Anita Roddick (The Body Shop) Essay

Inspiring profiles and best radiation diagrams for entrepreneurs Twenty-six years ago the Brighton level Argus ran a story on a dispute between 2 funeral parlour owners who were upset about a new cosmetics dress mark which had opened up next door. It wasnt the nature of the fear they were acquire hot under the collar about, but its name. They thought the green pasture front emblazoned with the words bole wander in gold flip might put off prospective customers. They wanted me to change my shop front which I had just spent 870 of my 4,000 loan on, recalls Roddick.My smart guide was to call the Argus and tell them I was being threatened by Mafia under considerrs who wanted to close me down. The press loved it. The story of the beleaguered hotshot mum with the house in hock trying to support her two kids with a bootstrapping start-up worked a treat. The small splash made Body buy at a cause celebre, won plenty of local support and won an important battle to get the business o ff the ground. The anecdote is a small aside, recounted with a chuckle and a hint of outrage in a long interview. But although the battles got much full-sizeger as Roddick grew her business into the multinational retailer it is today, anyone with heretofore a passing familiarity with the Body cheat story will instantly recognise the defining characteristics of its fiery sore founder in those early days of the business Ethical Anita versus the big bad world.There has never been any compromise in Roddicks views on how business should be done this is why her husband Gordon was tasked with discourse the City suits (they didnt like me talking about sexual stress at work) and why she stepped away from the business in 1998 when the shareholders give tongue to a campaigning chief executive was non what they wanted for Body Shop. You might think after thirty years of business and the solacement of a healthy shareholding and a wedge of cash in the desire Roddicks hunger for campaign ing might have diminished. But subaltern has changed since 1976. Her latest venture, a publishing start-up, produces books on ethical matters. It promotes her on the harangue circuit and all the profits going into campaigning. The only difference is right away she occupies the position of an icon for women and female entrepreneurs something I dont take lightly And there is still plenty to shout about when it comes to what she sees as an ethical vacuum in business today.Suffocation She rails against the suffocation of UK businesses as we outsource to cheaper countries the failure to preserve the pauperisations of shareholders in national companies the lack of respect for the responsibility of business to the community at bounteous the ongoing need for women to conform to a male template in order to succeed the lack of recognition of the apprise that employees bring to a business. Being ethical in business is not about swelled stuff away Roddick is emphatic about what this me ans in practice not sandals, beards and group hugs in the boardroom but the adoption of saucer-eyed moral values. People use the excuse of business to leave their morality at the front door and I dont eff how they get away with it.But can ethical business in reality fit in with the cut-throat world of today? Her business, she says, is living proof. She describes Body Shop as a great business experiment which is still proving a point you can run an entrepreneurial business, provide a pass away to shareholders while campaigning on ethical issues and placing a high value on human capital. Being ethical in business is not about giving stuff away. Its about your relationship with your employees, its about the aesthetics of the workplace and its about communication, says Roddick. There is no reason why the workplace cant be a genuine creative place, why there cant be flexitime, why there cant be transparency and even good manners. If Roddick doesnt sound like a business char its bec ause she has never claimed to be one. She puts her success down to a need for a livelihood and sees herself as the accidental entrepreneur.