Why The Body Shop’s Closure Could Be Catastrophic

As I walked down Oxford Street yesterday, I felt a pang in my coronary heart. Seeing the long-lasting The Body Shop retailer with its doorways shut and a heartfelt notice caught to it, thanking its prospects for his or her help, I truly felt just a little teary. Like all people else within the UK, I’ve an emotional reference to the sweetness model that formed my adolescence. But past that, as a magnificence journalist of practically a decade, the information that The Body Shop has entered administration and is closing practically half of its shops has hit me like a dagger to the center. Why? Because I’m an enormous fan—and never simply because I am keen on its Camomile Cleanser Butter. The reality is, regardless of all of my years on this job, I nonetheless think about The Body Shop to be one of the crucial (if not probably the most) spectacular companies in magnificence. Conversations over the previous couple of weeks round ‘what The Body Shop has carried out improper’ have left me feeling depleted and, frankly, unhappy. Its skincare merchandise are reliable, efficacious and never obscenely priced, its haircare line holds a number of the most coveted merchandise on the market (significantly for these with dandruff) and its physique lotions proceed to be the most effective round. The model can be one of many only a few that operates with ethics and sustainability at its core—not simply leaning into buzzwords to promote extra product when it fits them. If anybody have been to ever ask me what The Body Shop has carried out ‘improper’, I’d pull up each marketing campaign, each product that traces my cabinets and each initiative the model spearheads to attest to the truth that The Body Shop, truly, hasn’t carried out something improper in any respect. It needs to be one of the crucial worthwhile magnificence manufacturers on the earth.So why has it gone into administration?This is one thing I’ve mulled over because the information first broke a few weeks in the past. As a die-hard fan of the model, I actually wished to gather my ideas earlier than I spoke on the subject—and I feel I’ve come to a conclusion I’m prepared to share. Marketeers and retail specialists may say that The Body Shop hasn’t leant into nostalgia sufficient or that its advertising would not enchantment to the younger buyers upon which gross sales have traditionally relied. Others may say it misplaced a variety of help when its founder, Anita Roddick, sadly handed away and the model was bought to conglomerates. I’ve listened to all of those views. And whereas there are small components I agree with, I truly imagine the model has admirably caught to its weapons and proven utmost integrity in an age of quick magnificence, the place social media-driven magnificence traits put issues ‘in’ and ‘out’ of trend quicker than you may say physique butter.While The Body Shop arguably hasn’t adjusted its enterprise mannequin to stick to the ever-changing calls for of younger magnificence buyers, I truly applaud it for that. In order to proceed to be a genuinely earth-friendly and moral enterprise, there may be merely no manner The Body Shop ought to have carried out the issues being recommended. Can we actually count on a model who places sustainability on the forefront of every part it does to return to flogging animal-shaped soaps and tub pearls in a bid to feed the urge for food of our personal nostalgia? And, extra importantly, would we truly purchase any of it even when it did?!While millennial tweens have been heading right down to The Body Shop each weekend to top off on physique butters and White Musk (I used to be considered one of them), the tweens of 2024 are saving up their pocket cash to splurge on a £60 retinol serum. Expensive skincare is, in itself, a pattern—and we’re within the thick of it.So, my view is that this: The Body Shop has gone into administration as a result of being a magnificence enterprise that does good in 2024 is extremely tough—and if The Body Shop cannot do it, I’m undecided what model can. I take advantage of the phrase good right here broadly. I imply good for the planet, good for individuals, good for its staff, good for its customers and, critically, good product.I might be a idiot to not point out the nice The Body Shop does for individuals and planet. Its Be Seen, Be Heard marketing campaign sees the model associate with the British Youth Council to make sure younger individuals have a voice in democracy and politics. It spearheads activism for the necessity to present secure areas for the LGBTQ+ group. Just final month, The Body Shop introduced it has turn out to be the primary world magnificence model to attain vegan standing on all of its merchandise. Its refill scheme noticed the model roll out refill stations in 720 of its shops in a bid to chop down plastic waste.Importantly, I wish to focus on the subject of its unparalleled work with the Community Fair Trade programme. Set up in 1987, The Body Shop’s Community Fair Trade programme has set the gold commonplace for moral enterprise buying and selling for many years, not simply in magnificence however throughout all sectors. Involving 19 producer teams in 15 nations, the programme has allowed the model to nurture its relationships with its producers in a manner that no different firm can, all whereas investing in tasks that profit these communities and the surroundings as an entire. The positive factors of working with this type of programme are huge—from crystal-clear visibility on its provide chain to boosting the financial energy of the communities wherein it really works. The Body Shop has been so profitable with this that companies and firms everywhere in the world use them for instance for what can and needs to be carried out on the subject of moral enterprise follow. If the The Body Shop ceases to exist, the communities wherein they’re embedded might be devastatingly affected.And, lastly, the factor I feel is most essential on the subject of a companies proper to succeed—its merchandise. Despite gaining access to each magnificence product on the market, I can hand on coronary heart say The Body Shop produces a number of the most spectacular and efficacious magnificence formulation round. My private assortment is stuffed with merchandise from The Body Shop. I think about its Camomile Cleansing Butter to be the most effective cleaning balm ever made, I’m but to discover a physique moisturiser that compares to its deliciously hydrating Body Yogurts, no shampoo on the market can deal with dandruff like The Body Shop Anti-Dandruff Ginger, its bestselling Edelweiss Serum is without doubt one of the finest antioxidant merchandise in the marketplace and a bottle of the model’s Full Ylang Ylang Eau de Parfum sits completely on the MCUK desks as a result of entire staff’s adoration for it.If The Body Shop have been to ever go, we’d all lose a number of the easiest merchandise the sweetness trade has ever created. Beyond that, the trade would lose its finest egg. Who else on the market would set the bar for moral enterprise follow on a mass scale? Who else would supply a secure haven for all magnificence buyers? If something detrimental have been to ever occur to The Body Shop, the sweetness trade can be a worse place for it.And it isn’t simply me who feels this manner. Below, a few of staff Marie Claire UK share with me their most cherished reminiscences and merchandise…Jadie Troy-Pryde, News Editor

