Fast-fashion retailer Boohoo got into a soup after a BBC Panorama investigation revealed that they put “Made in the UK” labels on their clothing items that were made in South Asia. The original labels put in the plain T-shirts and hoodies were replaced at Boohoo’s flagship factory in Thurmaston Lane, Leicester, in 2023.
On Tuesday, the BCC reported that the fashion company is considering shutting down operations of the Thurmaston Lane site. Reacting to the issue, Boohoo said that “the incorrect labels were down to a misinterpretation of the labeling rules,” BBC reported.
Thurmaston Lane started its operations two years back and was promoted by the fashion firm as a manufacturing centre of excellence in the UK that offered end-to-end garment production.
The mislabelling controversy affected up to one in 250 of Boohoo’s global supply of garments between January and October 2023.
According to the BBC’s estimates, this means that hundreds of thousands of wrongly labeled garments were sold. The retailer has yet to disclose its own figures.
Boohoo claimed that it was an isolated incident and happened as “a result of human error”. Adding onto this, a company spokesperson said, “We have taken steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
The garments had been shipped from Pakistan and other countries in South Asia to Boohoo’s Leicester factory where they were printed on.
When the investigation findings were shown to Chris Grayer, who spent more than 10 years as head of supplier ethical compliance at High Street retailer Next, he said that there had been a “significant failure of inspection”.
Sylvia Rook, lead officer for fair trading at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, said that the mislabelling act was “incorrect” and “could potentially mislead consumers”.
Philip Dunne MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, said, “Consumers should not be misled as to the source of garments that they’re buying.”
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