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The Story Behind Boohoo — Britain's Billion Pound Fashion Brand | Carol Kane

Carol Kane is the co-founder of Boohoo, the brand Boohoo - she built from a £1,500 website in 2006 into a £1.5 billion publicly listed group. She served as co-CEO and Executive Director of Boohoo Group, overseeing its IPO in 2014 and the acquisition of brands including Debenhams, PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, Dorothy Perkins and Karen Millen. She is a pioneer of influencer and celebrity marketing in British fashion. In this episode of Origin Story, Carol sits down to share the full journey from growing up as the youngest of four in a three-bedroom house in Jarrow, Northeast England, to building a publicly listed fashion empire worth £1.5 billion. She talks about losing her father at 20, being the first in her family to go to university, landing in Hong Kong at 22 with almost nothing, and how those early years gave her the commercial instincts that would define her career. We cover the founding of Boohoo, how Carol and co-founder Mahmud Kamani identified e-commerce before the high street even took it seriously, and how they used distressed media buys, MTV bumpers and reality TV stars from Geordie Shore to build a brand that nobody saw coming. Carol also opens up about the harder chapters the Leicester supply chain controversy, the weight of public scrutiny, the reputational damage that followed, and how meditation, breath work and a Buddhist monk she met in Thailand helped her stay grounded through it all. This is a conversation about identity, class, resilience, wealth, and what it really means to build something that outlasts you. Follow me on Instagram: www.instragram.com/@davidmcintoshjr Sponsor: www.neutonic.com - use code "DAVID".

David McIntosh JrhostCarol Kaneguest
Apr 4, 202659mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:06

    Identity beyond the brand: separating self-worth from job titles

    1. DJ

      Carol Kane, welcome to Origin Story

    2. CK

      Thank you

    3. DJ

      When people ask you who you are and what you do, how do you bring that to life?

    4. CK

      You know, [sighs] when you've created something big, it's very hard to articulate who you are without name-dropping the company that you created. So I'd probably always say, you know, um, "Oh, I'm Carol," and they'll say, "Oh, where, where... " And I tend to always avoid saying m- my, you know, company name. I say, "Carol." I say, "Oh yeah, I was, used to be a designer. I'm in the fashion industry. I work in e-commerce." And I always wait for the next few questions to come. "Well, where do you work, and what do you do?" And because you can see people, when they know you're the creator of a big brand, their attitude changes-

    5. DJ

      Mm

    6. CK

      ... a little bit towards you. So I try and swerve it as long as I can into a conversation.

    7. DJ

      So let's see how long it takes for us to get there. [laughs]

    8. CK

      Yeah, exactly.

    9. DJ

      But, uh, the reason I do ask that is because when you have, and we're teasing the listener here, developed and created such a household brand, both society and perhaps yourself can confuse who you are and what you do because t- I guess those things become intertwined quite easily. And one of the questions I try and ask myself more often than not is, do I love myself for who I am or what I do? Uh, because for me, that's very different things.

    10. CK

      Yeah.

    11. DJ

      I get a lot of status and acknowledgement from others saying I have a podcast and I interview people like Carol Kane-

    12. CK

      Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

    13. DJ

      ... and, uh, the people I could name-drop. But that's not who I am. I am this cheeky little humorous Scottish lad from the west coast of Scotland-

    14. CK

      Yeah

    15. DJ

      ... from a council estate. And, uh, knowing you and your story so far, you are more than just the executive director of...

    16. CK

      Yeah, of course. I mean, I've probably gone through a journey to kind of start to describe who I am now. And a y- I did fall into the trap of describing myself and putting my job first, and my role, uh, and what I'd created, and I'd label myself, and I don't anymore.

    17. DJ

      Mm.

    18. CK

      And I think that we'll touch on, I'm sure, all of these topics, but I think, you know, when you create a company, then it becomes a public company, then it's not actually your company anymore. It actually belongs to a shareholder, and you're still, you're the founder, but you're still part of it. You start to remove a little bit of yourself from it in your own persona and your labeling. So, you know, I would always describe myself as, "Oh, what do you do?" "Oh, I work in fashion and e-commerce." And, you know, "What brands?" And then I'll go on to describe my journey, but I don't start with that. I've started just describe, "Oh yeah, I'm just a, you know, young girl from the northeast of England." [laughs]

    19. DJ

      Let's go back to the northeast-

    20. CK

      Yeah

    21. DJ

      ... of England. Let's go back to the origin story. What did home look and feel like for you?

  2. 3:06 – 6:07

    Growing up in Jarrow: humble beginnings, family life, and early resilience

    1. CK

      You know, I, I came up in a, I was brought in a very loving family. I'm, I'm the youngest of four. I've got two older sisters and a brother. I live with mom and dad. Three-bedroom house, three girls in a room. M- My brother got his own room-

    2. DJ

      [laughs]

    3. CK

      ... for obvious reasons. Um, so you know, quite humble beginnings. Um, went to a regular school, you know, Catholic school. And, um, got a decent education. I, I, you know, I wasn't the, definitely wasn't the brightest in the room. I wasn't the worst either. I got through. Got my, what were then, O levels. [laughs] Um, and then decided to go on to further education, and I was, I was probably the first of, or the only of my siblings that actually went on to a, a university to do any higher education. Um, so it was quite an achievement for the family to put me through that. You know, it was a bit of hardship. And, um, I went through that journey and it, and it was very difficult because my father d- uh, died when I was young. He was... I was only 20. So I actually ended up finishing my, the end of my education a little bit earlier than I probably would've done. I would've gone on to do a master's, and I didn't, for financial reasons. Um, but yeah. So then I, I ended up working in the industry very, very quickly at the age of 20.

    4. DJ

      What city or town in the northeast did you grow up in?

    5. CK

      I grew up in Jarrow. Jarrow Marchers, or the Jarrow Marchers as they're probably [laughs] called up there. Um, yeah, it's, it's a very working class, uh, quite... I mean, when I lived there, it actually was, everybody lived like that, you know? I, when I go back now, I think, "Oh gosh, it's quite poverty-stricken-

    6. DJ

      Mm

    7. CK

      ... isn't it? It looks really run down. It looks really tired." However, you know, when you come from a, the northeast, the, the streets I lived in, they were great. You know, we were kids playing out on the streets. It was normal. Um, I didn't know anything else, so that was normal to me. It's only when you go there now and you think, "Oh gosh, it's a, it... Oh, did I bring, was I brought up here?" But actually, I, I do believe it, it was nicer then than it is now. [laughs] Um, but yeah, it was just a regular, you know, upbringing. You know, like, you look at anything from, you know, any, any images you see in the 1970s, we all look the same. We're all wearing, like, strange outfits and funny colors and, and, and the slightly grainy photographs, and that's exactly what life was like. You know, on your chopper bike and you're s- riding around the streets and stuff. Um, you know, playing hopscotch in the road. So yeah, just regular upbringing.

