Boohoo opens in-house Textile & Apparel Laboratory

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 16, 2022

The Boohoo Group has opened an in-house Textile & Apparel Laboratory in collaboration with TÜV Rheinland. It’s at the online fashion giant’s Manchester HQ and is a first for the group that “will allow for fast, efficient, and cost-effective in-house garment testing”, we’re told.

The new facility is meant to give the business and its suppliers “better visibility of product performance, with a variety of retail testing available to ensure that products meet both the legal and performance standards required”.

And it said that it’s one of only two retailers in the UK to invest in such facilities with benefits set to include “increased transparency, decreased supplier workload, reduced costs, increased speed and agility, education support both internal & external and — most importantly — driving improvements in quality, consistency and customer experience”.

That all ties in with the work the firm has been doing on its supply chain in the past two years.

The Lab also supports its sustainability goals and its targets for using more sustainable fabrics in garments. 

The company has already started to buy fabric directly from textile mills and the Lab “will allow for those fabrics to be tested on quality and durability, so the business and the customer can be more confident around the longevity of the fabrics”.

It will also support the firm’s commitment to the Microfibre Consortium around microfibre shedding in garments, as it will provide details of the performance of the garment during washing.