high street, it said it would swiftly shut their 200-odd physical outlets.