LONDON — The Body Shop’s road to wreck was paved with many good intentions. But in the long run, the brand that pioneered cruelty-free beauty fell victim to cruel fate and poor management decisions, under the ownership of founder Anita Roddick and her husband Gordon Roddick, L’Oréal, Natura and the German private equity firm Aurelius.

While Roddick helped to set a template for future retailers and entrepreneurs when she initially launched The Body Shop, it has now fallen up to now behind the competition that success will probably be unimaginable without major funding, committed owners and a latest strategy, in accordance with industry experts. 

“When The Body Shop launched in 1976, it was a unique company. It stood out — it was hugely revolutionary,” said Sarah Montano, professor of retail marketing at University of Birmingham Business School, noting its impact on formulations, animal testing within the cosmetics industry, and girls’s and social issues, amongst others.

“It’s unlucky what happened, and there’s nothing to say it might probably’t be turned around,” Montano continued. “But so many aspects need to vary: price points, products and innovation.”

All just isn’t lost. Although worldwide the corporate is unwinding in alternative ways — it was placed under administration within the U.K., is closing operations within the U.S. and restructuring in Canada — the web business continues to operate as do some franchises and wholly owned stores in a wide range of regions worldwide.

Still, it’s a far cry from its former self. When the corporate first launched, The Body Shop epitomized innovation in beauty. Roddick was on the forefront of the naturals movement, offering products based on every-day and exotic ingredients. She championed environmental issues by encouraging recycling long before it became fashionable to achieve this, and she or he spearheaded beauty’s ethical drive, with high-impact campaigns against animal testing and promoting fair trade — long before they became rallying cries for other brands.

She also endorsed a holistic approach to beauty and promoted a more inclusive tackle what is taken into account appealing.

In its heyday, The Body Shop operated 2,085 doors, a lot of which were franchised, in 54 countries worldwide. In fiscal 2005, the British beauty giant generated revenues of 419 million kilos, or $736.1 million.

That success didn’t go unnoticed. In 2006, L’Oréal acquired The Body Shop in a deal valued at 652 million kilos.

Over the past 18 years, the corporate has modified hands thrice, and last month was placed into administration within the U.K., The Body Shop’s largest market, by its most up-to-date owner, Aurelius, with tons of of job losses and store closures.

In the subsequent few weeks the administrators, FRP Advisory, will vote on the Company Voluntary Arrangements to make a decision on the fate of the retailer within the U.K.

In response to industry observers, former employees and collaborators, the corporate’s failure was an extended time coming, and never on account of anybody owner, or set of managers. As a substitute, it was a slow means of “customer alienation, and poor decisions with massive consequences,” that began when the corporate went public in 1984, in accordance with a former worker.

Corporate restrictions and the profit-before-people demands of the general public markets within the go-go Eighties clashed with every thing The Body Shop stood for.

The person said that Roddick had good intentions when she eventually “sold to L’Oréal because she saw The Body Shop as a Trojan Horse, a way of fixing a giant corporate from inside.” And to a certain extent, it worked.

“It’s not selling out,” Roddick said during a press conference following the sale, which she attended with L’Oréal’s top brass. “And the belief that I’m sitting next to an enemy is one which is completely incorrect.”

A few of her customers would disagree. In response to Montano, those early shoppers were heavily invested in The Body Shop, its products and mission. 

“Anita Roddick was the brand, she lived it, and people customers wanted to provide their money to her, and support her causes. They didn’t want to provide their money to L’Oréal,” Montano said.

Natural beauty entrepreneur Mark Constantine, cofounder and chief executive officer of Lush, worked alongside the Roddicks within the early days of The Body Shop. Like others, he believes the brand lost its way after the corporate went public in London. 

“The Body Shop is all about principles. In the event that they will be bought and sold, it doesn’t work,” Constantine said. “My personal belief is a mixture of family ownership and staff ownership might have been a solution. Selling to the very best bidder? It broke the dream.” 

Many would argue that Roddick’s Trojan Horse strategy was successful, even after her death in 2007, inside a 12 months of the sale to L’Oréal.

With The Body Shop in its stable, the multinational ramped up its efforts to eliminate animal testing with the event of EpiSkin; improved its sourcing models, and have become involved in quite a few fair-trade schemes Roddick had supported.

