#151 Carol Kane (boohoo Founder): How I Built a British Fashion Empire

#151 Carol Kane (boohoo Founder): How I Built a British Fashion Empire

From Origin Story with David McIntosh Jr by David McIntosh Jr

April 2, 2026 · 60 min

About this episode

Carol Kane shares her journey from humble beginnings to co-founding Boohoo and building a fashion empire worth £1.5 billion.

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…

People in this episode

Host: David McIntosh Jr

Guest: Carol Kane

Topics covered

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Boohoo, Debenhams, PrettyLittleThing, Nasty Gal, Dorothy Perkins, Karen Millen

Books & works: Geordie Shore

Places: Jarrow, Hong Kong

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