The Body Shop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Founded | 26 March 1976 |
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| Founder(s) | Dame Anita Roddick |
| Headquarters | Littlehampton, England, United Kingdom |
| Industry | Cosmetics |
| Parent | L'Oréal |
| Website | www.thebodyshop.com/ |
The Body Shop International plc, known as The Body Shop, has 2,400 stores in 61[1] countries, and is the second largest cosmetic franchise in the world, following O Boticario (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Boticário in Português), a Brazilian company. The Body Shop is headquartered in Littlehampton, West Sussex, England, was founded by the late Dame Anita Roddick and is known for its products ranging from Body Butter, Peppermint Foot Lotion, and Hemp.
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[edit] History
In 1970, Anita Roddick and her husband, Gordon Roddick, visited San Francisco, and encountered stores on Union Square and on Telegraph Avenue in nearby Berkeley named The Body Shop, which sold shampoos, lotions and body creams in small plastic containers. Six years later on 27 March 1976, Anita and Gordon opened a copycat version at 22 Kensington Gardens, Brighton, England, also calling their new store "The Body Shop".
Roddick's Brighton Body Shop copied the green colour scheme and the idea of selling products in recyclable containers, offering customers discounts for bringing in their own bottles instead of using new ones from the store.
There are many stories about the start of the company including how it opened next to an undertaker, who according to Roddick complained to the local council about the name of the store. Later research suggested that Roddick manufactured that opposition, and even convinced the local paper, The Evening Argus, to write a sympathetic article about her supposed predicament in an attempt to generate publicity around her store opening. Roddick eschewed any paid promotions relying instead on her instinctual ability to generate controversy and media coverage to promote her products and company.
The Body Shop experienced rapid growth, expanding at a rate of 50 percent annually. Its stock was floated on London's Unlisted Securities Market in April 1984, opening at 95p. After it obtained a full listing on the London Stock Exchange, the stock was given the nickname "The shares that defy gravity," as its price increased by more than 500%. It long resisted moving into the world's largest market, the United States, as two women, Peggy Short and Jane Saunders, who owned the San Francisco area Body Shops, which had grown to 5 stores, might sue the British company for copyright infringement.
In 1989, The Body Shop settled with the American The Body Shop, paying its founders $3.5 million for the rights to The Body Shop name in the US and Israel, which the US company also held. In exchange for the settlement, the US company agreed to change its name to “Body Time” and signed a gag agreement preventing it from discussing the origins of The Body Shop name. However, in subsequent years, the former owners became angry at what they perceived as Roddick's misrepresentations about her company's origins and her claims that her original product line was inspired by her visits to foreign countries.
The Body Shop has always had many controversies surrounding it, including several related to marketing campaigns the company has run such as the Ruby campaign[2][3]. The company created a doll in the likeness of Barbie but with a lifelike voluptuous figure and luxuriant red hair, that came with the tag line, "There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only 8 who do"[4] Mattel later sued the company for copyright infringement[5] The company stopped the campaign but by that time the word had got out and Roddick had made her point.
In September 1994, independent journalist Jon Entine [1] wrote an article for Business Ethics magazine, "Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to be True." It documented the The Body Shop's image as an ethical company selling natural cosmetics and his desire to create a story using "the public record". Amongst this he stated that Roddick stole the idea and product line from the San Francisco area-based The Body Shop that existed six years before she opened her first store in Brighton; its products were "faux natural," meaning they contained only a smidgen of natural ingredients but were otherwise made from inexpensive off the shelf ingredients with dyes, petrochemical based preservatives, and artificial scents found in drug store quality products. The Body Shop had contentious relationships with its franchisees leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in franchise fraud suits and allegation, numerous investigations, and out of court settlements; and its record in support of the environment, women's rights, and other social causes issues that it promoted were spotty or non-existent. [2] The investigative article also found Roddick gave less than half what average companies give to charity, and gave nothing at all over its first 11 years of existence, as documented by the UK Charity Commission, while claiming in speeches and articles that she and her company gave "most of our profits away."
The 1994 article, which won a National Press Club Award for Consumer Journalism, created an international furore [3], and led to other investigations, including by London Greenpeace [4], to establish if there were discrepancies between The Body Shop's marketing claims and its practices. The Body Shop hired Hill and Knowlton, and Lovell White Durant, London solicitors.
