BACKGROUND: Anita Roddick was born in 1942, one of four children of Italian immigrants. Growing up, she was undoubtedly influenced by her mother’s habit of recycling.
Roddick always considered herself to be a rebel and had a strong sense of moral outrage, which was awakened at just ten years of age when she read a book on the Holocaust.

ETHICAL CONSUMERISM: The Body Shop was born of necessity. In 1976, Roddick’s husband Gordon set off to travel in the Americas. With the trip planned to last two years, Roddick needed to support herself during his absence.

The first Body Shop was opened in Brighton. The shop was damp so she painted it green – the only colour that would hide the mould – and recycled the bottles in which her cosmetics were sold to keep costs down.

Europe was beginning to go green at this time, so she stressed the ethical nature of her cosmetics. As the business grew, she was able to use natural products, often from the developing world.

Family and friends initially ran new branches of the Body Shop but customers began asking if they could open their own shops, and the franchise was born. Potential franchisees were interviewed by Roddick to ensure their values were in accord with hers: she wanted profits with principles.

On opening the shop, she made a conscious decision not to advertise. Instead, she lured customers in by laying a trail of perfume to the door. Later, as the Body Shop took off, window displays were given over, not to advertising the products within, but to drawing attention to various causes.

The 1980s Body Shop campaign Against Animal Testing for Cosmetics collected four million signatures. In 1997, the Self Esteem campaign featuring Ruby, the self-confident size 16 centrespread doll, used a strategy that has been imitated ever since, engaging franchisees and driving business while exposing the myth of the perfect body.

FORCE FOR CHANGE: In 1989, Roddick met Amazonian Indians whose rainforest and native lands were to be flooded for a hydro-electric project; she looked for a way to help. The answer was brazil nuts, which were collected in the forest and, when crushed, provided a rich oil that could be used in cosmetics for conditioning and moisturising.

Similar commercial projects, which allowed farmers to build sustainable businesses while earning a degree of marketing clout, were later established in countries across the globe, including Nicaragua, southern India and Nepal.

She fought tirelessly for human rights. On the 50th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1994, she launched the Make Your Mark campaign with the Dalai Lama, in partnership with Amnesty International. Three million thumbprints were collected in 34 countries and 17 prisoners of conscience were released.

Working for the environment, Roddick supported Greenpeace in 1985 as it campaigned to stop the dumping of toxic waste in the North Sea, against whaling in 1986, and on its Positive Energy Campaign from 2001 to 2002. In 1987, she worked with Friends of the Earth to highlight acid rain pollution. From 2001 until her death, she took on Exxon-Mobil, denouncing the energy corporation as the “world’s number one global warming villain”.

Among other campaigns too numerous to mention, she also worked to help stop domestic violence, set up a project to refurbish Romanian, Albanian and Bosnian orphanages, and campaigned for sweatshop workers’ rights.

In 1990, the Body Shop Foundation was set up. During its first six years, £3.5m was donated to 180 charities. In 2000, the Body Shop Human Rights Award was established. This biennial award of $300,000 was made to selected grassroots groups fighting for human rights globally. Roddick stepped down from the day-to-day running of the Body Shop in 2002 and sold it to L’Oréal in 2006.

She continued to campaign through her publishing company, Anita Roddick Publications, and believed that continuing to fight “for human rights and against economic initiatives and structures that abuse and ignore them” was a tall enough order to keep her busy for the next 30 years.

Sue Mennell is editor of TJ Online. If you would like to nominate a ‘Great Thinker’, please send your nomination to her at sue@trainingjournal.com

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