In 2004, thanks to my chairman, Oren R. Lyons, I was given the oppor- tunity to discuss the driving forces behind a company with the founder of The Body Shop, Anita Roddick. She had successfully managed, a few years prior, to obtain a listing for her company on the London Stock Exchange.
This gave The Body Shop money to be used for the expansion of Anita’s ideas. Or so she thought. When we met, she was very sad, tired, and disappointed. She deeply regretted the decision to take her company public and cursed herself for not having had the personal strength to resist. At the time, as we sat and talked, the English media was busy accusing her of embezzled money from the company and using it for charity.
She told me and Oren the following story. It is purely from memory and not a direct quote.
I founded The Body Shop because I needed something to do, and to show that women are also capable. It went fine, someone got in touch and wanted to franchise in another city, another asked the same... and on it went. We quickly grew and I realized the possibility I had of impac- ting the industry that I was a part of... and when I saw the amount of resources we were actually creating, I decided to use The Body Shop as a tool to impact society. I gave 25% of the profits to different social projects, we engaged in trade with our frequently-poor suppliers in a responsible manner... and we were still making enough of a profit. Maybe that is precisely why we became so successful – during all these years, I haven’t made a single ad for The Body Shop. Our reputation has done the job for us, our customers have spoken well of us. It’s as if employees, customers, and suppliers have all shared my driving force. Then the financial officers began nagging about the stock market. They said we needed more money for investments, expansion, and other things. That side of the business has never really been an interest of mine, but eventually I gave in and decided to allow the company to go public... Since then, I’ve felt that The Body Shop is no longer The Body Shop that I built up, as nowadays everything revolves around the next quarterly report, and the true purpose I had with running the company – to make a difference – is no longer something I can do. For me, it’s been destroyed.
When Anita, having taken her company public, continued to donate money to social projects, the new owners obviously reacted. Even if this is only one example, as there aren’t that many to give, it still speaks about how owners tend to prioritize their responsibilities.
Later, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Anita Roddick described the financial elite as being financial fascists:
“They see only goals and disregard justice and human rights. The world around them doesn’t matter, only profits and losses do.”
Anita Roddick left The Body Shop completely only a few months after our meeting, tired of the business world and its pursuit. On September 10, 2007, she passed away, but she’ll always be, to me and many others, a shining example of what we call ‘social entrepreneurship’