The original censored article, running 10,000 words, was published in 2004 in a compendium with other articles by Nation Books: "Killed: Great Journalism, Too Hot to Print" [5]. Entine has also written a detailed analysis of The Body Shop and its practices that he prepared for his lawyers when it appeared The Body Shop was going to accuse him of libel A Social and Environmental Audit of The Body Shop, July 1996 - July 2003.]
The Body Shop turned increasingly toward social and environmental campaigns to promote its business. In 1997, Anita Roddick launched a global campaign to raise self-esteem in women and start a campaign against the media stereotyping of women. The campaign focuses on unreasonably skinny models and the knock on effects of the waif in the context of rising numbers in bulimia and anorexia. The star of the campaign became world famous. Her name was Ruby, a real-life size 16 plastic doll that Mattel thought looked too much like Barbie. The strategic platform and global campaign production were developed with Host Universal, who went on to create an old-age Ruby for Body Shop Australia.
In March 2006, The Body Shop agreed to a £652.3 million takeover by L'Oréal. It was reported[6] that Anita and Gordon Roddick, who set up The Body Shop 30 years previously, made £130 million from the sale.
There was a huge controversy surrounding claims that L'Oréal continues to test on animals, which contradicts The Body Shop's core value of Against Animal Testing. L'Oréal states the company has not tested on animals since 1989. There was talk of boycotts around the globe from customers. Roddick addressed it directly in an interview with The Guardian[7], which reported that "she sees herself as a kind of "trojan horse" who by selling her business to a huge firm will be able to influence the decisions it makes. Suppliers who had formerly worked with the Body Shop will in future have contracts with L'Oréal, and working with the company 25 days a year Roddick will be able to have an input into decisions."
[edit] Social activism
In its earliest years, The Body Shop did not visibly market itself as committed to social causes, which would later become its key branding strategy. It promoted its products as "natural," and by the standard of the times they were. However, the bright colours and strong fragrances were created by chemicals, including from petrochemicals, which were also used as preservatives. The products gradually improved under the guidance Mark Constantine, Roddick's original cosmetologist, who subsequently left the company and ultimately founded Lush. The social activism dimension of the company first evidenced in 1986 when The Body Shop faced its first serious challenge in its niche as a "natural" cosmetic maker from Revlon and Marks & Spencer. Looking for a way to promote her best-selling range of products made with jojoba oil, Roddick proposed an alliance with Greenpeace in the UK to promote her line as helping to save the whale, implying that jojoba oil was a substitute for whale spermaceti. Undeterred, Roddick began launching other promotions tied to social causes, generating massive free publicity. The Body Shop regularly featured posters on shop windows and sponsorship of local charity and community events. Over time, Roddick blossomed into a full-time critic of business in general and the cosmetic industry in particular, criticizing what she considered the environmental insensitivity of the industry and traditional views of beauty, and aimed to change standard corporate practices[8] Roddick said: "For me, campaigning and good business is also about putting forward solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses".[9]
In response to the criticism from Jon Entine, The Body Shop instituted pioneering social audits in the mid-1990s, and now regularly promotes its values[10][11] such as Community Trade[12], reflecting its avowed practice of trading with communities in need and giving them a fair price for natural ingredients or handcrafts they purchase from these often marginalized countries.
[edit] The Body Shop Foundation
Despite representing itself, in Roddick's words, as "giving most of its profits away," The Body Shop, in its first 11 years, gave no money to charity and had given little money to charitable causes until critical articles began to appear in 1994. The Body Shop has since responded by significantly expanding its charitable giving. The Roddicks founded The Body Shop Foundation, which supports innovative global projects working in the areas of human and civil rights and environmental and animal protection. It is The Body Shop International Plc's charitable trust funded by annual donations from the company and through various fundraising initiatives.[13]
The Body Shop Foundation was formed in 1990 to consolidate all the charitable donations made by the company. To date, The Body Shop Foundation has donated over £9.5 million in grants. The Foundation regularly gives gift-in-kind support to various projects and organisations such as Children On The Edge (COTE).[14]
[edit] Policy on Animal Testing
Signage posted in Body Shop location reads, "Our products are not tested on animals, never have been and never will be. [15] The same page asserts that The Body Shop "also supports the development of alternatives to animal testing." The Body Shop's animal testing policy is not significantly different than other cosmetic companies, as almost all of its ingredients have been tested on animals.
