Dame Anita Roddick, the founder and owner of the Body Shop cosmetics chain was for many years the most famous and successful businesswoman in Britain. In 1976, she borrowed £4,000 to open her first Body Shop in Brighton, on the south coast of England. In 1984, the Body Shop chain was valued at 8 million pounds.
In the 1970s, when she started, Anita Roddick was aware that women were starting to worry about the powerful, artificial chemicals contained in the creams which they were putting on their skins and the shampoos they were using for washing their hair. Women were also worried about the fact that these products were usually tested on animals causing them a great deal of pain and distress.
The first Body Shop in Brighton sold just 15 different cosmetic products. These were all made, not with artificial chemicals, but with natural products from fruits and vegetables. The shop was a relaxed and happy place, quite unlike the formal atmosphere of the typical cosmetics departments in big stores. Traditional cosmetics departments made women feel guilty because they were not as slim, charming and beautiful as the assistants who worked in the store.
The traditional approach to make-up was to paint a beautiful face on top of the ordinary face which was underneath. Anita Roddick’s approach was different. She wanted her customers to reveal their beauty, not to hide their beauty under thick layers of coloured creams and powders.
Her ideas were immediately popular and the Body Shop chain started to grow. They opened new shops and added more products; shampoos, soaps, creams, perfumes, body scrubs and bathing salts. 15 years after opening her first shop, nearly every High Street in Britain had a branch of the Body Shop.
Anita Roddick appeared regularly on TV talking about her ideas. She wrote articles for newspapers and magazines about the cruelty of animal testing and the importance of the environment.
Although Anita Roddick was the public face of Body Shop, her husband Gordon was the business genius, creating the franchise system which helped Body Shop to grow so quickly. . “He’s the do-er, I’m the dreamer” she said.
In September 2007, Anita Roddick died at the age of 64.
You can read more about Anita Roddick and other successful businesswomen in Women in Business by David Evans Penguin Readers Level 4.
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