In 2012, The Body Shop named Lily Cole as a worldwide brand ambassador. She lent her name to a cruelty-free makeup line and helped to speak the Beauty With Heart campaign, with a mantra “Look Good, Feel Good and Do Good.” 

Concurrently, The Body Shop arrange interactive areas in-store to tell customers about its fair-trade activities.

One other former worker said that despite those and other efforts, the L’Oréal and Body Shop cultures never quite gelled, and to exacerbate matters, the French beauty giant on the time was not a retailer but a brand owner. “And The Body Shop was an organization that lived and breathed retail,” the previous worker said.

The Body Shop ended up losing more luster as other retailers moved onto its sustainability turf.

“It was a really modern and interesting retailer, however it has felt boring for a few years,” said Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at GlobalData Retail. “The first problem with Body Shop is the proposition and brand not being compelling enough for consumers. This meant that sales online and in stores suffered equally.”

Richard Hyman, a partner at Thought Upsetting Consulting, agreed. “It didn’t really have any latest ideas, and didn’t effectively defend its original ones,” he said.

In 2017, when Natura & Co. purchased The Body Shop from L’Oréal at a valuation of $1.1 billion, it also had good intentions. But Natura had its own organizational and profitability worries, and didn’t really do much with the once-revolutionary British brand. 

Just five years later, in November 2023, Natura would go on to sell The Body Shop to Aurelius for an enterprise value of $254 million, roughly one-quarter of its original purchase price. 

Three months after the sale, in February, Aurelius placed The Body Shop into administration within the U.K., claiming that it couldn’t turn the business around fast enough given weak trading over the vacation season and the cost-of-living crisis within the U.K. 

Earlier that month, The Body Shop signed an agreement with an international family office to sell most of its business in mainland Europe and parts of Asia. The a part of the activity affected was reminiscent of about 14 percent of The Body Shop’s business worldwide. On the time, the corporate operated around 2,800 retail locations in greater than 70 countries.

The retailer’s U.S. operations ceased on March 1, while its Canadian subsidiary began restructuring proceedings. In France, The Body Shop’s subsidiary entered administration in early April.

As The Body Shop moved from owner to owner with nobody quite determining how one can nurture it, the sweetness industry was evolving at warp speed, with brands and entrepreneurs of each stripe tearing a page from Roddick’s playbook and specializing in social causes, sustainability and cosmetics that promised to be kind to skin and to the planet.

Still, industry experts think The Body Shop might be salvaged, a minimum of partially. 

Saunders believes the retailer “could make something of a comeback, as a much smaller entity — perhaps more focused on online and wholesale.” Nonetheless, since its U.S. operation is closing, it looks unlikely The Body Shop will probably be fully revived in that market. As a substitute, it could consider Europe and other countries abroad, especially through a franchise model.

However the going wouldn’t be easy. “Retail is under huge pressure,” Hyman said. “Consumers are less well-off and produce other spending priorities.” 

He believes The Body Shop has already turn out to be more of a brand than a retailer. “It must focus investment in its core — ie., the product,” said Hyman, who views its website as needing greater functionality and higher narratives to support the offer and highlight what makes the brand unique.

To assist rebuild The Body Shop’s emotive reference to consumers, it would consider moving away from its longstanding give attention to clean beauty, which is omnipresent, and residential in as a substitute on biotech-created products that deliver performance — and provenance, in accordance with Wizz Selvey, strategic adviser and mentor at Wizz & Co.

“This might be an area The Body Shop pivots to and educates consumers on, as there continues to be not mainstream understanding,” she said, adding sustainability might be one other of its focuses looking ahead.

“I don’t think that is the last we’ll see of The Body Shop, however it must operate, look, feel and act very in another way to survive,” Selvey said.

On the plus side, beauty has been a sturdy area of growth — for the businesses that get it right. However the query of whether or not The Body Shop can reestablish relevance with a latest generations looms large. 

“So The Body Shop’s demise says more about [itself] than the broader beauty sector,” Saunders said. “That said, it does underline how not staying connected with consumers could cause issues. Today’s market punishes those retailers that don’t make an effort to remain relevant.”

“Success in retail requires constant reinvention and investment,” he continued. “Standing still means retailers will fall back. That is the trap Body Shop fell into.”