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An Interview with Anita Roddick, founder of The Body SHop
I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and
my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I
had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to
take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but
that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking. Running that
first shop taught me business is not financial science, it's about trading:
buying and selling. It's about creating a product or service so good that people
will pay for it. Now 28 years on The Body Shop is a multi local business with
1,980 stores serving over 77 million customers in 50 different markets in 25
different languages and across 12 time zones. And I haven't a clue how we got
here!
I was born in Littlehampton in 1942. As the child of an Italian immigrant
couple in an English seaside town, I was a natural outsider, and I was drawn to
other outsiders and rebels. James Dean was my schoolgirl idol. I also had a
strong sense of moral outrage, which was awakened when I found a book about the
Holocaust at the age of ten. I trained as a teacher but an educational
opportunity on a kibbutz in Israel eventually turned into an extended working
trip around the world. Soon after I got back to England, my mother introduced me
to a young Scotsman named Gordon Roddick. Our bond was instant. Together we
opened first a restaurant, and then a hotel in Littlehampton. We married in
1970, me with a baby on my back and another in my belly.
It wasn't only economic necessity that inspired the birth of The Body Shop.
My early travels had given me a wealth of experience. I had spent time in
farming and fishing communities with pre-industrial peoples, and been exposed to
body rituals of women from all over the world. Also the frugality that my mother
exercised during the war years made me question retail conventions. Why waste a
container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can
use? We behaved as she did in the Second World War, we reused everything, we
refilled everything and we recycled all we could. The foundation of The Body
Shop's environmental activism was born out of ideas like these.
I am aware that success is more than a good idea. It is timing too. The Body
Shop arrived just as Europe was going 'green'. The Body Shop has always been recognizable
by its green color, the only color that we could find to cover the damp, moldy
walls of my first shop. I opened a second shop within six months, by which time
Gordon was back in England. He came up with the idea for 'self-financing' more
new stores, which sparked the growth of the franchise network through which The
Body Shop spread across the world. The company went public in 1984. Since then,
I have been given a whole host of awards, (which are outlined below) some I
understand, some I don't and a couple I think I deserve.
Businesses have the power to do good. That's why The Body Shop's Mission
Statement opens with the overriding commitment, 'To dedicate our business to the
pursuit of social and environmental change.' We use our stores and our products
to help communicate human rights and environmental issues. In 1993 I met a
delegation of Ogoni people from Nigeria. They were seeking justice and
reparations against the giant oil multinational Shell that was ravaging their
lands through oil exploration and production. Working with other NGOs, we turned
their campaign into an international cause celebre. Tragically, the Ogoni's key
spokesperson, Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni, were executed in 1995 by the
Nigerian Government. But our campaign continued and eventually 19 other
imprisoned Ogoni were released. In 1997, after 4 years of unrelenting pressure,
Shell issued a revised operating charter committing the company to human rights
and sustainable development. A year later, they launched their 'Profits and
Principles' advertising campaign declaring their recognition of the interests of
' a much wider group of stakeholders in our business'. I like to think we had a
hand in getting Shell to think about what it really means to be a corporate
citizen.
In September 2001 I joined forces with The Body Shop and Greenpeace, and many
thousands of other organizations and individual consumers in an international
campaign against Exxon-Mobil (Esso), the world's largest oil and gas company,
and 'No 1 Global Warming Villain'. This is the company that refuses to accept a
direct link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming, and that has
turned its back on investing even a single penny on renewable alternatives, such
as wind and solar.
For me, campaigning and good business is also about putting forward
solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses. One
key area where my business and personal interests naturally combine is through
The Body Shop community trade initiatives. It all started in 1989 when I
attended the gathering at Altamira of Amazonian Indian tribes protesting against
a hydro-electric project which would have flooded thousands of acres of
rainforest, submerging native lands. There had to be something practical I could
do to help these people preserve their environment and culture. Nuts?
