Seeing red: Superdry boss Julian Dunkerton with his wife Jade Holland Cooper
Superdry’s boss has branded rival retailer Shein a ‘complete environmental disaster’ and accused it of dodging tax.
Julian Dunkerton yesterday called for a tax clampdown on the Chinese fast fashion giant as it plots a £50billion London stock market listing.
Ministers should close the ‘loophole’ that allows Shein to dodge import duties by sending its low-value packages direct to customers in the UK, he said.
The tariff is not charged on parcels worth less than £135 that are sent straight to shoppers.
‘The rules weren’t made for a company sending individual parcels and having a billion-pound turnover in the UK without paying any tax,’ the businessman, who founded Superdry in 2003, told the BBC.
He added: ‘I would force them into paying import duty, VAT and possibly even an environmental tax.’
Dunkerton described the Chinese company as a ‘complete environmental disaster’.
Shein, which has also faced fierce backlash over alleged poor working conditions, has previously said that it meets all of its UK tax liabilities.
The EU is preparing to whack custom duties on parcels shipping from outside the bloc.
And President Biden has proposed a crackdown on the loophole in the US. Meanwhile, Dunkerton, 59, was upbeat about Superdry’s future as a private company after it quit the London stock market earlier this year.
He said the company was outperforming its High Street rivals by 35 per cent.
‘We’ve had the best start to a season we’ve had for 15 years, it’s actually quite exciting at the moment,’ he said.
‘I’ve been able to really get my hands dirty since we delisted, it’s given me more time to do my job properly.’
He added that the industry was ‘cyclical’ and that Superdry, which has struggled for years with an unfashionable image, is ‘very much appealing to teenagers again’.
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