The Body Shop Mango Body Butter

“Ahh, The Body Shop Body Butters; a staple of my teenage years, and I persistently returned to them in my twenties regardless of what number of fancy alternate options got here my manner. My dedication to the vivid orange pot of mango-scented cream was everlasting. I bear in mind again in the noughties—earlier than Westfield Stratford existed and my mates and I needed to trek to Oxford Street to store in any respect the excessive road shops without delay—The Body Shop was all the time on the hit record after hours of parading by large Topshop and pretending we might afford issues from the Selfridges magnificence counters. The earliest make-up brushes I owned have been gleefully bought there with my Saturday job cash, and I bear in mind them championing sustainability and cruelty-free merchandise earlier than it was the norm for magnificence manufacturers.”

The Body Shop White Musk Eau de Parfum

“The Body Shop was my first ever foray into the world of magnificence. From the long-lasting physique butters to the single-scent perfumes (hey White Musk), 14-year-old me felt the peak of sophistication making her first magnificence purchases on the soon-to-be-very-familiar picket tills.”To this present day, I’m a fan of the model’s genuinely nice make-up and fantastically scented physique merchandise (I nonetheless dream concerning the discontinued Japanese Camellia cream)—not least of all due to the pure ingredient-rich formulation that my delicate pores and skin merely laps up.”Ally Head, Senior Health & Sustainability Editor

The Body Shop Vitamin C Glow Revealing Serum

“I’ve such fond reminiscences of popping into The Body Shop retailer with my mum and siblings as a child. We’d slather ourselves within the samples, loving how decadent they smelled and the way nice they made our pores and skin really feel. Each Christmas, we might get our favorite physique butter wrapped up in our stocking, and the odor of the coconut one nonetheless takes me proper again to my teenage years. There aren’t many manufacturers that I loved as a baby which have stayed a agency favorite by to maturity, however The Body Shop is considered one of them. I nonetheless use their vitamin C merchandise religiously to this present day and take my hat off to them for the work they proceed to do within the sustainability sphere, making eco-conscious purchasing not simply an possibility, however the norm.”Mischa Smith, News & Features Editor”Growing up, The Body Shop was one of many few locations I bear in mind letting you attempt merchandise earlier than to procure them. I’d go in with my pocket cash and take a look at the totally different Body Butters—I knew I might solely afford one, and The Body Shop did not look down on prospects for that. It made that rigorously chosen product really feel much more particular. I ultimately labored by all of them earlier than touchdown on the now-discontinued Papaya as a failsafe favorite.”

https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/beauty/the-body-shop-administration

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