The Body Shop is about to close – so what went wrong for the pioneering brand?

FOR those of us with fond memories of White Musk perfume, baskets of bath beads and satsuma body butter, it's a body blow.

After almost five decades on the high street, beauty retailer The Body Shop is seeking help from administrators, making store closures and job losses likely.

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Enjoy massive nostalgia about collecting all the flavors of fruity Born Lippy lip balm, or buy a Dewberry basket for your mother at Christmas.

It seems incredible that a brand that started out in the 1970s as a pioneer in sustainability and anti-cruelty could fail just as the rest of the world is moving toward the same ethical values.

Despite the beauty industry booming, The Body Shop, which has more than 200 UK outlets, saw sales fall by 24.3 per cent in 2022.

Slow sales around Christmas have reportedly prompted a plan to appoint experts to significantly restructure the retailer.

So how did a company that was once so ahead of its time miss the moment so completely?

I belong to a clearly declining number of customers and was there yesterday buying a refill of pink grape fruit shower gel.

It's sweet and fruity enough to make me feel like a teenager again and it also makes me feel like a smug thirty-something thanks to the reusable bottle and fair trade organic ingredients.

So 2024.

But the store is no longer fun or exciting.

It doesn't have the youthful, hippie vibe I remember as a teenager, when my friends and I would hang around the Milton Keynes branch and try every flavor of body butter and swish Shimmer Waves bronzer.

It's also not a luxury “mall” like higher-end competitors like Kiehl's or Aesop, even as their prices are rising.

Instead you get bland corporate packaging and – apart from the refill station, a recent resurrection from the 1990s – little mention of its proud record of activism.

That's a shame, because The Body Shop has a compelling backstory.

Founded by the late campaigner Dame Anita Roddick in 1976, it started life as a single shop in Brighton, so dilapidated that she joked that its distinctive dark green color came from an attempt to hide the mold on the walls.

She used natural ingredients, sourced from sustainable sources, and took a stand against animal testing.

It was beauty with a purpose and with a focus on feeling good, rather than slimming or anti-aging.

Shoppers loved it.

But the rot probably started when Dame Anita decided to sell the company to French beauty giant L'Oreal in 2006 for £652 million.

When she made the sale, shortly before her death from a brain haemorrhage in 2007, Dame Anita hoped to be a “Trojan horse” that could make L'Oréal more sustainable from within.

But loyal customers saw it as a betrayal of The Body Shop's values, especially as L'Oréal still used some animal-tested ingredients at the time.

Mark Constantine, co-founder of The Body Shop's rival Lush, was a key supplier to it for many years under his previous company.

He says that under L'Oreal's ownership, moving production to the Philippines allowed for better profit margins, but at a price.

He said: “You can't make everything cheaper, remove the values ​​and make more profit without customers noticing and going elsewhere.

“They lost the feeling you got when you bought a Body Shop product and that you helped change the world.”

The Body Shop has since changed hands twice more and has been owned by investment group Aurelius since last year.

While it has seemingly lost focus on its ethical values, every other beauty brand worth its bath salts has started incorporating some sort of “purpose” into its marketing strategy, with varying degrees of sincerity.

The Body Shop had that moral high ground, but everyone else has now climbed to the top

Neil Saunders

Mark Constantine's Lush, with its 'naked' packaging and organic ingredients, is a good example.

Dove has its 'real beauty' campaign, REN its zero-waste commitment and Dr. Hauschaka all-natural ingredients.

My eye make-up remover, from Unilever-owned Garnier, claims to “empower young people within the LGBT+ community”.

Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, said: “The Body Shop had that moral high ground, but everyone else has now risen to the top.”

And what about The Body Shop's other major strength, its appeal to young people?

Long before I doused myself in vanilla body spray as a teenager, I would pack my “Animals in Danger” laundry bag for sleepovers and arrange my soaps in the “Save the Whale” shape along the side of the tub.

But today's teens have more refined tastes, thanks to social media.

With 58 percent of 11- to 12-year-olds using TikTok daily and watching nearly an hour of videos, parents are reporting how kids are falling for high-end beauty products and multi-step skincare regimens.

Expensive brands like Summer Fridays and Drunk Elephant are at the top of the wish list.

There's not much for those kids to be excited about at The Body Shop these days.

It is unlikely that it will disappear completely.

Administrators will likely focus instead on cutting costs, which could lead to fewer stores and a larger online presence.

I hope The Body Shop survives, and not just for nostalgic reasons.

In a crowded market where many supposedly 'ethical' promises to beauty consumers are only superficial, I'd like to see it return to its radical roots.

That would be really wonderful.

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