River Island and Boohoo battle suppliers over quality concerns

UK fast fashion giants River Island and Boohoo are reportedly tackling quality concerns with suppliers leading to either the withholding of payments or threats to send back orders.

River Island is the latest to have raised issues over quality with its suppliers, according to The Times, with the fashion retailer understood to have requested discounts on goods that it said had not met its standards.

While one supplier told the media outlet it had been accused of sending a shipment of clothing that were deemed “slightly too short in length”, leading to River Island threatening to send the whole order back unless a discount was offered, another claimed the retailer’s requests for discounts had “gone into overdrive”.

“They’ve become very hot on open costings,” one source said. “If we give them a price for a product, they want to know how we’re breaking it down and if we’re costing in that 100 percent.”

A similar story had already been seen at Boohoo which, as reported on by The Telegraph, had allegedly been withholding payments to manufacturers that it claimed were producing faulty goods.

A source for the outlet said the decision to withhold payments came as a part of a programme to “improve quality following a marked increase in faulty goods being delivered”.

The source noted that in this case, the company was “contractually entitled” to withhold money until the issues were resolved.