Women Entrepreneurs in History: Anita Roddick

Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop: "We entrepreneurs are loners, vagabonds, troublemakers. Success is simply a matter of finding and surrounding ourselves with those open-minded and clever souls who can take our insanity and put it to good use."

Business can do good in addition to generating profits. Anita Roddick opened the world-renowned "The Body Shop" on the principle of pursuing social and environmental change. The Body Shop came out of the need for Roddick to make an income when her husband was away for some time. Within 6 months she opened her second shop. By 1991, the brand had 700 branches and Roddick won the 1991 World Vision Award for Development Initiative.

---

In 1993 she told Third Way Magazine: 
“The original Body Shop was a series of brilliant accidents…We knew about storytelling then, so all the products had stories. We recycled everything, not because we were environmentally friendly, but because we didn’t have enough bottles. It was a good idea. What was unique about it, with no intent at all, no marketing nous was that it translated across cultures, across geographical barriers and social structures. It wasn’t a sophisticated plan, it just happened like that.”   

Roddick believed that success is more than a good idea, it includes timing, opportunity and faith. She showed business owners everywhere that it was possible to be successful on a budget. Her shop was painted green to cover damp spots on the walls; she refilled her customer’s empty containers at a discounted rate and did not spend much on advertising and packaging to keep costs down. All the methods that she used to save money differentiated her brand. She grew The Body Shop from a small survival project into an international empire. Her story shows that brand can create a loyal consumer base with the absence of advertising and the focus on the products and a cause.