Anita Roddick (the Body Shop)
Anita Roddick (The Body Shop)
Growing Business' Weekly Round Up
Inspiring profiles and best practices for entrepreneurs Twenty-six years ago the Brighton Evening Argus ran a story on a dispute between two funeral parlour owners who were upset about a new cosmetics boutique which had opened up next door. It wasn't the nature of the business they were getting hot under the collar about, but its name. They thought the green shop front emblazoned with the words Body Shop in gold leaf might put off prospective customers. "They wanted me to change my shop front which I had just spent £870 of my £4,000 loan on," recalls Roddick. "My smart move was to call the Argus and tell them I was being threatened by Mafia undertakers who wanted to close me down." The press loved it. The story of the beleaguered single mum with the house in hock trying to support her two kids with a bootstrapping start-up worked a treat. The small splash made Body Shop a cause celebre, won plenty of local support and won an important battle to get the business off the ground. The anecdote is a small aside, recounted with a chuckle and a hint of outrage in a long interview. But although the battles got much bigger as Roddick grew her business into the multinational retailer it is today, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Body Shop story will instantly recognise the defining characteristics of its fiery feisty founder in those early days of the business: Ethical Anita versus the big bad world. There has never been any compromise in Roddick's views on how business should be done: this is why her husband Gordon was tasked with handling the City suits ("they didn't like me talking about sexual tension at work") and why she stepped away from the business in 1998 when the shareholders said a campaigning chief executive was not what they wanted for Body Shop. You might think after thirty years of business and the comfort of a healthy shareholding and a wedge of cash in the bank Roddick's hunger
Growing Business' Weekly Round Up
Inspiring profiles and best practices for entrepreneurs Twenty-six years ago the Brighton Evening Argus ran a story on a dispute between two funeral parlour owners who were upset about a new cosmetics boutique which had opened up next door. It wasn't the nature of the business they were getting hot under the collar about, but its name. They thought the green shop front emblazoned with the words Body Shop in gold leaf might put off prospective customers. "They wanted me to change my shop front which I had just spent £870 of my £4,000 loan on," recalls Roddick. "My smart move was to call the Argus and tell them I was being threatened by Mafia undertakers who wanted to close me down." The press loved it. The story of the beleaguered single mum with the house in hock trying to support her two kids with a bootstrapping start-up worked a treat. The small splash made Body Shop a cause celebre, won plenty of local support and won an important battle to get the business off the ground. The anecdote is a small aside, recounted with a chuckle and a hint of outrage in a long interview. But although the battles got much bigger as Roddick grew her business into the multinational retailer it is today, anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Body Shop story will instantly recognise the defining characteristics of its fiery feisty founder in those early days of the business: Ethical Anita versus the big bad world. There has never been any compromise in Roddick's views on how business should be done: this is why her husband Gordon was tasked with handling the City suits ("they didn't like me talking about sexual tension at work") and why she stepped away from the business in 1998 when the shareholders said a campaigning chief executive was not what they wanted for Body Shop. You might think after thirty years of business and the comfort of a healthy shareholding and a wedge of cash in the bank Roddick's hunger