    8. DJ

      And it's in a time where there was no social media to compare yourself to other people that might have been brought up in oth- other areas differently, who had more or less than what you had. There was no life dysmorphia-

    9. CK

      No

    10. DJ

      ... in the same way.

  3. 6:07 – 7:59

    Childhood influences: commerce instincts and early fashion exposure

    1. CK

      No, there wasn't. No. I mean, you only saw what was in front of you and- I don't remember looking at anybody in school thinking they're a fat kid or they're a thin kid. You know, everyone was the same. Um, nobody had very much, so we were all happy with what we had. Tell you what I used to do, though, I mean, talking about being a kid, you know, retail must have been in my blood 'cause I was always playing shops [laughs] from the garden across the wall, you know, trading stuff and things. Um, and that was just normal life. You know, you had two pence a day to go to the tuck shop with.

    2. DJ

      Commerce was in your DNA.

    3. CK

      I think it probably was. I think fashion probably was as well, although I didn't appreciate it or understand it at the time. But having two older siblings and sharing a room, I think we maybe mentioned this in a conversation we had on the phone, but I had... M- my eldest sister was into glam rock, so we had T. Rex and Marc Bolan on one side of the room. My other sister was into [laughs] which you'll know, the Bay City Rollers.

    4. DJ

      Mm.

    5. CK

      So we had pictures of tartan and everything else on the other side of the room. I mean, I was confused as a child as to what is fashion, you know, 'cause obviously in that period of time, there was lots of types of fashion and almost, you know, it didn't really matter which group you fit into. Now, fashion is a little bit boring and a bit generic, and everyone's looking the same. Well, there it was very much about individualism. So I think that kind of came up a little bit in my childhood where when I dressed myself, I probably had a kind of eclectic mix, shall we say, of hand-me-down clothes from both my sisters. [laughs]

  4. 7:59 – 10:05

    What fashion means now: from catwalk dominance to social-media-driven trends

    1. DJ

      That's interesting. Really interesting. If I were to ask you, what does the word fashion mean? How would you describe it?

    2. CK

      Mm. I always say fashion fades and style stays. Um, people who work in fashion don't really cha- chase it. It's quite interesting. We don't, we don't look at the latest trends and wear them, and we're a bit almost anti that ourselves.

    3. DJ

      Mm.

    4. CK

      It's a little bit of snobbery. Um, you don't, you don't wear the latest trend if you're, if you work in the fashion industry. You tend to dress as I am today, a T-shirt, a blazer, and a pair of jeans. I mean, you know, [laughs] it's a bit of a uniform 'cause we don't wanna think about that stuff for ourselves. We think about consumers and what they're looking for when we're thinking of fashion. But really, I never really think of it as fashion. I think of what's the latest trend, what's coming through, what's consumers looking for, um, how can I take a drag out of that? And then you make the fashion that way. You know, we used to always, um, look at the high street for, you know, what are they doing? But we'd also look at the catwalks. The catwalks aren't really that relevant anymore. Everyone used to look at catwalks. They set the tone for fashion, and that's what happens. It doesn't really happen now. There's so many m- other influencers in fashion. Social media has, uh, been, played a huge part. Celebrities played a huge part, as well as the big designers playing a part on what the actual high street and e-commerce players do today. So what used to set the tone doesn't set the tone anymore.

    5. DJ

      What sets the tone now?

    6. CK

      It's a combination. It's a combination. It'll be celebrity trends, topical trends, things you see on TV, see, things you see on influence, influencers, things you see on shopping channels, things you, you see on TikTok. You know, they're all, they all play a part in what people want to wear.

  5. 10:05 – 11:42

    Leaving the Northeast for art school: talent, introversion, and finding expression

    1. DJ

      After growing up in the Northeast, you had to relocate, or you chose to relocate.

    2. CK

      I did. I chose to relocate for, for my higher education. I went to Berkshire College of Art and Design 'cause I just wanted to become a fine artist. Yeah, no, we're talking fashion like it was always in my blood. It was there, but it was never in my intention to do that. That was never my, gonna be my career of choice.

    3. DJ

      A girl from the Northeast doing fine art seems like a bit of a contrast. It doesn't seem like the path well-trodden.

    4. CK

      Yeah, that was in my blood. I mean, you know, if my mom were still alive today, she'll tell you I was never without a pencil. I mean, literally all of my pocket money went on sketchbooks and then the back of anything else I could write off, including the bedroom walls and [laughs] getting into trouble for scribbling on everything. Um, I, you know, uh, she's just said, you know, from a very... As soon as you could lift up a pencil, you were, you were s- you were sketching. So, yeah.

    5. DJ

      What were you sketching? Was that a form of escapism or expressionism?

    6. CK

      I think living in a crowded household probably was my way of tuning out. I was quite a quiet child. I was probably very, very introvert. Um, and I probably just, yeah, I probably did zone out, um, almost into a meditative state. But I, I liked doing, um, portraits and trees. [laughs]

    7. DJ

      [laughs]

    8. CK

      Two very different things. Um, but I loved, I loved portraits, and then I ended up loving life drawing after doing that, so yeah.

  6. 11:42 – 16:32

    The north–south culture shock: class contrast, grit, and “never quite good enough”

    1. DJ

      When you reloca- relocated for your education out of Jarrow, was that when you had your first moment of comparison to perhaps the other students that you were with?

    2. CK

      Oh, God, yeah. They were rich kids.

    3. DJ

      Do you have any examples of that contrast?

    4. CK

      Uh, yeah. Well, there was, um, there was five of us from up north joined a load of very rich kids [laughs] who-

    5. DJ

      It's like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. [laughs]

    6. CK

      Yeah. So there's five of us rocked up. Three of us knew each other. The other two were from Manchester. Actually, one was from Manchester, one was from Liverpool. So these five northerners, uh, turning up in Maidenhead where this sm- very small college was. And of course, we, there was a bit of a north-south, south divide. One, they couldn't understand us. I had a very thick Geordie accent probably then, and they didn't, they didn't really, you know, thinking, "Oh gosh," I had to start really talking a little bit slower and start articulating things. Um, I think where we were very different, and I saw that north se- south divide, was we worked a lot harder. We knew our, we'd come from, you know, very working class backgrounds. Our parents had made, had made sacrifices for us to be there. Um, we didn't take that so kind of easy, you know, 'cause you, you know, you, you had to understand that if you've got £700 for the entire term... 'Cause there was a grant system then, and you, I got £700 a term [laughs] which was never enough to get me through because my art equipment alone would cost more than that. My fabrics would cost more than that, and to have to lean on, you know, bank of mom and dad to kind of subsidize it. These kids didn't actually have any of that pressure. They were probably living not very far from home. They were subsidized from, they would come from quite wealthy backgrounds. They'd all been to the, privately educated, and it was just a different world, you know? But we had a bit more grit, I think.

