Our Structure, Business & Supply Chain

 

Beauty Bay is a retailer of over 10,000 products including skin care, hair care and cosmetics from the industry's favourite beauty brands. We strive to source the best new and trending products from exciting brands across the globe. As you might expect, our supply chain is sizeable and includes suppliers from over 10 countries as far away as the USA. As a Group, we operate in over 90 countries and employ over 130 people in the UK.

 

Policy statement

 

Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. It takes various forms, such as slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking, all of which have in common the deprivation of a person's liberty by another in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.

Abusive labour conditions can be sustained through the procurement of goods and services from unethical suppliers. As such, we are committed to ensuring that we only deal with and support ethical suppliers, to act with integrity in all our business dealings and relationships and to implement and enforce effective systems and controls to ensure modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in our own business or in any of our supply chain. We expect the same high standards from all our contractors, suppliers and business partners and won't take breaches of our ethical standards lightly. If we are unable to work with our suppliers to influence and change any areas of concern, we will end our relationship with them.

Whilst the board of directors has overall responsibility for ensuring that we comply with our legal and ethical obligations, our employees have day to day responsibility for furthering our commitment to reducing the risk of modern slavery and human trafficking. We expect all staff to ensure that our business is conducted with honesty and integrity.

 

Due Diligence Process and Risk Management

 

The following measures are being or have been implemented to ensure that we take steps to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking:

• Ensuring that our purchasing agreements include relevant provisions requiring suppliers to comply with modern slavery and human trafficking legislation and our high ethical standards. Any breaches of such provisions would be treated as a serious breach of our agreements with our suppliers.
• A detailed questionnaire which our most significant suppliers must answer to ensure that they comply with our requirements to prevent slavery and human trafficking and that they are respecting employees’ rights. This will be used to vet suppliers and when considering future trading relationships.
• Communicating our commitment to addressing the issue of modern slavery to all suppliers, contractors and business partners at the outset of our business relationship with them and reinforcing this message as appropriate. We believe that constant communication is important in preventing modern slavery and human trafficking. This will include making clear that any infringements will affect future purchasing decisions and relationships.
• Where possible, working directly with our suppliers and visiting their premises, not only to help build long lasting relationships but also to ensure that we are happy with their ethical standards and working environment.
• Where possible, as part of our commitment to ethical buying, we will look to certification bodies to approve and certify products and where they come from.  
• Encouraging employees to raise concerns about any issue or suspicion of modern slavery in any parts of our business or supply chains at the earliest possible stage through our Whistleblowing Policy. We encourage openness and support anyone who raises genuine concerns in good faith, even if they turn out to be mistaken. We are committed to ensuring no one suffers any detrimental treatment as a result of reporting concerns in good faith. We actively encourage those with concerns to raise them under our Whistleblowing Policy.
• We undertook an initial process review in 2018 to ensure we were compliant with the UK's Modern Slavery Act which came into force in October 2015. We continue to undertake annual reviews to ensure we have appropriate procedures in place and are satisfied that we remain compliant.

 

Effectiveness

 

We will use key performance indicators to monitor the effectiveness of our practices to ensure that modern slavery and human trafficking is not taking place in our business or supply chains. This will include, for example, monitoring the training that we provide and the other steps that we take to ensure that they are applied consistently across our business.

 

Training

 

We consistently look to identify areas of improvement in our ways of working and work force and provide appropriate training to address these needs. This is no different with our policy on preventing slavery and human trafficking. All our employees need to have a good understanding of the risks of modern slavery and human trafficking and we are taking steps to ensure this. Those who are closer to our supply chains will receive the most detailed and targeted training.

 

Statement

 

This statement is made pursuant to section 54 (1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes our Group's slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year ending 31st March 2024. It is made by DOTCOM Retail Limited for itself and its subsidiary company, Beauty Bay Limited and any other relevant subsidiary undertaking.

This statement is approved by the Board of Directors of DOTCOM Retail Limited and is signed on its behalf by:

 

Arron Gabbie

Joint CEO

08/05/2024