00:00♪
00:29The daughter of Italian Jewish immigrants, Anita Lucia Pirilli,
00:33was born in a bomb shelter in Little Hampton, England in 1942.
00:37This wartime baby grew up to fight on many fronts,
00:41not with bombs and bullets, but with body butters and cosmetics.
00:46The founder of the body shop, Dame Anita Roddick,
00:49was one of the few business entrepreneurs who really made a difference.
00:53The empire she founded began with one small shop in Brighton in 1976.
00:57It sold just 15 products,
00:59but they were products steeped in social and environmental responsibility.
01:03I was not interested in running a dime-a-dozen cosmetic company.
01:06I was not interested in seeing the way businesses are run,
01:09which are about private greed.
01:11I wanted to show more developed emotion than fear and greed within this.
01:15It was an experiment.
01:17From the very beginning, the body shop did things differently.
01:20Roddick was actively against animal testing and actively for human rights.
01:26Unlike many business enterprises with a conscience, this one flourished.
01:31By 2004, that one Brighton shop front had grown to 1,980 shops
01:37with 600 products and more than 77 million customers globally.
01:43It was voted in the top 30 brands in the world
01:46and the second most trusted brand in the UK.
01:50As the company's success continued,
01:52Roddick began to move away from the more hands-on side of the business,
01:56devoting herself to travelling the world,
01:58researching new products and communities to do business with.
02:03Roddick was scathing in her criticism of the illusions sold by the beauty industry,
02:08even though critics pointed out she had made her fortune in that very business.
02:13The products which you can now pick up on any shelf,
02:16which are now something like 95 pounds for a couple of mils,
02:20more expensive than gold.
02:22The notion that you can apply yourself to a woman my age,
02:25and this is what 57 looks like,
02:27and it will get rid of your 30-odd years of environmental,
02:3140 years of environmental abuse and psych abuse, whatever, is ludicrous.
02:36Roddick once said it would be obscene to die rich,
02:39and in 2005 she announced in an interview with the National Post newspaper
02:43that she intended to give away her 51 million pound fortune,
02:47but she would not be turning her back on the body shop which remained dear to her heart.
02:52Secret was the fact that we had a different, we had another agenda,
02:55not just making products for the skin and hair,
02:58we had a very progressive political agenda,
03:00you know, we can turn the shops into action stations,
03:03we campaign on human rights,
03:05we changed the law in this country on the issue of animal testing within the cosmetic industry,
03:10and 12 million of our customers around the world put their thumbprint to defend human rights workers,
03:15so that made us more interesting.
03:17And then in March 2006 there was widespread astonishment,
03:20and not a little controversy,
03:22when Roddick sold the body shop to multinational cosmetics company L'Oreal.
03:26Not only did L'Oreal use animals to test its products,
03:29it was also affiliated with companies like Nestle,
03:32which had faced condemnation for allegedly unscrupulous business practices in the third world.
03:37Roddick defended the sale,
03:39comparing the body shop to a Trojan horse
03:42that could affect more change for the better by working inside the enemy's camp.
03:46Businesses are petrified by consumer revolt,
03:48when customers say, not only will we boycott,
03:52but we will campaign, we will legislate, we will fund against your behaviour.
03:57What businesses should be doing is bringing in the non-government organisation,
04:01Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, as advisors.
04:04They should also be bringing in the poorest active advisors,
04:08because they know, and we all know, that the biggest catastrophe out there is poverty,
04:12economic poverty.
04:14Roddick contracted Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion in the early 1970s.
04:19She was managing her illness,
04:21but in September 2007 she died suddenly from a massive brain haemorrhage.
04:26Her legacy, however, lives on.
04:29If we're serious about corporate social responsibility,
04:32we are stepping out of line with the prevailing version of the free market economy.
05:02www.oxfam.org
Comments