BODY AND SOUL: Profits with Principles--the Amazing Success Story of Anita Roddick and The Body Shop

by Anita Roddick ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1991

In case the title fails to warn you, this is a somewhat unfocused inspirational corporate history by the entrepreneurial cult heroine who founded the wildly remunerative ""environmentally conscious"" cosmetics company called The Body Shop. What the book doesn't tell you: anything about the financial or marketing nuts and bolts of how Roddick turned one little provincial English store into a worldwide chain and manufacturer of ""natural"" remedies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, the story has interest--as the chronicle of a hippie woman from Littlehampton, England, tossed willy-nilly into the last decade's economic boom and making the most of it, and as a manifesto for environmentally pure and socially responsible business practices. In respect to the latter, Roddick advocates a ban on animal testing; increased corporate campaigns for saving the whales, preserving the rain forests, and disarming the world; a soft retail sell; recyclable products; and placing factories in undeveloped regions, such as Easterhouse, Scotland--where, Roddick writes, ""we employed the unemployable,"" who ""fell in like lambs."" (Unions are necessary only when the managers are ""bastards."") She attributes The Body Shop's success to ""passion"": ""I have never been able to separate Body Shop values from my own personal values,"" she boasts, and delineates them fully. How did Roddick force all 600-odd Body Shop operators to adopt her green-and-white color scheme while maintaining a corporate ""democracy""? What is the exact financial structure of this profitable ""social experiment""? We don't find out here, but we may be inspired to expand our own little business in homage.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991

Categories: NONFICTION