Anita Roddick - an Impressive Entrepreneur Who Put The Ethical into Business Ethics

“For me, campaigning and good business is also about putting forward solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses.”

The above quote is from the late Anita Roddick, and can be found in article on her website In The Land of the Free… She wrote those words in February 2007, just five months before she died of a brain hemorrhage.

In 1976, while her husband was travelling abroad, Anita Roddick opened a small toiletries shop in Brighton, on the south coast of England. A local herbalist made the toiletries to Anita’s specifications, many of them based on ingredients she had picked up when travelling. She had only twenty products to sell, and little money to dress things up fancy, so packaging was kept to a minimum and customers who brought back empty containers to be refilled got a discount on their purchase.

The shop was a success. She soon opened another, and along the south coast several of her friends opened units, which they owned, but for which she supplied the products. To make it look like they had a wider range they sold the toiletries in several different sizes.

Anita’s company was, of course, The Body Shop, which went on to become a global brand by the early 1990s. When she started supplying her friends with products for their own stores she knew nothing about franchising, although that was what she was doing. Nor did she know about niche marketing. Yet her products filled a niche. At the time they were far more natural than most toiletries on the market, and – equally as important in the 1980s when there was growing public condemnation of the use of animals in cosmetic testing – the company did not test their products on animals.

Production took place just outside Littlehampton, the small seaside resort where Anita grew up. At the height of its popularity visitors could visit the factory and tour the facility and local people were proud of the success story in their midst.

At heart Anita Roddick was primarily an activist, and she worked hard to ensure that both her suppliers an employees were treated fairly. Long before the Fair Trade movement began she worked with communities in both the UK and abroad to establish ethical business practices. She travelled widely to source ingredients for her products, meeting with local women in remote tribal communities, as well as with farmers who could produce the ingredients she needed in the right quantities. Her motto was “Trade Not Aid,” and she believed in offering fair prices that enabled her suppliers to support themselves.

The International Fair Trade Labeling Organization has the same principles, and not surprisingly Anita worked closely with the UK section, the Fairtrade Foundation. She was also active in environmental campaigns, including supporting Ken Saro-Wiwa and others in seeking justice against Shell’s activities in Nigeria that had caused much environmental destruction.

Anita Roddick freely admitted that she made mistakes, and in particular that she sometimes chose managers who were unsuitable for her vision. One such manager turned out to be, in her words: “the biggest bully you could imagine.” Partly because of this she stepped down from her position of Chief Executive in 2002.

In a way The Body Shop became a victim of its own success. During the 1990s both mainstream and alternative manufacturers began to copy its formula, both for using herbs in products and for its simple packaging. The Body Shop struggled to compete with the mainstream producers on price and in the early part of this century closed much of its production at Littlehampton. Today it is no longer the choice of those seeking natural toiletries as many of its products still contain carcinogenic substances such as parabens.

Anita Roddick also had her critics, who claimed that her travels to Nepal, the Amazon or India were just publicity stunts and that her products were no more natural than any others. These critics were vociferous, and many of her supporters dismayed, in 2006 when Anita and Gordon sold The Body Shop to the French company, L’Oreal. The move was indeed ironic, given that L’Oreal continues to campaign against the outlawing of testing cosmetics on animal.

In spite of these criticisms those in the Fair Trade movement met Anita Roddick’s death with deep sadness, with the British wing of it leaving a permanent obituary to her on their web site. Although The Body Shop may have been surpassed by the many companies who now produce organic products, Anita Roddick was a true pioneer in this field, and her vision of trading ethically and treating employees with kindness is one that many other companies are now starting to emulate.