EXCLUSIVE There’s a new top donor to the GoFundMe campaign set up by George Floyd’s family.
Website prettylittlethings.com has donated $35,000 to the campaign, which now boasts $7 million in donations. Pretty Little Things is a company that specializes in cheap clothes for teens. Last Thursday, another retailer, called Boohoo, bought out the minority stake in Pretty Little Things for a reported $338 million.
The whole deal is pretty sketchy. Boohoo bought a 34% stake in Pretty Little Thing owned by Umar Kamani, the son of Boohoo’s chairman and co-founder Mahmud Kamani, and business partner Paul Papworth.
The deal drew criticism in London from Matthew Earl, the head of hedge fund ShadowFall, who is known at the “Dark Destroyer” for the effect his research can have on companies’ share prices. “Above all, this is another example of the Kamani family reducing its ownership in the company largely using cash,” Earl said.
What PrettyLittleThing cares about George Floyd’s family is unclear. But Boohoo is not a popular company in the fashion world. According to the website labourbehindthellabel.org: “boohoo sells dresses for as little as £4, a price that is too good to be true. With prices this low it is unlikely that the workers making their clothes will have fair wages and be free from exploitation. boohoo won’t tell us which factories produce their clothes, so the human cost behind the price tag remains hidden. We are calling on boohoo to publish their supply chain and tell us about the working conditions and wages behind their low-cost clothing.”
The Floyds might want to consider rejecting the donation.
As I wrote yesterday, the Floyd GoFundMe campaign has attracted a lot of famous donors. Add to the list today Georgia Jagger, model and daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, who kicked in $2,000.