    7. DJ

      What was the inner fabric of your mind towards your peers? Was it resentment? Was it jealousy? Or did you have a sense of competition in a way to-

    8. CK

      No, none of those

    9. DJ

      ... None, none of those things?

    10. CK

      I was probably a little bit overwhelmed initially because although I was 18, I was young. I was a young 18-year-old. I looked about 15, and everyone said, [laughs] "Are you old enough to be here?" You know, I was just out of pigtails when I went there. I was, I was a baby. I didn't know anything. Been wrapped up by my mom and wrapped up in love, and I'm exposed, and I'm on my own. I don't know how to do anything. I don't know how to use the oven-

    11. DJ

      [laughs]

    12. CK

      ... or the washing machine or do anything. So yeah, I just, I just ... I'm going a bit off track, aren't I? I do that. D- ask me again what you were, what you were gonna ask me.

    13. DJ

      I was curious to know if you had a sense of jealousy, resentment-

    14. CK

      No, not ... Yeah, that's what I said

    15. DJ

      ... or competition.

    16. CK

      No, I was just, just a bit overwhelmed, um, by it all. Um, so I didn't feel, I don't remember feeling jealous. I remember feeling, "They're better than me." If ... What would've been, "Oh my God, because they're rich, they must be better. I've got a lot to prove."

    17. DJ

      Mm.

    18. CK

      "I really have to prove my worth here." And I think that might have been my overall sense of, um... And I think sometimes you do feel when you come from, that you're, you're ne- ne- maybe never quite good enough. And, you know, it stays with you sometimes throughout your life, that. That you, you know, you do feel a little bit of a, you know, a mis- a misfit amongst it all.

    19. DJ

      Do you still feel that way?

    20. CK

      Yeah. [laughs] Always. Yeah. Sometimes you just don't fully fit in, but that's okay. I, I, I don't think I f- I felt even in the living in the northeast of England, I felt like a misfit as well. I always felt there was something else. Um, yeah, so I drowned myself in e-commerce in the end [laughs] to disguise myself probably.

    21. DJ

      Another, uh, sliding door moment in your life seems to be your trip/trips to Asia-

    22. CK

      Oh, gosh

    23. DJ

      ... as a young woman.

    24. CK

      Yeah.

    25. DJ

      And I can imagine you would have been so, so much of a misfit over there as well, like a young working class woman working in fashion in Asia in the '80s.

    26. CK

      Yeah.

    27. DJ

      It, but it, it would've been the-

    28. CK

      '87. I moved

    29. DJ

      ... '87.

    30. CK

      Yeah, I moved there.

  7. 16:32 – 18:35

    A pub conversation that changed everything: landing a fashion placement and first big win

    1. CK

      How that came around. Okay. So obviously, um, I touched on, you know, the fact that I had to try to help pay for Pantone marker pens and [laughs] fabric to get myself through a fashion course. I was working at a bar, and it was just like a country pub. It was near the station. It was lovely, lovely landlord and landlady and, uh, lovely people came in and they were amazing. There was this group of people that would come into that pub and, you know, one of them worked in Slough Mars factory, so he brought me chocolate. Another one worked somewhere else, and he brought me cheese. It was Nestle or something like that. And, um, there kind of was this group of, uh, I, I would say older couples, but they were probably 40 at the time, kind of took me under their wing a little bit. Even I was working in this bar and there's this gentleman who used to come in, and I don't know if your audience will possibly be too young to remember this name, but there used to be, um, a house, uh, at least on every high street called C&A. Uh, they still, they still exist. They just don't exist in the UK anymore. And he used to be a fashion buyer for C&A, and he used to buy outerwear, and he'd just left, and he'd set up on his own. So I said, "Oh. Oh, you work in fashion?" I went, "Oh, great." I says, "I'm doing fashion." I said, "Can I come and do a placement for you? You don't have to pay me anything, but if you can pay my train fare and buy me lunch, it'd be helpful, so I don't go hungry." And, um, he said, "Yeah, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, that's great, you know. You know, I don't mind having a kid hanging around." Anyway, when I was there, I did a collection, um, of ski wear, and it was for Topshop And they bought it. And it was like a 5 million pound order. Cheapest lunch he'd ever forked out for, I think. Um,

  8. 18:35 – 22:21

    Thrown into Asia (1987): four years that built a full-stack commerce skillset

    1. CK

      so he said, "Right, when you finish, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna give you a job." And it came for me to start, literally it was two weeks before. I was up visiting my mum, and, uh, I said, "Well, I start jo- I'm starting this job in August or something," and we'd finished in the July, so I thought, "I'll have a couple of weeks off. Go and see mum, go and see the, my sisters, my brother." And I, uh, took a phone call. He says, "Oh, you can't, you can't start. The job's off." I says, "You're kidding me." I says, "I've just rented a room in London. I've just paid my deposit. It was £250."

    2. DJ

      [laughs]

    3. CK

      "Where am I gonna get the money back from? I've got nowhere to live now. What am I gonna do?" I says, "I've wasted all this time." He goes, "Well, just come. All right, well, if you really want a job that much, have you got a passport?" I said, "Yeah, I've got a passport." But then I didn't have a, a 10-year passport. I had a one-year passport, because that's what you did then. You used to get one-year passports just to go into Europe. He says, "Get yourself a passport, and I'll buy you a ticket. You're coming with me." So I did, and I did that for four years. I was pretty much based out in Asia the first four years of my career.

    4. DJ

      Do you have any stories that cement what that means for you?

