Business and Innovation Practices and Analysis Adopted by Boohoo Group PLC

BUSINESS AND INNOVATION PRACTICES AND ANALYSIS OF BOOHOO GROUP PLC
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Table of Contents 1.    Introduction. 3 2.    Drivers for Innovation. 4 2.1      Customers. 4 2.2      Organizational Culture. 4 2.3      Employees. 5 2.4      Online Shopping Trends. 5 2.5      External Environment 6 2.6      Prompt Quality Standards. 6 3.    Innovation Pentathlon Framework Application in Boohoo Group Plc. 7 3.1      Idea Generation. 7 3.2      Selection and Prioritization of Ideas. 8 3.3      Implementation through Project Management Skills. 9 3.4      Innovative Strategy. 9 3.5      Culture. 10 4.    Contribution and Conclusion. 11 References. 13 Appendices. 15 Appendix 1: Boohoo’s Business Model 15
Business and Innovation Practices and Analysis Adopted by Boohoo Group Plc
Introduction
Boohoo Group Plc started its operations back in 2006 under the leadership of Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane. The company drops over 500 new fashion products per week. Currently, it has over 36,000 products with up-to-date inspirational fashion. Its headquarter is in Manchester, UK, and the business owns above 2400 employees and generates sales above £1bn (Boohoo, 2021). The company connects to different brands daily to strengthen its product portfolio.
It recently acquired the online marketplace of luxury brands, mytheresa.com, by issuing 3.1 million new Boohoo shares valued at £63.5m. MyTheresa.com is an international online marketplace for luxury brands to reach a worldwide customer base with a wide selection of designer clothing at discounted prices to customers from around the world. Boohoo Group Plc owns and operates several online fashion stores, including Boohoo.com, La Redoute, and fashion brands from Europe, North America, and Australia. The company derived its revenues mainly from France (65.4%), Italy (15.1%), the United Kingdom (6.2%), and Germany (4.7%), which represented £182.0m in sales; £106.6m in retail sales and £75.3m in wholesale sales respectively, to customers in the online marketplace (Boohoo, 2020). The company relies on the acquisition and modern innovation strategies to satisfy customers by offering them unique and latest fashion products.
The research aims to investigate the innovation pentathlon framework for Boohoo Group Plc and targets the critical drivers for the company strengthening the robust and innovative organizational culture. The critical drivers chosen are its competent employees, reliable suppliers, and innovative and advanced business culture to sustain the market position of Boohoo. In the end, the report recommends that the business improve the production lines and strengthen the research and development for Boohoo by adding new products and services.
Drivers for Innovation
The section discusses different drivers for innovation in Boohoo Group Plc.
Customers
The primary driver of innovation in Boohoo Group Plc is customers. The Boohoo Group Plc is a British-based retailer with rapidly growing sales in the UK and other European countries. It manages the brands it owns, Boohoo.com, PrettyLittleThing, and Nasty Gal. Boohoo Group Plc strengthens the innovation by focusing on Direct to Consumer (D2C) demands, including Boohoo’s online store, mobile site, and social channels; Retail, which includes all retail stores. The company is one of the leading brands of the Boohoo Group Plc, which provides clothing, footwear, and accessories for young women (Chaffey et al., 2019). The management enables innovation by taking feedback from customers and offering products based on their demands.
Organizational Culture
Boohoo is a world-famous fashion brand that has been established for more than 20 years. One of the main drivers for Boohoo’s innovation strategy is the organizational culture. The organizational culture makes it easy for the company to achieve its goals and improve its innovation (Albors-Garrigos, 2018). The organizational culture at Boohoo is based on five core values: creativity, imagination, collaboration, courage, and justice. Organizational culture is built on respect and trust, which helps establish the right environment for innovation (Hendriksz, 2017). Boohoo has an independent board of directors that focuses on embedded culture into all organization operations.
Boohoo’s board of directors takes care of strategy formulation and strategic issues essential for business operations. This type of organizational structure is making Boohoo’s innovation easier to improve. Boohoo is using different strategies for achieving its goals and improving innovative capability at its organization. One of the strategies is improving the people department process (Dickel, 2016). The company has built a global center for HR, which field offices support. It includes all people operations such as recruitment, learning and development, and reward systems.
Another strategy Boohoo uses to improve innovative capability is building a digital platform that unifies its different business processes. The company has implemented a system that tracks both customer contact and employee engagement. They provide objective information about the culture and innovation capability of Boohoo (Paton, 2020). Boohoo is using online media as an innovation driver because it enables the company to reach more customers worldwide to reach more customers more accessible than before.
Employees
The company has a diverse workplace where members can quickly meet other teams in another country to discuss their projects. The team can learn new skills by traveling to different locations or setting up an office somewhere else if they want to try something new. The company hires people with different skills in their way, with greater flexibility in the team structure (Times, 2017; Goffin & Mitchell, 2017). The company initially offered full-time employment contracts for one year but is now more flexible by allowing long or short-duration contracts. The employees lead to share ideas as team members, and their collaboration generates new ideas for innovation.
Online Shopping Trends
Online shopping trends are another innovation driver for Boohoo. It is the 21st century; online shopping is now very much in vogue. Here are some of the most recent trends in electronics and fashion that will give customers an idea of what to buy and how to style it. Last year Black Friday sales made up $4.7 billion worth of online garments, but sadly it happened on November 24th, which meant all stores closed during Thanksgiving day. Online clothing sales are expected to reach $49 billion this year (Chaffey et al., 2019).
The trending online shopping is the primary innovative driver for the business, where the company has a robust technological framework. It enables the business to improve its productivity and strengthens innovation. Boohoo relies on modern and advanced technologies to sell products online through fly-by-wire technologies and control technologies that use advanced materials (Wright & Nilsson, 2020). Such technologies make it easy for the business to develop an efficient cockpit design and handle the workload for its employees.
External Environment
Another driver for innovation is the external environment of the business, where the company involves shareholders and suppliers of the business. Boohoo has a robust supply chain process where it quickly receives the products from suppliers or associated fashion brands and delivers immediately to customers to strengthen its operational plan (Torugsa, 2016). The global supply chain is beneficial for easy operations and ensuring a robust fashion materials supply.
Prompt Quality Standards
Another primary driver of innovation is the prompt delivery standards and high safety standards for Boohoo. The company contracts only the businesses with a strong reputation, so it cannot compromise on the quality. The company believes that these standards make it easy for the organization to meet technical requirements (Wright & Nilsson, 2020). The reliance on quality standards attracts customers globally as they believe that quality standards lead to solid innovation.
Innovation Pentathlon Framework Application in Boohoo Group Plc
The Innovation Pentathlon Framework comprises five stages (figure 1). The first stage is the idea generation in response to trends and challenges. The second stage is the process for selecting and prioritizing ideas, whereas the third is implementing an idea to market the product in an environment of uncertainty. Fourth is the innovation strategy to identify where innovation is needed, and the fifth stage is the enterprise culture (people and culture) to manage the tension of taking risks and minimize failures (Goffin & Mitchell, 2017). The current section examines the innovation techniques adopted by Boohoo Group Plc by using Pentathlon Framework.
Figure 1: Pentathlon Framework
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Source: Goffin & Mitchell (2017)
Idea Generation
The first section is the ideas generation of Boohoo regarding...