Dame Anita Roddick started a cosmetics shop to provide for her daughters. With nothing more than a good product and strong ethics, The Body Shop grew to have franchises around the world.
Anita Perella was born in 1942 in a bomb shelter in Littlehampton, West Sussex. Her parents had recently immigrated from Italy, and owned a café - as a child she worked with her parents, who instilled in her a fierce work ethic.
Although her mother encouraged her to become a teacher, Roddick was more interested in travel. She spent a year working in Paris, then a year in Geneva working for the UN. From there she set out to travel through Europe, the South Pacific, and Africa.
On her return to England, she met fellow free-spirit Gordon Roddick. They were married in 1971 and shortly after opened a Bed-and-Breakfast, and later a restaurant.
In 1976 Gordon wanted to fulfil his dream of horse trekking through the Americas. His wife encouraged this adventure and they sold their restaurant to fund the trip.
In order to support herself and her two daughters while her husband was away, Roddick opened the first Body Shop, located between two funeral parlours in Brighton.
The shop was run on a shoestring budget, which influenced the way Roddick did business as much as any philosophy. The dark green colour scheme hid the damp patches in the walls, recycling jars and using little packaging was about minimising costs as well as being environmentally friendly. The lotions Roddick sold were fragrance-free because it was cheaper that way, not because it was more natural – it also allowed customers to mix their own perfumes to add to their purchases.
Roddick quickly learned the value of controversy as an advertising tool. When one of the funeral parlours next door complained that the name of her shop would hurt their business, she leaked a story to the local papers about undertakers bullying a woman shopkeeper who was just trying to get by. It worked – people came to the store to see what the fuss was about.
The combination of good PR, unique products and solid values turned out to be a winner. Within a year Roddick had opened her second store. When Gordon returned in 1977, both stores were doing so well they decided to sell franchises. By 1982, The Body Shop stores were opening at a rate of two a month.
Roddick decided to make the most of the growth. The Body Shop had its IPO in 1984, and in the first day share prices doubled.
Instead of advertising, Roddick used social activism to drive the brand. Roddick and The Body Shop partnered with Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and NGOs focused on saving the rainforests and banning animal testing.
By 1992 there were more than 700 The Body Shop stores through the UK, Europe, and the US.
However, the social activism that helped to grow the business began to take up more and more of Roddick’s time. Instead of updating the company’s aging product line, Roddick was putting energy and money into launching an array of environmental campaigns. Rival companies began to appear and The Body Shop’s customer base shrank, causing profits to drop.
By 1996 change was needed. The Roddicks stopped running the day-to-day operations and brought on a managing director, who immediately implemented a corporate structure which Roddick had steadfastly resisted. Roddick left her role as CEO in 1998, though she still remained the public face of the Body Shop.
In 2003 she was recognised for her services to business and the environment by being made Dame Anita Roddick.
By 2004 The Body Shop had almost 2000 stores throughout the world.
In 2006 The Body Shop was sold to L’Oreal for £652 million, causing significant controversy as L’Oreal conducts animal testing and is part-owned by Nestlé, which has been criticised for its treatment of third world producers. Roddick addressed this by saying she saw herself as a kind of Trojan horse – able to create change from within.
Sadly, she didn’t get the chance – she suffered a brain haemorrhage and passed away in 2007. The entirety of her estate was left to charity.
Quotes for entrepreneurs from Dame Anita Roddick
“Whatever you do, be different—that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.”
“There’s no scientific answer for success. You can’t define it. You’ve simply got to live and do it.”
“Potential entrepreneurs are outsiders. They are people who imagine things as they might be, not as they are, and have the drive to change the world around them. those are skills that business schools do not teach.”
“It is a critical job of any entrepreneur to maximize creativity, and to build the kind of atmosphere around you that encourages people to have ideas. That means open structures, so that accepted thinking can be challenged.”