Yes, George at ASDA is a fast fashion brand. Its parent company, Walmart, is also a fast fashion brand.
George is a clothing sub-brand of supermarket giant ASDA, owned by US supermarket chain Walmart (owned by the white American Walton family, who are worth $200 billion). The George range itself is worth £1.75 billion and it focuses on selling clothes at supermarket prices.
In 2013, Walmart was one of the retailers associated with the Rana Plaza factory collapse. They later refused to sign an agreement to provide compensation to the families of the 1,134 garment workers who lost their lives, and the 2,500 people who were injured.
In 2006, Walmart was found to be sourcing from a Jordanian factory that committed child and adult labour abuses.
In 2020, Walmart stopped paying their garment factories, breaking contracts and causing many people to face unemployment and poverty. They are yet to rectify this.
In 2022, George at ASDA was found to be sourcing polyester from a manufacturer using Russian oil, despite having removed its products from the country in protest of the illegal war on Ukraine.
Transparency Rating: 28-34/100
Sustainability Rating: 2/5
This snippet is part of a larger guide to UK fast fashion brands, which goes into more detail about the issues with fast fashion, why it will never be sustainable, and how to make your wardrobe more sustainable.
Data for this review is taken from the brand’s website, corporate website, and Wikipedia. The Transparency Rating is from Fashion Transparency Index 2020. The Sustainability Rating is from Good On You.
“owned by the white American Walton family” LOLOLOL
Sucks to be a mindless, stereotypical, race-obsessed, virtue-signaling, non-individual. Some people are simply far more prone and/or genetically predisposed towards being endlessly enthusiastic about their trendy cultural conditioning…due to their susceptibility for being propagandized. A truly pathetic failure of basic insight, awareness, and introspection. They, themselves, don’t even understand why they do it. Choosing simply to believe it’s righteous, yet having no actual understanding of the evolutionary origins of human societal conditioning. And speaking of insight and awareness, these are easily circumvented when a relatively ignorant person is lead to believe they are fighting the good fight! Righting the wrongs! Stamping out inequality! LOL!
Good luck with that, virtuous and ethical innovator.
Author
How odd, to write paragraphs of text on a topic you think we should all ignore and not act upon. Why do you feel so uncomfortable at this, but not at the suffering of others? Maybe you could put your keyboard warrior skills to good use, rather than feeling inflamed about the noting of a billionaire family’s ethnicity.
For starters I would like to say I hope that you do better working conditions for the workers that was awful I love your clothing brand and I was wondering is there any way y’all can make a big and tall tall girls need form fitting clothes and big women love your stuff too often they are tall as well my daughters are both tall and they cannot get form sitting clothes because they only sell tall and big and tall for women online which is stupid beautiful tall women need beautiful clothes that form fit them and have proper length is there any way y’all can do something about it?
Author
Thanks Laura – I agree, I wish ASDA and George provided better working conditions for their workers. Also a shame to hear that they don’t provide size-inclusive options in their stores!
B x
While that may be true, you are racist to say owned by white people. How the HELL does that matter? Disgusting racism!
Author
Hi Mary – I don’t follow your logic here. Noting someone’s race is not racism. However, perpetuating a system of oppression against a race certainly is racism, and that’s what I’m highlighting here. The white American Walton family is exploiting people in the Global South through Walmart/Asda/George’s supply chain, and has demonstrated it really doesn’t care for their lives by refusing to compensate any of the Bangladeshi workers killed and injured in the Rana Plaza collapse, among other instances. To overlook that, and point the finger at me simply stating their race, is quite contrived.
B
The fact that you noted their race for no valid reason other than they were white denotes racism on your park.
Author
The fact you overlooked the racist actions of the Waltons denotes racism on your *part. Noting someone’s ethnicity is not racist. ✌️
YOU are perpetuating a racist view as many (probably most) large manufacturers are using child or under compensated workers. This is true no matter the race of the owner or board. Let’s focus on the real issue.
Author
…The responsibility of a large manufacturer using child labour and “under compensated” workers is quite literally the responsibility of the owner and the board. But yah call me a racist for noting someone’s ethnicity. Try again, Debbie.
C’mon lady! I get that you are some “woke” social justice warrior, and it’s trendy to hate white people right now (which contradicts the purported egalitarian values of SJWs), but adding the word white family makes you seem like the racist around here. White people and people of European descent do have a history of oppressing the other races, but your statement makes it seem like whites are THE bad guys. The poor Asians who make a lot of these clothes are oppressed by their own government and by the wealthy elite of their own countries and other Asian countries. White people aren’t the only oppressors. If you go back through history it is a constant that those in power have mistreated the less fortunate. Japanese people massacred Chinese during the Rape of Nanjing, Hutus murdered thousands of Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide, many of the Africans who were sold into slavery in early early America were sold by rival tribes to the slavers, you can keep going back through history to the Egyptians who enslaved Jews and many other groups to build their empire. It’s a dark part of humanity, but people have always taken advantage of those less fortunate than them and it’s not just white people who are doing it.
Author
Hi Dad, thanks for the comment! Justifying the exploitation of people because it’s an age-old tradition is stupid. Overlooking racist actions to instead be offended that someone has noted another person’s race is stupid. Do I need to go on as to the many reasons why your comment is stupid?
In reality, I appreciate you reading this review of George at ASDA, and the wider issues going on in Walmart’s supply chain. I hope it got you thinking. Do cheap clothes really justify actions as deathly as genocides of eras gone by? Do your ill-fitting, scratchy, polyester polo shirts make you feel superior to others in this world? The funny thing is, you are not, and will never be, even 1% as rich as the Walton family. Why do you defend them? They don’t like you either. They exploit you too, as a customer of theirs.
B
I’m Spanish and I don’t think it’s racist. How many black own businesses you see out here and that’s the first thing they say “black owned business “
How is mentioning someone’s race racist? As far as business goes, we hear “black owned business” in the US and no one complains about that term.