An article headline on The Independent's website described Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop chain, as a "capitalist with a conscience." Dame Anita passed away yesterday from a brain hemorrhage leaving others to reflect on her legacy in the retailing and consumer products world.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described her in a BBC report as one of that "country's true pioneers" and someone who "campaigned for green issues for many years before it became fashionable to do so and inspired millions to the cause by bringing sustainable products to a mass market."
Dame Anita spoke of her start in business as a means "to create a livelihood for myself and my daughters, while Gordon (her husband), was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience ... 30 years on, The Body Shop is a multi local business with over 2045 stores serving more than 77 million customers in 51 different markets in 25 different languages and across 12 time zones."
Some saw Dame Anita's decision to sell the Body Shop chain to L'Oreal last year as an abandonment of the principles on which she founded the business.
While she understood the criticism, she refused to accept its premise. She wrote in March of 2006, "I do not believe that L'Oreal will compromise the ethics of The Body Shop. That is after all what they are paying for and they are too intelligent to mess with our DNA. ??But it is also the way the world is going. And if it is going that way, with customers and staff alike demanding more than the misery of the bottom line, it is doing so partly because of what we - founder, staff and customers old and new - have been doing at The Body Shop all these years."
Dame Anita was 64.
Discussion Question: What do you see as Anita Roddick's retailing and consumer products legacy?