    5. CK

      Yeah, it gave me everything that I still use today. That, that great grounding. I do sometimes think your first job's an important one, 'cause you can... It, it doesn't need to be, but for me it was, um, because it gave me a good mix of business. Um, listen, when you're in Hong Kong, they're not, it, back, it's different now. The luxury market is there, but it wasn't in 1987. You know, your big designers, your Chanel shops and your Louis Vuittons weren't, they didn't, you know, they didn't have that stuff then. So what they did, what I did learn from that was how to trade. So I knew how to design a garment. I knew how to cost it. I'd go and buy the fabric. I knew where the zips come from. I knew what a stud cost. I knew everything, the cost of a component of a garment. I knew how to put it together, but also, all of the buyers used to come over to Hong Kong, and I knew how to sell. So in the first 12 months, I was doing every single component of commerce. I also would know how to do all the administration work to pay the bills and to do an import and export license. So I did everything in the first couple of years, and I did that in Asia.

    6. DJ

      What role or seniority did you have in that organization?

    7. CK

      None. [laughs] There was only me and him. There was two of us. There was two partners, actually. There was, there was a bigger team in Hong Kong. In London, there was just me and him. Um, but in Hong Kong, we had two other partners, um, a Dutch guy who was quite intimidating. I remember at the time I was quite scared of him, and a Chinese lady who was just amazing. I loved her. She, like, looked after me. Um, so yeah, but then there was a whole group of people over there. So, but no, never a s-seniority, but you're a bit of a thing if you were a designer then. There wasn't really that much designing done for the high street. You know, there'd been fashion buyers-

    8. DJ

      Mm-hmm

    9. CK

      ... and suppliers, but nobody really was designing. And so the fact that he had this young, kind of trendy-looking little designer coming in was a bit of a selling point when it came to having a meeting with the customers, because it would always be, um, back then it was always the sales director and the, you know, account handler and the client, where then you put me in the mix and you've got a bit more of a colorful conversation about consumer trends.

  9. 22:21 – 24:10

    Motivation and ambition: mastery first, money later

    1. DJ

      Were you doing well for yourself then? Were you well off, or were you still on your way up?

    2. CK

      No, no, I was earning nine grand a year. [laughs]

    3. DJ

      [laughs]

    4. CK

      I was totally broke. [laughs] Uh, I didn't, didn't, you didn't, I did it for the love then. Uh, you know, it was always just having enough money to go out and have a drink at the weekend and feed myself, pay my rent.

    5. DJ

      So you were never financially incentivized?

    6. CK

      No. Not in the early part of my career, not at all.

    7. DJ

      I think that's quite interesting given the role that you have now-

    8. CK

      Mm

    9. DJ

      ... and have had of such a large organization, in contrast to your background growing up, uh, very working class.

    10. CK

      Yeah.

    11. DJ

      It is quite common for people who are entrepreneurial founders to have this necessity for abundance and wealth and security and stability, but it's interesting to hear that you just wanted to do what you loved and get paid f- at least fairly for it.

    12. CK

      Yeah, but I, I always kind of knew through persistence and time, I would, I would achieve it. I would, I would have all those things, but I wasn't in a rush. It wasn't my number one priority. I wasn't like some entrepreneurs today. They wanna be entrepreneurs to earn money. Uh, that never happened to me. I wanted to be good at what I did, number one. I wanted to be the best at what I was doing, and I wanted to be a trailblazer in an industry, but the financial aspect came after. You know, the successes financially came way later.

    13. DJ

      Do you think that's a unanimous piece of advice for someone listening to this, is become a superstar in your world and-

    14. CK

      Yeah, absolutely

    15. DJ

      ... the world will reward you?

    16. CK

      If you just go chasing the pound or dollar, what, what's that about? You know? You've gotta be the best at what you do.

  10. 24:10 – 26:23

    The seed of Boohoo: switching from high street thinking to e-commerce logic

    1. DJ

      After your time in Hong Kong, tell me about launching and founding, uh, Boohoo. Where did that, where was the seed of that idea planted?

    2. CK

      Yeah, well, there was, there was a good decade between things [laughs] of another career, um, which was- I moved to Manchester in 1993 to work for, um, a, a family. Um, and, uh, the youngest son of the family became the co-founder with Boohoo, M- Mahmud Kamani. But I worked with that family for some, quite some time. I brought some of the high street players with me as accounts. So I was kind of designing, buying, selling. Yeah, still doing what I'd been doing, but doing it for somebody else. And, um, in 2002, um, another, I, I won't name drop, another e-commerce platform was born. And, um, some of the buyers there I'd serviced in other organizations, uh, they'd been clients of mine, and they asked me to help them. So I said, "Yeah, yeah." Because e-commerce is, is very different from high street. High street you tended to think, "Right, I've got, uh, 200 shops. 200 shops. To fill them 200 shops, I've gotta buy X amount of a style." And so y- you run garments, you have a much s- smaller collection. You buy thousands of everything. E-commerce you don't, and you have a much wider collection, a wider selection, but you only buy hundreds of something. They couldn't... They didn't know how to do it, so I was kind of saying, "Don't worry about it. I've got a big order going through. I'll bob a few on the back for you." [laughs] So I learned from them. I knew that, I knew the formula because I had a client who was in e-commerce. So one day Mahmud was sitting, and we're sitting just, oh, I don't know, maybe having a cup of tea or something. He said, "Do you fancy doing e-commerce?" And I just said, "Yeah." He says, "Why are you so confident?" I said, "'Cause I know how to do it." I says, "If they can do

  11. 26:23 – 31:26

    Building Boohoo from a £1,500 website: teams, roles, and “acting big when tiny”

    1. CK

      it, we can do it." I said, "I don't know..." I says, "Listen, I know about garments. I can get garments. I don't know marketing, but I can't imagine it's that difficult," 'cause it isn't. Um, [laughs] we have, we had a small warehouse, so I thought, "Well, I've got somewhere to ship out of. I've gotta build a studio. Fine, I can do that. Um, I don't know about tech, so we'll hire that." And so Boohoo was born with a £1,500 website. It was terrible. [laughs] Kept falling over. But it's got us started.

    2. DJ

      Boohoo was founded with a £1,500 website.

    3. CK

      Yeah, initially.

    4. DJ

      And has become the giant that it-

    5. CK

      Yeah

    6. DJ

      ... it has.

    7. CK

      Yeah, yeah.

    8. DJ

      I think from the outside in, if you'll, if I think about my generation and some of my friends, including myself at times, we look at some of the big behemoth brands or players in whatever industries that we're interested in and think there's such a gap between our starting point and where they're at that we're discouraged to even begin. But in fact, through iteration and through being resourceful, you can create something, a prototype or an MVP really early on, and with enough persistence, trust, collaboration, you can scale it into something that is much larger, but-

    9. CK

      And I think you can do a lot more for less now because of AI and technology and all of the apps that are just kind of easy to download and to teach yourself to do something. You know, I think, I think the, the entry to market is easier.

