The shop that changed the world

How Anita Roddick made The Body Shop a global behemoth

- NADA FARHOUD

WHEN Anita Roddick opened the first Body Shop in March 1976 she admitted knowing absolutely nothing about business.

She said: “My sole object was to survive, to earn enough to feed my kids. If it hadn't worked, I would have found something else to do.”

But her groundbreaking concept swiftly brought reuse and recycling to the high street, long before it became fashionable, and the firm campaigned against beauty products being tested on animals - leading to a shift in the industry and a European ban.

It is now 50 years since it launched - but the first store in Brighton, a unique recipe of natural cosmetics with a social conscience, nearly didn't happen after Anita, then 33, was initially turned down for a £4,000 bank loan.

She died in 2007 aged 64, but said previously: “I turned up with my two children, wearing jeans and a Bob Dylan T-shirt. I was turned down flat. A week later I went back with [my husband] Gordon. We were both wearing suits and this time I had an impressive looking business plan in a plastic folder. We got the money with no trouble.”

BOTTLES

Friends helped fill the bottles and hand-write the labels, while Anita painted the whole store in its iconic dark green shade, saying: “Not because I wanted to make an environmental statement, but because it was the only colour that would cover up all the damp patches on the wall.

“The cheapest containers I could find were the plastic bottles used to collect urine samples, but I couldn't afford to buy enough. I thought I would get around the problem by offering to refill empty containers, or fill customers' own bottles.