In the danb-eat-danb cosmetics world ... The Body Shop profits

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 10

In the danb-eat-danb cosmetics world ... The Body Shop profits

By

COTTON TIMBERLAKE, NZPA-AP

Anita Roddick was the quintessential flower child of the ’6os. She cared seriously about pollution, whales, acid rain, all of it. Now she runs a SIO6M cosmetics business — and is still a flower child at heart, and in fact. To her competitors in this highly competitive business, “We may seem to be slightly flaky,” she says. “But in 20 years time what we are doing is going to be the norm.” What is this 45-year-old entrepreneur doing at her company, Body Shop International PLC? Among other innovations, she uses natural ingredients in her products, vegetable — not animal — materials. _ She refuses to test her cosmetics on animals or buy from suppliers that do. She provides refills to cut down on waste. She uses recycled paper and recycles her waste. She also ploughs a portion of the profits into environmental causes and education. “The Body Shop approach,” Anita Roddick says, “is non-exploitative.” And apparently, successful. What started out

in 1976 as a little shop in the seaside town of Brighton, in south-east England, now numbers 14 stores and 317 franchises throughout the world. Its first shop in the United States has opened in New York in — where else? — Greenwich Village. “It’s that constant looking for a better way that gives our company its morale and sense of purpose,” its founder says. Anita Roddick is passionate, with a hard edge. When she talks, her face is alternately wide open and closed. She is a short woman, highly energetic,

with a shock of shoulder length brunette hair. She usually wears jeans and sneakers to work. She is breaking the rules riot just in business but in the cosmetics industry in particular. Body shop seeks to buy its ingredients and create jobs in Britain and the Third World. It has pledged to devote 25 per cent of the profits of a new soap factory to the Glasgow community where it is located. Besides launching a myriad of community projects, it uses its stores as forums for educating people about issues ranging from saving whales to saving the ozone layer. Anita Roddick travels around the world three months a year observing women perform their ablutions to get ideas for products which simply cleanse, polish, and protect the hair and skin. “It’s constantly looking, using the past as a prologue, seeing what can be done,” she explains. Not all her travels are fruitful. She discovered that some Japanese women rub crushed nightingale droppings on to their skin to whiten it. “I haven’t been able to do anything with that,” she says, laughing. The company says it doesn’t hype or advertise its products. “Beauty” and “rejuvenating” aren’t in its vocabulary. Anita Roddick has harsh words for her traditional competitors. “The entire industry seems to be run by men,” she observes. “They create needs that don’t exist, and the vaginal deodorants of the 1970 s are a perfect example of this. “They are constantly making women feel dissatisfied with their bodies,

trading on hope and promise.” But Body Shops are a far cry from run-of-the-mill natural foods and cosmetic stores which sell vitamin E pills and Castile soap. Body Shops are a hybrid of the 1960 s health ideal and 1980 s sophistication.. They are cool, dark green, and fragrant. The 300 or so products include white grape skin tonic, Viennese chalk facial wash, and a Moroccan mud shampoo. Anita Roddick was born and brought up in Littlehampton, a small working class resort town west of Brighton. As a teenager she worked in the family cafe. Her first passion was drama, but she was trained as a teacher. She married, had two daughters, and then her Scottish husband Gordon, who now serves as the company’s

chairman; announced he was ‘off, on his own, to travel in South America on horseback. “I started the business to survive, if you don’t do it, you don’t eat,” she says. Her idea was to sell cosmetics in small quantities, like fruits and vegetables. It was a hit, and she opened her second shop just six months later. Her roaming husband returned after a year and got the idea to start franchising Body Shops, beginning in 1977. The Roddicks search for franchisees who share their aims and ideals. “We just grew and grew,” she says. A turning point came in 1984 when the company went public. That is when the Roddicks, who have retained a 30 per cent holding, decided to step up their humanistic activities in earnest.

“Suddenly we realised we were a wealthy company,” Anita Roddick recalls. “If we were perceived as being a mentor or a role model, we decided, then bloody well be that model. Also, we wanted to protect ourselves from our success because success corrodes you.”

The company made charitable donations of $100,480 that year, and net profit jumped 81 per cent to $12.5M, or 32 cents a share, on a 64 per cent gain in revenue to $76.9M. Some sceptics say Anita Roddick’s way .of operating is merely clever marketing. With a hint of indignation, she notes that corporate raiders, whom she views as immoral, win a great deal of respect in some circles, while altruism is “seen as suspect.” Her critics also say she should pay more attention to her shareholders’ profits. She has'an answer for that, too. The company’s stock, originally priced at $2.50 is now trading at around $17.10. The stockholders, she says, “are so happy with how we’re performing.” . She has more than money to prove her success. This year, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire. In July the University of Sussex gave Anita Roddick and another ’6os survivor, former Beatie Paul McCartney, honorary doctorates. The entrepreneur also has succeeded in preventing success from corroding her, as she puts it. She maintains her headquarters in her hometown, and she has lived in the same house, 15 minutes away, for seven years.

‘That constant looking for a better way'

Preventing success from corroding her