The Body Shop files intention to appoint administrators
A late update: The Body Shop’s private equity-owned company have, as feared, filed that they intend to appoint administrators.
When Anita Roddick sold The Body Shop in 2006, she left behind not just a thriving cosmetics and skincare empire but living proof that a business could follow strict ethical guidelines and still make healthy profits.
But administration, when it comes, is likely to trigger dozens of shop closures, putting jobs at risk and threatening a crucial source of sales for a global network of small farmers and producers.
Such a fate seemed impossible when L’Oréal agreed to pay £652m for the business, a deal in which Roddick – along with husband and business partner, Gordon – relinquished control only 18 months before her death.
The decision to sell to a global corporation left many loyal customers stunned.
Roddick had opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976, expanding rapidly through a franchise model and adhering to strict moral principles.
In an industry dominated by lab-tested, synthetic products, ethically minded shoppers flocked to a brand that did not just eschew corporate rapaciousness but actively campaigned against animal testing and for ethical relationships with suppliers.
The defiant challenge to corporate and social norms made Roddick one of the most recognisable figures of the 1980s.
Mark Constantine, a one-time supplier to The Body Shop who went on to found rival Lush, told the Guardian he had been “inspired and terrified” by Roddick’s combination of iron principles with whip-smart business acumen.
“She did things that nobody else had the nerve and the balls to do.
“I don’t think B Corps [the ethical business standard] would exist without The Body Shop.”
Updated