    10. DJ

      Mm-hmm.

    11. CK

      Scaling in a market is what's difficult.

    12. DJ

      Tell me about that journey with Boohoo. How did you take it from-

    13. CK

      Oh

    14. DJ

      ... a £1,500 website to-

    15. CK

      Well, we, I brought in a COO

    16. DJ

      ... where it is now?

    17. CK

      I thought it better to professionalize ourselves. There's loads of stuff I don't know. [laughs] Um, so brought somebody else in to help. So we became a trio. So it's me, Mahmud, and a guy called Chris, uh, working together, and it was just like, "Right, okay, I'm gonna do the front end. You're gonna have to warehouse and tech. And Mahmud, you're gonna get some money together [laughs] to help us finance the stock." So we got started, and, uh, you know, it was all about marketing. I decided through... Everyone would say, "Oh, digital marketing." Oh, I don't really know how to do that. Um, so I, I learnt how to, about digital marketing through interviewing people and asking questions. You know, I didn't understand what a PPC meant or SEO or all of the acronyms, and I went, "Okay, everyone stop talking in, uh, acronyms because I don't really know what you're all talking about." So I went through the interview process, and I came through that, and I thought, "I'm not doing any of that." Mahmud says, "Why?" I said, "Well, we're small. Nobody knows our name. If they find us in a Google listing, why would they trust us?" He says, "Well, they won't." I said, "So I think we have to act big when we're small." He says, "Go on." I said, "Well, if I can get creative ready," pretty much I was behind the camera a lot myself in those days and using m- m- m- friends in Manchester to model. But I mean, that's how you got started. Um, "If we can shoot some campaigns and, and get some images together, and we can buy distressed media." He says, "Right." So what, that's what I did. I, I went. We probably woke up the magazine world at the time. So we went from a classified ad, £400, to buying distressed pages in the weekly magazines or the monthly magazines for a couple of grand. I knew what day they had to go to print, and I'd be ready the day before. "Let me know if you've got a page free." And so you start seeing a brand in a magazine. And I know kids are not really buying the magazines like they used to, but the distribution back in 2006 was pretty high. This was about 2008 when I'd started doing this. So I went from there to shooting video and went on TV. So I kind of just thought, "Oh, we'll shoot some campaigns." So we started, um, on Sky, teaser campaigns. We put ourselves, um, all of the bumpers around MTV and shot. And we were still small, but we, we, because we'd had this legacy old business, we had money in the bank to help, help finance this. Although we didn't spend loads of money on marketing, nothing to what it looked like. We just acted big as we were tiny, got the trust, and then went into digital marketing. So they were the first early, early years of scaling really was having a, a tiny little team but with a big ambition and acting big.

    18. DJ

      Yeah.

    19. CK

      So the customer didn't really see that we were sm- ever small.

  12. 31:26 – 34:17

    Outpacing the high street: influencers, reality TV, and rapid growth to IPO

    1. DJ

      What did you see in Boohoo that your competitors didn't at that moment in time? Because when I think of Boohoo, I think of celebrity and influencer marketing. I think of the Kardashians. I think of-

    2. CK

      Yeah

    3. DJ

      ... using social and digital media in a way that others were maybe slower to react to.

    4. CK

      Yeah, they were... Well, the high street was really slow. They didn't take e-commerce seriously at all. They didn't see us coming. It was almost like we were a submarine.

    5. DJ

      Mm-hmm.

    6. CK

      They just didn't see it, and then we were there. It's like, "Who are these guys? Oh, that's never gonna work." I remember doing, uh, interviews for The Sunday Times thinking and saying to them, "Well," I said, "why have you not opened shops? Why is this gonna work?" I said, "Well," I says, "really, do people really wanna go into a high street store? They might wanna go and browse." But I said, "Ultimately, I do believe omni-channel is a channel that is very successful, but they will check out online, and they will use browse. They will use stores, uh, to browse." I says, "I can do that with pop-ups as a marketing campaign, can't I? I don't really have to open shops."

    7. DJ

      Sure.

    8. CK

      So I just think they didn't really see us coming, the high street, and then there we were. But in terms of the use of social media, I think we were probably the, the trailblazers in that we started with influencers, and we started probably around, um, s- you know, celebrities on TV shows, shows like Geordie Shore.

    9. DJ

      Yeah.

    10. CK

      [laughs]

    11. DJ

      Ex On The Beach, that, that kind of era.

    12. CK

      Yeah, like it was all of that-

    13. DJ

      Yeah

    14. CK

      ... stuff that started at the time, and I was, there was a little bit of snob. I think, "Oh, should I really be putting... 'Cause they're falling out of taxis drunk, aren't they? Should I really be putting my stuff on them?" [laughs] I thought, "No, let the, let the fashion snobbery go here. That's where our con- that's what our... It's topical. It's what our consumers are looking at. Let's dress those guys." And that's how it started.

    15. DJ

      What were some of the numbers behind those decisions? What did that mean for turnover and revenue and profit? How big did Boohoo become during the digital and social media marketing era?

    16. CK

      Well, we kept doubling and doubling and doubling again. It was like that, you know. You're at 50% growth, um, most of the time. You know, it, it's, it, it's just like, you know-

    17. DJ

      Is that tens of millions in revenue?

    18. CK

      Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's tens. We, um, I can't remember what every year we did from growth. I remember the first parcel was £37, and we were doing nothing and, you know, thinking, "Ugh, we've gotta... How can we keep this going? How can we sustain it?" Um, but then, um, when we IPO'd, we, which was 2014, we were at about 125 million revenue then.

    19. DJ

      [laughs] Not bad for a girl from the northeast of England.

    20. CK

      Yeah. Yeah.

  13. 34:17 – 37:18

    Becoming a public-company leader: investor language, governance, and leveraging product insight

    1. DJ

      Given the scale of the operation had to catch up with those numbers, and given that your background was fine arts and illustration-

    2. CK

      Mm. Mm

    3. DJ

      ... I can imagine you would have had to learn about corporate governance and leadership and all of this type of business stuff by doing, not by doing an MBA or going to Harvard or Yale.

    4. CK

      I did actually toy with going to Harvard to learn, you know. It, one of my HR directors had suggested it. [laughs] I thought, "I haven't, I haven't got time to do that. I've got a business to run." I just learned on the job. Um, yeah.

    5. DJ

      Well-

    6. CK

      I mean, you, you have advisors. You know, when you become a public business, y- you do have advisors.

