Boohoo’s dramatic fall from a £5bn fast fashion titan to a £340m brand—tracing scandals, governance woes, and Kenyan-born co-founder Mahmud Kamani’s legacy.
🕒 Timeline: Boohoo’s Rise & Fall
📍2006
Boohoo is founded in Manchester by Mahmud Kamani (born in Kenya) and Carol Kane.
📍July 2020
Leicester labor scandal: The Sunday Times uncovers sweatshops paying workers as little as £3.50/hour.
📍January 2021
Boohoo acquires Debenhams brand for £55 million in an effort to expand beyond youth fashion.
📍November 2024
Frasers Group attempts boardroom coup, pushing to remove Kamani due to governance concerns.
📍January 2025
Shareholders vote 63.17% to keep Mahmud Kamani on the board, blocking Frasers’ challenge.
📍March 2025
Yahoo News UK reveals personal allegations against Kamani involving a former female employee.
In the whirlwind world of fast fashion, few names once shimmered brighter than Boohoo. Born in 2006 and headquartered in Manchester, the British e-commerce juggernaut—co-founded by Mahmud Abdullah Kamani, a man born in Kenya—rapidly became a darling of Gen Z consumers, social media influencers, and city traders alike. But in a twist of fashion fate, the company that once strutted down Wall Street and the London Stock Exchange like it owned the runway is now staggering in the bargain bin.
Boohoo’s market cap has plunged from over £5 billion at its peak to a mere £340 million today. It’s a stunning reversal for a company that symbolized the meteoric promise of online retail. At the heart of the story is not just business miscalculation—but alleged labor exploitation, boardroom battles, questionable governance, and a co-founder who now finds himself battling to preserve his legacy.
From Mombasa to Manchester: The Kamani Origin Story
Mahmud Kamani, Boohoo’s co-founder and now executive vice chair, was born in Kenya to Indian immigrant parents before the family relocated to the UK. The Kamanis are a classic entrepreneurial story—one of grit, hustle, and calculated ambition. The family’s journey began with modest textile businesses and eventually led to Boohoo, a bold leap into the nascent world of online fashion retail in the early 2000s.
Under Kamani’s stewardship, Boohoo grew into a powerhouse. With razor-sharp instincts, he understood the importance of speed and scale in fashion—and he gave Gen Z exactly what they wanted: affordability, trendiness, and overnight delivery.
But as Boohoo scaled, cracks began to form beneath its glossy surface.
The Leicester Scandal: Where Fast Fashion Turned Ugly
In 2020, an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times uncovered that garment workers in Leicester, supplying Boohoo’s Nasty Gal label, were paid as little as £3.50 an hour—less than half the UK’s minimum wage. Even more damning: the factories lacked basic health protocols during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Global investors recoiled. Retailers such as Next, Asos, and Zalando dropped Boohoo from their platforms. Major fund managers demanded accountability. One top investor, Lesley Duncan of Aberdeen Standard Investments, didn’t mince words: Boohoo’s response was “inadequate in scope, timeliness, and gravity.”
The fallout was swift. Lawsuits followed. Forty-nine investors—including the California State Teachers’ Retirement System—filed for over £100 million in damages, accusing the company of misleading the public and failing to act on internal warnings. The brand’s once-trendy sheen faded into corporate shame.
The Debenhams Gamble: A Legacy Brand that Backfired
In 2021, Boohoo acquired the collapsed Debenhams brand for £55 million. It was a bold move aimed at extending Boohoo’s reach beyond youth apparel. But many saw it as a last-ditch gamble.
CEO Dan Finley recently claimed Debenhams.com sales rose by 10%, and the company was “on track” for profitability. Yet, the Boohoo Group’s core brands—PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, and BoohooMAN—have continued to bleed market share, especially to ultra-fast rivals like Shein and Temu. The rebrand to “Debenhams Group” this year was seen less as a revival and more as a retreat.
Boardroom Chaos: The Kamani Family Under Fire
Mahmud Kamani hasn’t escaped the mess. In late 2024, Boohoo’s second-largest shareholder, Frasers Group (owned by retail magnate Mike Ashley), demanded Kamani be booted from the board, citing governance failures. But in a dramatic twist, shareholders—some still loyal to the Kamani legacy—voted 63.17% in his favor, rejecting the move.
Yet tensions remain high. Frasers accused Boohoo of paying over £2 million annually to Umar Kamani, Mahmud’s son, for “consultancy” services—raising red flags over transparency and nepotism. The payments were tied to PrettyLittleThing, a brand already at the center of previous scrutiny.
Then came more disturbing headlines. In March 2025, Yahoo News UK reported that Mahmud Kamani was embroiled in a court case involving allegations of controlling and manipulative behavior toward a female employee—a PR nightmare that only added to Boohoo’s battered image.
A Reflection from Kenya: What Kamani’s Fall Means
For many in Kenya’s diaspora business circles, Mahmud Kamani had once been a source of quiet pride—a Kenyan-born entrepreneur who built a fashion empire on British soil. But now, his fall from grace is a cautionary tale about the limits of unchecked growth and the cost of cutting ethical corners.
His story raises important questions for Kenyan enterprises aspiring to scale globally: Can speed coexist with sustainability? Is family-run governance enough when your company goes public? And at what point does ambition become corporate arrogance?
The Road Ahead: Can Boohoo Be Saved?
Boohoo’s biggest challenge now isn’t just competition or declining profits—it’s trust. Rebranding as the Debenhams Group might buy time, but unless the company retools its governance, pays attention to labor conditions, and redefines its mission beyond cheap clicks, it may never regain its mojo.
Boohoo once conquered fashion with breakneck speed. Now, it must learn to survive through accountability and humility.