In 1976, Anita Roddick opened a small health and beauty shop in Brighton with 25 products and an idea about how a cosmetics business might operate. The Body Shop sold products made with natural ingredients and built its identity around ethical sourcing and opposition to animal testing. Refillable bottles, introduced partly because the first shop did not have enough containers, became an early expression of that approach. The company grew into an international retailer, but its history also includes disputes over its origins, controversy over a later takeover and a sharp contraction after financial difficulties.
A Brighton shop grows
Roddick opened the first Body Shop in her hometown in 1976. According to the supplied account, her immediate motivation was to make a living for herself and her two daughters while her husband, Gordon Roddick, was travelling. The business began modestly: its 25 products were presented in handwritten-labelled bottles, and Roddick used local press rather than explicit advertising. She had bought urine-sample bottles from a nearby hospital, but had too few to meet demand. Refillable containers followed from that shortage and became a feature of the shop.
The company’s stated early principles included using natural ingredients, sourcing directly from producers and avoiding animal testing. These ideas shaped how the brand presented itself, but its expansion also depended on ordinary commercial decisions. In the late 1970s, Gordon Roddick returned to Brighton and suggested franchising as a way to grow. By 1984, The Body Shop had 138 shops, 87 of them outside the United Kingdom. The company went public that year, joining London’s Unlisted Securities Market; Anita Roddick remained managing director, while she and Gordon retained a substantial shareholding.
The brand’s history also has a complication that its promotional story can obscure. An unaffiliated shop called The Body Shop had opened in Berkeley, California, in 1970, founded by Peggy Short and Jane Saunders. In 1987, Anita Roddick paid them for exclusive rights to the name. A 1994 investigation in Business Ethics alleged that the British company had copied aspects of that earlier business, including its name, shop design, marketing concept and product ideas. This dispute belongs in an account of the company’s development alongside its better-known ethical claims.
Trade, campaigning and scrutiny
From the 1980s, The Body Shop connected its business identity with campaigns on social and environmental questions. Its 1987 “Trade Not Aid” campaign promoted sourcing ingredients directly from communities associated with them. That year also saw the start of the Community Trade programme, which paid suppliers for ingredients and handicrafts. Its first product was a wooden roller supplied by Teddy Exports, a small community in southern India. Other goods and ingredients included Brazil nut oil, sesame seed oil, honey and shea butter.
The programme gave the company a practical way to link its retail products with supplier relationships. It also attracted criticism. Paul Vallely, a former chair of Traidcraft, argued in an obituary of Roddick that the programme covered only a very small fraction of the company’s turnover. The Body Shop conducted periodic social audits of sourcing through Ecocert, according to the supplied Wikipedia account. Community Trade was therefore both part of the company’s distinctive public identity and a subject on which the scale and effects of its practices were contested.
Animal testing became another defining campaign issue. The company has campaigned against testing cosmetics on animals with Cruelty Free International since 1989, and its products carry that organisation’s Leaping Bunny certification. In 2017, the two organisations launched the Forever Against Animal Testing campaign. The company received a lifetime achievement award from the RSPCA in 2009 in recognition of its policy on animal testing by suppliers. Its record also changed over time: after announcing that all its products would be certified vegan by the end of 2023, it completed that process in January 2024, but later reintroduced a limited number of products with non-vegan ingredients. The company said the change responded to customers’ preferences.
Roddick’s activism extended beyond sourcing and animal welfare. The company formed alliances with Greenpeace and Amnesty International, and its campaigns addressed environmental issues and social causes. In 1997, Roddick launched a campaign against media stereotyping of women and in support of women’s self-esteem. The Body Shop Foundation, founded by Anita and Gordon Roddick in 1990, consolidated charitable donations and supported work concerning human and civil rights, the environment and animal protection. The company later announced a World Bio-Bridges Mission focused on biodiversity and sustainable supply chains.
Takeovers and a changing business
The company’s growth brought changes in ownership as well as scale. In 2006, The Body Shop agreed to a £652.3 million takeover by L’Oréal. The sale prompted controversy because of L’Oréal’s business in China, where cosmetics testing on animals was then required by law. Roddick said she hoped that joining a larger company would allow her to influence its standards on animal testing and environmental issues.
L’Oréal sold The Body Shop to Brazil’s Natura & Co in 2017 for £880 million. The brand had become an international chain, but the later years brought further ownership changes and a severe crisis in its British operation. Natura sold the company to the German private equity group Aurelius in 2023. In February 2024, the UK business entered administration. Restructuring led to the closure of 82 British shops and the loss of hundreds of jobs, including posts at head office. The company’s UK assets and trademarks were subsequently acquired by Auréa Group in September 2024.
The upheaval was not confined to Britain. The company’s US stores closed in March 2024, and its US operation entered liquidation; its Canadian business sought creditor protection. Several European operations also entered administration or closed stores. These events underline the difference between the international reach associated with the brand at its height and the much more difficult business position it faced in 2024. The supplied Wikipedia account lists more than 1,189 locations in 2025, but that figure does not erase the closures or establish that the network had returned to its former scale.
Products and a contested promise
The Body Shop’s range covers skin, body and hair care, cosmetics, fragrances and bath products. Tea tree, vitamin C, vitamin E, aloe vera and seaweed are among the ingredients associated with its product lines; the company also sells products such as body butters, shampoos, soaps and make-up. Community Trade ingredients, including sesame seed oil and marula oil, have connected some products to the sourcing programme.
The company’s influence rests in part on making ethical claims visible in everyday retail: a bottle could be refilled, a product could carry a cruelty-free certification, and a supplier relationship could be presented as part of the product’s story. Those practices and campaigns helped distinguish the brand, but they should not be treated as proof that every claim went uncontested or that every programme transformed its industry. The history includes criticism of the scale of Community Trade, scrutiny of the company’s origins and changes in policy as products and owners changed. Its legacy is stronger for including those tensions than for presenting ethical business as a settled achievement.
Why The Body Shop deserves a place in British Legacy
The Body Shop deserves a place in British Legacy because a Brighton retailer made questions about sourcing and animal testing central to the way a cosmetics business spoke to customers. Its early use of refillable bottles grew from a practical shortage, while the later Community Trade programme sought to establish direct relationships with suppliers. The company also worked with Cruelty Free International on campaigns against cosmetic animal testing and linked retail activity to wider social and environmental causes. These are specific parts of a British business history: they show how a shop founded in England built an identity around practices and public campaigns, then carried that identity into international retail.
That legacy is not a claim that the company resolved the problems it highlighted. The scale of Community Trade was criticised, the origins of its name and retail concept were disputed, and its later corporate ownership raised questions about how far its founding principles could be maintained. Its financial crisis and store closures in 2024 are also part of the record. Taken together, the story offers a useful account of ethical enterprise as both a set of choices and a continuing test: sourcing policies, product claims and public commitments must be judged against the company’s changing practices. The Body Shop’s significance lies in making those questions part of mainstream beauty retail and leaving a history that can be examined, rather than simply celebrated.
Sources
The Body Shop — supplied Wikipedia revision
Adapted in part from The Body Shop by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.