Body and Soul

Anita Roddick admits that she knew nothing about business when, at 33, she opened her first Body Shop in Brighton with a bank loan of #4000. Now there are 570 Body Shops in 37 different countries and there will be 1000 before the next century. This book describes the way in which she has achieved this success. Turning conventional business wisdom on its head, the Body Shop spends no money on advertising or designing expensive packaging, but invests time, money and manpower on a range of vital humanist and environmental issues. It has also set up highly successful industries in threatened areas of the Third World - and quite literally, saved whole communities. The Body Shop chain has been acclaimed as Company of the year, Communicator of the year and Retailer of the year. Anita Roddick herself was named Business Woman of the Year in 1985, was awarded an OBE in 1988 and received a United Nations environmental award in 1989.