‘Enrich Not Exploit’: Can New CSR Strategy Help Body Shop Regain Glory?

In March 1976, Anita Roddick and her husband Gordon set up their first Body Shop store at Brighton, UK. The store sold around 15 lines of homemade cosmetics made with natural ingredients such as jojoba oil, rhassoul mud, etc. From its very early days, Body Shop was associated with the social activism of Roddick, who was critical of what she called the environmental insensitivity of industry and wanted a change in standard corporate practices. By the late 1970s, the company had a number of franchisee stores throughout the UK.

Roddick gave the company’s products brand names such as, ‘Tea Tree Oil Facial Wash’, ‘Mango Dry Mist’, etc. Urine sample bottles, the cheapest packaging available at the time, were used as containers. All labels were hand-written. Unlike other branded cosmetics, the packaging of its products contained detailed descriptions of the ingredients and their properties. The company never ‘sale’ priced its products but customers who returned product containers for refilling were offered a 15% discount....