    7. DJ

      What were some of the skills that you noticed within yourself that either you had a natural inclination towards that you didn't realize that you had, or maybe gaps that you had to fill?

    8. CK

      It's, it's interesting because actually when we became public, I, I actually thought, "I'm quite good at this," and I didn't expect to be. Took a few runs that were awful in front of investors before I got my confidence. It was scary. Just, you know, you've gone from talking to like-minded high street retailers when you're a, you know, 20-year-old. They wanna talk your subject. And then you start having to talk about all the different elements of a business in front of an investor or a banker. So they wanna know about your tech rollout. They wanna know about your growth of your warehousing. They wanna know how your international, what your international footprint's gonna look like. You're marketing a, in a whole other language. They're not really interested if I tell them it's a blouse on selling or a pair of jeans selling that week. That's not the conversation I'm gonna have with them. It's a very different conversation. So you learn on the job. Um, well, I think what I brought to it, unlike, say, I always worked alongside a, a CFO. I always let the CFO do the numbers. I'm, I'm not the best. You know, I'd, I have always been somebody who would surround myself with people who are strong where I am weak. I never try and do something I'm not very good at myself. Um, but what I brought to that and where we had a big win with all our investor community was the fact that I was quite colorful in my conversation. And I found not myself initially being very intimidated in that environment and then understanding that they don't know my topic very well, and I know it a lot better than they do. So when you remember that, you know, you talk with a level of confidence, and then they're quite interested as to, "Well, what is selling? You know, what areas of fashion are growing over others? Where are the consumer trends coming from?" And, uh, actually I managed to turn the conversation away from just numbers, boring kind of w-warehouse logistics, refinancing, and all of that into what really mattered was what we sold.

  14. 37:18 – 43:25

    Wealth, happiness, and staying grounded: standards, advisors, and ‘wealth whispers’

    1. DJ

      When Boohoo IPO'd, I could imagine your immediate net worth had changed.

    2. CK

      Oh, yeah.

    3. DJ

      What did that mean for you both from a pragmatic level, your quality of life, but also how you saw your own value? Did that shift or change during that moment?

    4. CK

      Not terribly. Um, I think, um, through the growth journey, we'd always managed to kind of at least travel business class, you know, when I was going to Asia for, for quite a few years before we IPO'd, so that didn't change. The house I'm in now I bought before we IPO'd. I mean, it was a shell. I've managed to decorate it now and rebuild it. Um, so that hasn't changed. Um, I drive the same car. Not exactly the same car, but the same model. So that doesn't change. I think what changes is you can look after your family a little bit more. You can ease up and think, "Right, okay, um, if I manage my money well, I can live for the rest of my life and, and not have to work again." Um, but I did, that didn't happen. So my day-to-day didn't change. I didn't change very much. Some people do. Um, I stayed very grounded.

    5. DJ

      Did you have anyone around you to advise you on that? I have came across and met a few working class people that have become celebrities, and they were never... maybe had a little bit of arrested development, or they didn't have any advisors around them, and they went off the rails in certain capacities or different ways. Uh, and I have another group of people who had people who had walked that, that road ahead of them and had counsel and advice that stopped them on their tracks. And as someone who is potentially using podcasting as a way to improve my life and my circumstances-

    6. CK

      Hmm

    7. DJ

      ... is there any advice that you would give to a working class person such as myself?

    8. CK

      I think, I think always stay with your likable grassroots. You know, I think when you change yourself and money changes you, you bec-become quite ugly.

    9. DJ

      Hmm.

    10. CK

      And, and showy.

    11. DJ

      I think money, money can bring the worst out in people.

    12. CK

      Yeah, and showy, and it, it's, it's not nice. Um-

    13. DJ

      Does money make you happy?

    14. CK

      I wouldn't be without it.

    15. DJ

      [laughs]

    16. CK

      You know, but it doesn't make you happy, no.

    17. DJ

      Do you think how-

    18. CK

      It doesn't make you happy, but you can't go back. You know, you've got to try and sustain a certain standard of living that you get used to. Would I change any of that for more happiness? No, probably not. [laughs] I'd probably be, um, 'cause I'm okay. I am happy, you know. I, I've managed to, I've managed to do both. I'm very, very fortunate that I've managed to keep my level of happiness and a level of wealth and combine those things, um, which I think I'm quite fortunate then because I do know very, some much wealthier people than me, and I wouldn't say they were very happy people.

    19. DJ

      Do you think some-

    20. CK

      Or very peaceful people.

    21. DJ

      Do you think some people trade happiness for wealth?

    22. CK

      Yes.

    23. DJ

      Have you seen that?

    24. CK

      Yeah.

    25. DJ

      What does that look like?

    26. CK

      Well, they get depressed. They've got everything, and they're depressed, and they're suffering from depression. And sometimes they can drink. Sometimes it leads to drugs. Sometimes it just leads to other addictive behaviors, work being addictive as well. Um, they have g- they give up family life. They give up seeing their children. They give up... A lot of sacrifices go into becoming wealthy. I mean, I made sacrifices along the way as well.

    27. DJ

      Some people are so poor, all they have is money.

    28. CK

      Yeah. That's a good saying, isn't it? I have another one for you. Um, you asked about advisors. So I d-didn't really have, but we formulated a board when we IPO'd. You, you have to, and I do remember a board member saying to me, which I did chuckle about at the time because he was somebody who was very egotistical [laughs] when he said to me, went, yeah, he said, "Don't talk about yourself. Talk about the business." Which is probably why, you know, you don't, there's not too much on me out there because I've always spoken about the business, not about my personal, uh, life. Um, he said, "Wealth whispers," and it's really stuck with me. And I thought, yeah, because I don't like talking about money, you know. I, I think about my family in the context as well, and it's, it's kind of ugly for them because they sort of live up in the northeast. And why do I want to go bragging about what I do? It's not nice.

    29. DJ

      I found that quite a unanimous trait, you know, Carol, this, uh, this notion of social mobility guilt.

    30. CK

      Mm-hmm.

  15. 43:25 – 48:43

    Self-care under pressure: meditation, grief, and managing public scrutiny

    1. DJ

      You've sp- we've spoken about some of the highlights of your career. I'd love to move on to perhaps the toll it might take to be the chief exec or co-chief exec of such a large organization, the pressure, the stress, the public scrutiny, the sacrifice of well-being at times. One of the things that you and I bond over is meditation.

    2. CK

      Yes.

    3. DJ

      And I know that you have told me that you've been practicing it for many of years.

    4. CK

      Yeah.

