October 23 - Remembering Anita Roddick

Posted October 23, 2020

Key Points

Ethical consumerism?

Well, yeah! The way we spend our money has a much bigger impact on the world than the words we say…right? Like, picture a man who says to all his coworkers that he is really pro-animal, anti-hunting, anti-fur… But then in his private life, if he spent big bucks on coats and accessories made out of exotic animals’ fur! – well, obviously his
“actions speak louder than words,” and he definitely does NOT “put his money where his mouth is.”

Today’s famous birthday, Anita Roddick, started a business and ended up becoming a human rights advocate and environmental activist!

Roddick – who was born on this date in 1942 – lived in the United Kingdom, and once upon a
time her husband was very far away in South America.

Her business ended up being wildly successful and very influential, but Roddick claims most of her success was accidental. Like the shop she opened in her hometown of Brighton happened to be located between two funeral parlors – that drew a lot of notice, because she called her shop The Body Shop. Yikes!!

What Roddick was selling at The Body Shop was 25 beauty products that were not tested on animals and that were made of natural ingredients she purchased straight from the producers. Roddick added yummy smells to her products and was lucky enough to launch the shop during a heat wave – when the smells would last longer and carry better than when people were bundled up in bitter-cold weather!

Roddick needed bottles to put her beauty concoctions into, so she bought some from a nearby hospital. Get this: they were urine sample bottles!! She needed labels – so she wrote labels by hand.

Soon Roddick was running out of bottles. So she decided to offer to refill bottles of returning customers. She wasn’t actually doing it to save the environment – but it was a great idea that saved money for the business, saved resources of the planet, AND created a nice buzz about the cruelty-free cosmetic company also being environment-friendly!

Roddick wanted her marketing to be truths, not hype, but she knew the power of stories. So she told true stories of where she bought the ingredients and how they were produced. She didn’t so much advertise as she talked to the people in her shop – and the location and name and wonderful aromas and delicious textures and interesting stories caught people’s interest. So more and more people ended up talking about The Body Shop and then of course more and more people started shopping at The Body Shop!

Six months after Roddick opened her first shop, she was able to open her second. And within 8 years there were 138 stores in the world! Now there are around 1,000 products sold in 3,000 stores in 65 countries! At least tens of millions of customers!

In 1984 the company went public – which means that the general public could buy stocks in the company – and in the first eight years, share prices went up 10,944%!!! So if you bought a share in 1984 for one dollar, your investment would pay you back almost 11 thousand dollars back in 1992!

In addition to Roddick’s ethical decisions discussed above – no animal testing, natural ingredients bought directly from their producers, refillable bottles, and no-hype marketing – Roddick was one of the first businesses to promote fair trade with developing nations. “Fair trade” meant that companies in developed nations could find ingredients they needed in nations that were struggling economically, and then could buy those ingredients from the native communities that grew and harvested them. Of course the companies would pay a fair price and would dialogue with the local producers about good working conditions and other human-rights issues.

The phrase “Trade, not aid” is an indication that establishing such fair trade agreements gives a much longer-lasting, stable economic benefit to communities in developing nations than does traditional charity (or “aid”).

Roddick had some great business ideas and some wonderful social justice ideas. She ended up greatly benefitting from her good ideas: she not only made a lot of money (for example, in addition to all her earnings before then, when she sold her company to L’Oréal in 2006, Roddick reportedly made 130 million pounds – equivalent to about 250 million U.S. dollars then and about 325 million today!), but she was also given the honorary title “Dame” – which basically means she was knighted.

In addition to all the good works Roddick did with her company, she did a ton of other regular-old charitable work, too. And when she died in 2007, she left her fortune to charities!

Wow!