Body Shop has lost its soul - founder Roddick

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12155/story.htm

UK: August 27, 2001
Story by Ed Cropley
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

EDINBURGH - Body Shop founder Anita Roddick said last week the ethical
cosmetics chain has lost its way since being floated on the stock market
and has no place as a mere cog in the international financial system she
despises.

"The Body Shop is now really a dysfunctional coffin," Roddick told the
Edinburgh International Book Festival, adding that the company had lost its
political edge.

"I wanted every shop to challenge the World Trade Organization (WTO), to
ask every Member of Parliament, and they won't do that," she said.
Roddick, who supported some Third World cooperatives through trade, called
on those opposing aspects of economic globalization to bypass governments
and go straight to the corporations.

Questioning Bodyshop's future as a publicly quoted company, she said the
relentless drive to maximize profits for investors was killing the
25-year-old company's spirit.

The company has some 1,700 outlets in 46 countries.

"Did it (flotation) work? Yes, it did. It gave us money to build
manufacturing plants. Does it work now? I don't think so," she said.
A statement from the Body Shop said, however, that listing on the stock
exchange had benefited it greatly in helping it see the difference between
itself and giant corporations, which "are simply interested in maximizing
profits whatever the cost for planet or people."

There had already been two attempts to take the company she founded in her
kitchen private again, where it could avoid the harsh light of investor
scrutiny and the pressure of market forces, Roddick said.

"The market controls everything, but the market has no heart," she said.
Giving a lecture to promote her book, "Business as Unusual," Roddick came
under a scathing attack from a former employee in the audience who said she
had been callously laid off in contravention of Body Shop's own
employee-friendly practices.

But Roddick said that since handing over the reins to the new chief
executive, Patrick Gournay, she had no say in the day-to-day running of the
company once touted as the model of an ethical business.
"I can't interfere. I'm not allowed to interfere," she said.

GENOA, SEATTLE - "A WASTE OF TIME"

A tireless environmental campaigner, who joined anti-capitalist groups
protesting at the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle, Washington, Roddick said
demonstrations aimed only at governments, like those at the recent G8
summit in Genoa, Italy, were pointless.

"You will not see another Genoa. You will not see another Seattle because
it's a waste of time," she said.

Roddick, now in her 50s, has said she is getting ever more radical as she
gets older and wants to take the fight for her causes straight to the
boardroom.

"The protests are going nowhere. We should be directly pointing the finger
at businesses, not even bothering with the governments," she said.
"You've got to direct it at the companies," she added. "The only thing they
really fear is consumer revolt."