    5. DJ

      What, how do you look after yourself? What does self-care look like for Carol?

    6. CK

      Oh. It's been, it's always been a priority, actually. Even in the chaos of going through running a public business when I was CEO, I always made sure if I stayed in a hotel, I insisted there be a gym, even if it meant I had to train at h- at 5:00 in the morning. I have that 30, 40 minutes for myself is look after myself 'cause that's, if I don't look after myself, I'm not gonna be my best at my job. Um, so that was always a priority for me. Um, but I went through, you know, losing my dad quite young. 38, I lost my mum, and that's when I started on a lot more of a wellness journey. I, um, a friend of mine had recommended a place in Thailand I go to, and I was a mess. You know, losing, losing my mum was just devastating. I, uh, I wasn't married, and I had no children, and so I felt like an orphan. And I believe this is quite a common thing, s- certainly if you haven't got children of your own and you lose your parents quite young, that you just feel totally alone. And I had a partner, but it, I don't know, I just felt alone. Um, so I went on this wellness journey and, and learned about, you know, good diet, good exercise, doing yoga, and I met, um, a Buddhist monk, and he taught me about healing meditation, and that's where my love of meditation started, and it was literally just helping myself get better and getting through grief. So it was born out of really the, the, the start. I'd always done fitness throughout my, my years, um, but that's where I think my wellness journey started.

    7. DJ

      What year was that?

    8. CK

      Oh, gosh. Oh, how old am I now? [laughs] It's 21 years ago, so where, where are we? It's, yeah, it's over 20, 20, 20-something years.

    9. DJ

      Yeah, so-

    10. CK

      Yeah

    11. DJ

      ... in the, in the 2000s, meditation and wellness, they weren't standard practices in, uh-

    12. CK

      Yeah

    13. DJ

      ... in the sense that right now every podcast is speaking about meditation-

    14. CK

      Yeah. Facts, facts

    15. DJ

      ... or mindfulness, or there's, there's applications everywhere. To learn meditation, you'd have to go to a Buddhist center or go to Thailand.

    16. CK

      Yeah, yeah.

    17. DJ

      It was very hands-on. How did that stay with you when the organization became a publicly scrutinized, publicly listed organization? I, I know from the story of Boohoo that there has been public controversy.

    18. CK

      Yeah.

    19. DJ

      And I can't imagine as someone that is the face and leader of that organization, that would've been a particularly easy time for both the organization but your inner fabric of mind.

    20. CK

      Mm.

    21. DJ

      During some of the public controversy, did you have to tap back into some of those techniques?

    22. CK

      Yeah, you always find, have to find a bit of calm amongst the storm, um, even that's just a bit of breath work. Um, yeah, going through public scrutiny, it's, it's, it's horrid. It's horrid because up until that, you know, the negative side of be- running a public business, it had been pretty plain sailing. You know, we'd been the poster child of e-commerce. We were the lovies of the, of the stock market. Um, and then you c- you go through that level of scrutiny. Um, and there's been lots of different scrutinies on different levels. But yeah, I, I, I do tap in. I, I did, um... I, I actually have a, um, a weekly or sometimes twice-a-week session with, um, uh, a, another healer. Um, he's based out in Thailand, and, um, I still have my sessions with him. Sometimes they just end up being talking. It's a bit of a, a bit of therapy, what's gone on this week, where my frustrations are, how I'm feeling. But I have quite physical reactions to stress. I get anxiety. I can feel, um... I think when you develop on this healing and meditation kind of wellness things, you become more sensitive to situations, which is the negative side of it. You can be overly sensitive, so you have to pull yourself back, and you have to protect yourself a little bit. So sometimes if I'm in a situation and I'm finding it, right, okay, this is... I listen to my body. So if I'm in a room and there's lots of negative stuff going on, even if I haven't heard it, but I can feel it, I feel it as soon as I go in. And I have to protect myself sometimes, and I do that through breath work still today. It's just to center myself to be able to deal with very hard situations around me.

  16. 48:43 – 53:53

    Leicester supply-chain controversy: media storm, investigation, reforms, and reputational aftermath

    1. DJ

      Do you mind if we speak about one of those hard situations? One of the things I wanted to ask about was the-

    2. CK

      Know what's coming. [laughs]

    3. DJ

      I, I must ask about the Leicester supply chain-

    4. CK

      Yeah. Of course

    5. DJ

      ... headline, uh, where Boohoo was investigated for working conditions and-

    6. CK

      Mm-hmm

    7. DJ

      ... poor pay. Could you set the stage of what that meant in essence for Boohoo, uh, and, I guess, what accountability and repercussions that had on you personally too?

    8. CK

      Yeah. Yeah, I tend not to talk about this topic too much 'cause it's so kind of been in the press, and the press still use it. It's clickbait, and it got so big because of clickbait. Actually, at the time, there was, uh, an undercover reporter in a factory that was having a conversation and somebody said they were paid X amount an hour, which was below the minimum wage. And there was parcels, boxes there with our brand on. We didn't actually manufacture those garments in Leicester, funnily enough, so it was all a bit of a... There was never a retraction in the press, but actually it was a bit misconstrued, that initial, those initial findings. Um, it was actually produced in Morocco, and actually it just come into a lot of the Leicester, uh, manufacturers have secondary factories in Morocco. There's a bit of a... The fabric comes from Leicester. They ship it to Morocco. They produce it in Morocco. They bring it back to Leicester. It gets boxed up there. So this happened, and this got picked up by an undercover reporter, and it g- totally got exaggerated and exploded. And I remember having, uh, a reporter at my home gates. It was lockdown at the time, and luckily I was having work done at the house, and I had just flown in from somewhere I'd been. And my builder, who was doing the house, said, "Oh, she's just, she's, she's in lockdown. You, you can't speak to her." I thought, "I've got pretty smart." This builder didn't even know that was happening at the time, but that's how bad it got when you have people at your, your garden gates, uh, queuing up, and it was a bit scary for me personally then. Um, but yeah, so we did a lot for Leicester in that time. Yeah, nothing was perfect. We actually had, um, teams on the ground, and as did everybody else, and we weren't the only retailer, but we were made the pos- poster child of this scenario. I still question why us and why not somebody else. They've been producing there, and they've been producing out of Leicester a lot longer than we have. We're, we're babies next to some of these high street retailers who've been in there for decades. You know, w- why are you starting on us? There's a little bit of me wants to think, well, you know, they didn't really want us to get that big, did they? Um, but that's just, you know, my assumption. But there w- there w- there wa- there was underpaid wages. We couldn't see it because we audit factory and audit records, and obviously we check payroll within that. Um, so none of it was visible to us. Everything looked above board, but obviously there was... We did put an investigation together. Um, so we're the first in Leicester to have actually done that. So we've actually done some good in that we tried to turn it around. Um, it hasn't actually helped our reputation, but it did help correct any, um, wrongdoings that were happening within factories to workers because what we did was we put whistleblowing lines in place. We put a full investigation, um, in place. We had an Alison Levitt report where we were all k- kind of interrogated. Um, and it was all overseen by Sir Brian Leveson, the High Court judge. And, um, so yeah. So we did more than I think any of anybody, and we put a center of excellence together as a training ground for, um, young people in Leicester to learn manufacturing. So we did so much good, but has it affected our reputation? Yes. Has it affected my reputation? I don't get as many invites to parties as I used to, put it that way. You know, um, I, you know, I'm doing this with you now because I like to do a bit more public speaking and a little bit of that, and it's about positioning Carol outside of that a little bit because it, it did affect our reputation. Um, we've got to a stage now where we can't-- haven't really ever shaken it off as a Boohoo brand. Thankfully, customers are forgiving. But it, uh, you know, this reputational stuff, it is clickbait. It was well-read, and it gets clicked on, and a v- lot of lazy, very lazy journalism rehashing an old story, and it... Five years on, we still read it. Um, we've actually changed our, um, group name to Debenhams Group now, so Boohoo is a brand within that. So as a public business, we're now Debenhams, and all of this has been because of some reputational damage that happened. Personally, not too much, though. Um-