[edit] Community Trade (formerly Trade not Aid)
The first Community Trade activity in 1987 was a footsie roller which was supplied by a small community in Southern India (today known as Teddy Exports) and still a key CT supplier[16]. Since then, The Body Shop has found many trade partners in over 20 different countries.
By 1991, The Body Shop's "Trade Not Aid" initiative with the objective of "creating trade to help people in the Third World utilise their resources to meet their own needs" had started a paper factory in Nepal employing 37 people producing bags, notebooks and scented drawer liners. Another initiative was a 33,000 square foot (3,000 square metre) soap factory in the depressed Glasgow suburb of Easterhouse, whose payroll included 100 residents.
Criticisms have been made of the programme by fair trade activists. Numerous indigenous rights groups, particulalrly Cultural Survival, which teamed with The Body Shop in its first trade initiative, in the Amazon, and Amanakáa, a Brazlian rights group, have criticised the company for exploiting cultures and former University of Chicago anthropologist Terrence Turner famously dismissed The Body Shop's Trade Not Aid marketing strategy as "Aid Not Trade"--aid by indigenous groups to The Body Shop with only paltry volumes of trade in return. "The company's prominently displayed claims to pay fairer prices to the Third World poor covered less than a fraction of 1 per cent of its turnover", wrote Paul Vallely, the former chair of Traidcraft, in the obituary of Anita Roddick published in The Independent on 12 September 2007.
The Body Shop has decided to not export its products to China, because cosmetics sold there have to be tested on animals, according to Roddick. [17] However, Body Shop has always sourced many of its baskets and other non cosmetic supplies from China.
The Body Shop has undertaken periodic independent social audits of its activities [18].
[edit] Products
The Body Shop carries a wide range of products for the body, face, hair and home. Until the mid-1990s, The Body Shop marketed its products as "natural" before modifying its claims, calling them "inspired by nature." Its products still contain chemical dyes, scents and preservatives.
65% of the company's products contain community traded ingredients by the end of 2008 and the company spent over $12 million on community traded ingredients in 2006.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/services/aboutus_company.aspx
- ^ Elliot, Stuart (August 26, 1997). "The Body Shop's campaign offers reality, not miracles.". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9905E2D61F3EF935A1575BC0A961958260. Retrieved on 4 February 2009.
- ^ Best Rejected Advertising: The Body Shop, http://www.bestrejectedadvertising.com/ban/A.html, retrieved on 2006-04-30
- ^ Google Image Result for http://www.hostuniversal.com/var/host/storage/images/clients/the_body_shop/ruby_centrespread/15991engGB/ruby_centrespread_nodeimage.jpg
- ^ John Riviello. Body Image. More than just dolls?
- ^ L'Oreal buys Body Shop for £652m - Business News, Business - Independent.co.uk
- ^ The Guardian. Interview: Anita Roddick, Body Shop founder
- ^ http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/links/bodycode.html
- ^ The Body Shop
- ^ The Body Shop: Our Values, http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/services/aboutus_values.aspx, retrieved on 2006-04-30
- ^ The Body Shop: Values Report, http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/values-campaigns/reports-policy.aspx, retrieved on 2006-04-30
- ^ (PDF) The Body Shop: Values Report, Community Trade Principles, http://www.thebodyshop.co.uk/_en/_gb/services/pdfs/AboutUs/CTPrinciples.pdf, retrieved on 2006-04-30
- ^ The Body Shop Foundation
- ^ Children On The Edge
- ^ "The Body Shop and animal testing". http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/bodyshop/values/against_animal_testing.jsp. Retrieved on 2008-09-05.
- ^ The Body Shop - Values & Campaigns - Our Values - Support Community Trade
- ^ BBC: The Magazine Monitor
- ^ The Body Shop Values Report
[edit] External links
- Official Body Shop International Web site
- "Body Shop Scrutinized" from Investing For A Better World, September 1994
- Neoliberal Ecopolitics and Indigenous Peoples: The Kayapo, The “Rainforest Harvest,” and The Body Shop
- Jon Entine's investigatory articles and other investigations of The Body Shop
- London Greenpeace investigates The Body Shop
- The Myth of the Green Queen, National Post (Canada), September 21, 2007
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