Specifically brazil nuts, which the Indians gathered sustainably from the forest
and which when crushed produce a brilliant oil for moisturizing and
conditioning. This first trading relationship with forest people, unused to any
real commercial activity, was fraught with pitfalls and dangers. But 13 years on
we're still trading with them and have even set up a Green Pharmacy project
producing remedies based on traditional knowledge of forest plants Ð reducing
dependency on inappropriate and expensive modern pharmaceuticals. Every year I
travel to a number of our projects. In November 1999 I visited our long-term
partners Teddy Exports in southern India and GPI in Nepal and our new partners,
the Chepang indigenous people who grow herbs for our Ayurvedic range. In January
2001 I visited the 130 sesame seed oil farmers in Nicaragua who receive a fair
and stable price for their seed. As a result the farmers have built up a
sustainable business that as well as offering marketing clout, runs a subsidized
store, a credit union, and employs a Cuban agronomist specializing in organic
methods. The deal with The Body Shop isn't going to make the farmers financially
rich, but it does enable them to maintain their chosen way of life and through
co-operation achieve autonomy. I'm immensely proud of our efforts to make fair
or community trade relationships more mainstream. The Body Shop now has 42 such
projects in 26 countries and we aim to develop more.
The Body Shop and I have always been closely identified in the public mind.
Today, it is impossible to separate the company values from the issues that I
care passionately about Ð social responsibility, respect for human rights, the
environment and animal protection, and an absolute belief in Community Trade.
But The Body Shop is not a one-woman-show Ð it's a global operation with
thousands of people working towards common goals and sharing common values.
That's what gives The Body Shop its campaigning and commercial strength and
continues to set it apart from mainstream business.
Though I no longer sit on executive committees, I spend most of my time on
The Body Shop business. I source new products during travels abroad, work as
part of the creative team and spearhead campaigns, such as the current Positive
Energy Campaign with Greenpeace. And I constantly question myself: how can I
bring values into an industry that is certainly not values-laden? The only way I
can do it, is to perhaps bring back an idea for a trading initiative with an
economically impoverished community in Mexico or Africa, or find inspiration for
a new company commitment, just as my 1990 trip to Romania spurred the Romanian
Relief Drive (now called Children on the Edge) and a visit to Glasgow led to our
partnerships with Soapworks a local factory that produces our soaps. I also hold
great hopes for The New Academy of Business, a masters degree course at Bath
University, which I helped to launch in 1997 with the aim of reforming business
education for the new century.
The most exciting part of my life is now - I believe the older you get, the
more radical you become. There's a Dorothy Sayers quote I love, "A woman in
advancing old age is unstoppable by any earthly force." In November 1999, I
flew to Seattle to speak out against the role of the World Trade Organization
and witnessed the 'Battle of Seattle'. I'm fascinated by the publishing
industry: in 2000 I published my autobiography Business and Unusual and in 2001
I edited Take it Personally, a collection of provoking thought pieces to
challenge the myths of globalization and the power of the WTO.
The excitement and success of these endeavors has prompted me to start my own
communications company, Anita Roddick Publications. I like to say we manufacture
"weapons of mass instruction." We are experimenting with various forms
and mediums to celebrate and advance the same things I've always cared about:
human rights, the environment, and creative dissent. Our first two books were
published in 2003: "Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits: A Spiritual Activists
Handbook" and "A Revolution in Kindness."
I launched my own website AnitaRoddick.com
in 2001 and I am overwhelmed by the potential of the web to link like-minded
people and move them to mass-action. We are excited to experiment in other media
too -- perhaps subversive billboards, or a television program, or other print
projects. As someone once said, we are only limited by our imaginations.
Two of my greatest passions now are the campaigns we've undertaken as part of
Anita Roddick Publications. One focuses on sweatshop labor by multinational
corporations. We've joined forces with the National Labor Committee on this and
helped foster creative resistance that has made some noticeable inroads. And
we've joined with a group of human-rights activists to free the American
political prisoners known as the Angola Three. These three men, who were black
political activists in the 1970s, have served over 31 years in solitary
confinement in Angola prison for crimes they did not commit. It is my intention
to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to see that their story is
told and they are set free.
With The Body Shop and Anita Roddick Publications, I will continue fighting
for human-rights and against economic initiatives and structures that abuse and
ignore them. That's a tall enough order to keep me busy for the next 30 years.
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