  17. 53:53 – 59:37

    ESG and legacy: sustainability commitments and leaving the business stronger than the founder

    1. DJ

      Is there a responsibil- is there a responsibility for a publicly listed company like Boohoo to be a good corporate citizen-

    2. CK

      Absolutely

    3. DJ

      ... to do good in the communities?

    4. CK

      Absolutely. Yeah.

    5. DJ

      And are, are there... I, I guess when I think of e-commerce and fashion, there's always the sustainability-

    6. CK

      Yeah

    7. DJ

      ... uh, question, what ends up in landfill and, and these types of statistics that back that up. I know Boohoo or Debenhams Group have a commitment to net, net zero now, uh-

    8. CK

      Yeah

    9. DJ

      ... goals for 2030.

    10. CK

      Yeah.

    11. DJ

      How important is it for an organization at such a scale to-

    12. CK

      Well, you know-

    13. DJ

      ... make that commitment and leave the, leave the world a better place than they found it?

    14. CK

      Of course. We, we have a lot of incentives going. Um, there's lots of arms to our ESG. Um, we have a ESG committee. I'm part of that committee. We have, um, a director of sustainability now, so we do... Obviously, all of the carbon footprinting is done. Um, we use science-based targets. Um- You know, a lot of the goalposts have been ma- moved out a bit from 2030 to 2035, actually, across the board, not just for us, just 'cause some of those targets were just not actually doable, um, that were set a few years back. But yeah, we have a whole team behind this. Uh, we're looking, we work with Cotton Connect now. Um, we're trying to transfer as much over to organic cottons as possible. We're trying to use, where we can, recycled polyesters. I mean, five, six years ago, it's very difficult to use a recyclable polyester. It might be come from a pl- a plastic bottle, because actually the, the fabrication, the technology wasn't actually there to make that fabric, um, sustainable for wear for over a period of time. You know, it might break in the wash because it's come from a bottle. But the technology's there now. So there's a lot of work gone into that. Um-

    15. DJ

      Is that important for you personally from a morality point of view?

    16. CK

      Oh, I love that stuff. You know, I love, I love the whole ecosystem of, of re-wearing as well. We, we've, um, we've, you know, we've done stuff like hire, uh, for Karen Millen, um, and I think we might be starting to do it on Coast where you can just hire the, the, um, garments. Um, yeah, it's, it's a lot of work in progress. None of, none of it's ever gonna be perfect, um, unless there's a change of behavior and people shop less, which obviously being in e-commerce, I don't really want that to happen. Um, I do have a business to run, and I do have, you know, a big workforce to keep. Um, so yeah. But, you know, we're doing so much. We've got a fantastic director behind it, yeah, a young woman, and she's absolutely amazing.

    17. DJ

      The reason I ask that is just, uh, as a woman from the northeast of England from working class background, I'm just curious to know how you see your responsibility both as a group, uh, chief exec or executive director, uh, and paying it forward for the next generation, whether that's through, uh, schemes into-

    18. CK

      Yeah

    19. DJ

      ... the organization, whether it's through sustainability initiatives.

    20. CK

      Yeah.

    21. DJ

      Um-

    22. CK

      Yeah, I mean, yeah, obviously, you know, I'm, I'm not at the end of my career, but I'm certainly at the, the latter decade of my career in terms of working full-time. Um, I started a brand, built a group, and I want to leave that in good shape for the next generations to come. Um, so it's important for my legacy, you know, that we do everything right to our ability.

    23. DJ

      And that was one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, Carol. Like, given your humble beginnings and what you have grown for British business, I think that origin story lays a roadmap for the next generation. I wanted to showcase that end-to-end journey so that-

    24. CK

      Oh

    25. DJ

      ... perhaps another working class woman from Glasgow or the Northeast or from Manchester hears your story and goes, "I want to be a woman in leadership. I want to be a, I want to be a successful, uh, retail entrepreneur. I want to leave an organization that is better than I found it or created it." And I, I feel like we've achieved that with your story today.

    26. CK

      Thank you.

    27. DJ

      Uh, I realize we're running out of time in this, the, this space, but if I were to ask you, based on the highs and lows of growing such a recognizable e-commerce organization, if you were to distill your legacy into a couple of sentences, what would you wanna leave?

    28. CK

      [sighs] I want to leave the brand that I created would be bigger than I ever was. You know, I was the, um, I like to think about it, I was just the caretaker for a period of time, and it will live on way beyond my years. You know, that's really what, that, that would really, you know, uh, uh, if, if when it comes to the end of my days and I'm 100 years old and Boohoo and Debenhams and all the other brands that have been part of the, the journey, 'cause, you know, we've got 13 of them, still exist, are still loved by a consumer, I'd die a very happy woman.

    29. DJ

      Carol Kane, everyone. I recognize all of your brands, and they're a part of my origin story, that of my friends and family. People wear your brands to special occasions that are part of their origin story, whether it's parties, whether it's social events, first dates.

    30. CK

      I hope they do, yeah. [laughs]

Episode duration: 59:37

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