Anita Roddick, (23 October 1942 – 10 September 2007) was the founder of The Body Shop, a British cosmetics company producing and retailing beauty products that shaped ethical consumerism. The company was one of the first to prohibit the use of ingredients tested on animals and one of the first to promote fair trade with third world countries.
Roddick was also involved in activism and campaigning for environmental and social issues including involvement with Greenpeace and The Big Issue. In 1990, Roddick founded Children On The Edge, a charitable organization which helps disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe and Asia.
Roddick eloquently stated:
“I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe in.”
“I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently . . . This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.”
“Over the past decade, ... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.”
“Since the governments are in the pockets of businesses, who's going to control this most powerful institution? Business is more powerful than politics, and it's more powerful than religion. So it's going to have to be the vigilante consumer.”
Roddick was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis due to long-standing hepatitis C in 2004, and after she revealed this to the media in February 2007, she promoted the work of the Hepatitis C Trust and campaigned to increase awareness of the disease.
In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Roddick a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and she was officially styled Dame Anita Roddick DBE.
Roddick was born as Anita Lucia Perilli in a bomb shelter in Little Hampton, Sussex, in an Italian immigrant community. Her family had fled Naples just before the Second World War. Her mother, Gilda, ran a café and was in the habit of recycling. She went to school at St Amy's Convent and then attended the Maude Allen Secondary Modern School. Roddick's parents divorced when she was 9 years old and her mother married her former husband's cousin, Henry, who died of tuberculosis after only a few years of marriage. It was not until Roddick was 19 years old that her mother told her that Henry was the biological father of Anita and her brother, but not Anita's two sisters. Prior to this Roddick thought that her mother's first husband, Donny, was her biological father.
After leaving school, Roddick trained as a teacher at Bath College of Higher Education and traveled widely before her mother introduced her to Gordon Roddick, whom she married in 1970. The couple opened a restaurant followed by a hotel. By the time they married, they already had one child and were expecting another. Roddick became the mother of two daughters, Justine and Sam. Following in her mother's footsteps, Roddick ran her own business, an upmarket and ethical sex shop, Coco De Mer. Roddick worked for the United Nations, for which she traveled extensively and met people from a number of different cultures. She founded The Body Shop in Brighton, in 1976. The Body Shop was basic, offering only 15 products at first. The Body Shop's full range now has over 300 products.
Roddick opened the first Body Shop with the aim of making an income for herself and her two daughters, Sam and Justine, while her husband was away in the United States. Her idea was to exploit some of the ideas she had formed while traveling around the world. She opened her second shop six months later. On her husband's return, he joined the business. By 1991, The Body Shop had 700 branches, and Roddick was awarded the 1991 World Vision Award for Development Initiative Award.
In 1993 she told Third Way Magazine:
“The original Body Shop was a series of brilliant accidents. It had a great smell, it had a funky name. It was positioned between two funeral parlours--that always caused controversy. It was incredibly sensuous. It was 1976, the year of the heat wave, so there was a lot of flesh around. We knew about storytelling then, so all the products had stories. We recycled everything, not because we were environmentally friendly, but because we didn’t have enough bottles. It was a good idea. What was unique about it, with no intent at all, no marketing nous, was that it translated across cultures, across geographical barriers and social structures. It wasn’t a sophisticated plan, it just happened like that.”
By 2004, the Body Shop had 1980 stores serving over 77 million customers throughout the world. The Body Shop was voted the second most trusted brand in the United Kingdom, and 28th top brand in the world.
On 17 March 2006, L’Oreal purchased Body Shop for £652 million. This caused controversy, because L'Oréal is involved in animal testing and because the company is part-owned by Nestlé which has been criticized for its treatment of third world producers. Anita Roddick addressed it directly in an interview with The Guardian which reported that she sees herself as a kind of 'Trojan horse' who by selling her business to a huge firm will be able to influence the decisions it makes. Suppliers who had formerly worked with The Body Shop will, in the future, have contracts with L'Oréal. Working with the company 25 days a year, Roddick will be influential and be able to have an input into decisions.
Roddick gave away her fortune, worth some £51 million ($104 million).
