The Body Shop is dead, declare several Naturewatch and anti-animal cruelty organisations after the much-publicised L'Oreal acquisition. The Body Shop went from the "good guys" side on many of these organisations' ethical shopping guides to the "bad guys" side - pretty much overnight.
Today, on 1st of April 2006, some had even planned a Day Of Action event to publicly protest about the sell-out. An international Day of Action is planned for the 29th of April.
This is not the first time The Body Shop has come under scrutiny. The 90s leaflet and boycott campaigns attempted to dig deeper behind the marketing strategies and public image. This time, the big question is whether all this hoopla around L'Oreal and TBS deter the average customer. It's one thing to end up putting off a hardcore set of followers (that's what TBS used to inspire.) For quite some time now, TBS has gone after the "average customer" instead and various activism-heavy campaigns have been replaced by the sort of 3 for 2 promotions that you might spot at any typical UK High Street retailer.
During TBS' golden era in the 80s, there was nothing average about the campaigns, stores, or products. Anita Roddick started her business in Brighton in the 70s, with just one small store, then opened a second one with a £4000 loan from a former garage owner (now TBS' biggest single shareholder) - but it could be argued that the influence of Mark Constantine and his creative team helped to lift her business to superstar status. The marketing concepts of ethical consumerism were already brewing, but when Mark introduced the anti-animal testing slant to the business and produced most of TBS' best-selling products for a decade or so to boot, things went from quirky to global at breakneck speed.
When the Roddicks brought all manufacturing in-house and parted ways with Mr. Constantine, many consumers didn't notice an immediate difference, as The Body Shop had purchased the recipes and continued to make at least some of the best-selling items. This did not last. Dubious new products were introduced (dubious, in the sense that they did not seem all that "natural" after all) and by the mid 90s, as consumer awareness of cosmetic ingredients and business issues increased, The Body Shop started to lose credibility with the original customer base it had worked so hard to develop. Add to that, the extreme mistakes made in their business model (franchising and over-expanding beyond what their infrastructure could handle), by the late 90s, the value of the company had actually drastically declined, despite its inflated size.
What's particularly depressing is that, once upon a time, TBS actually had a genuine positive influence on individuals' lives and on the entire legislative jungle surrounding animal testing on cosmetics. Now money spent at TBS will go to the pockets of the biggest cosmetics giant in the world—not inherently bad per se, business is business—but sadly, since L'Oreal does not share the principles that really made a difference, this acquisition has effectively removed the biggest single "pro-ethical cosmetics" voice from the marketplace. I suppose it could be said that TBS has been washing its ideals off bit by bit for quite some time in the lead-up to this, so the unholy marriage with L'Oreal is not really as unholy as it seems on the surface.
Article comments
1 - Nukapai
Umm, why has the writer accreditation for this changed to PiaSavage?! I wrote this (Pia Hall).
Here's the original.