Anita Roddick (The Body Shop) Essay

Inspiring profiles and best practices for entrepreneurs Twenty-six days ago the Brighton Evening Argus ran a story on a dispute between two funeral parlour owners who were upset close a new cosmetics boutique which had opened up next door. It wasnt the nature of the vocation they were getting hot under the collar somewhat, tho its name. They vox populi the green shop front emblazoned with the words Body Shop in gold leaf might put aside prospective customers. They cherished me to change my shop front which I had just spent 870 of my 4,000 bestow on, recalls Roddick.My smart move was to call the Argus and tell them I was creation threatened by Mafia undertakers who wanted to close me bulge out. The press love it. The story of the beleaguered single mum with the house in hock toilsome to support her two kids with a bootstrapping start-up worked a treat. The small splash make Body Shop a cause celebre, won plenty of topical anaesthetic support and won an important battle t o get the transmission line off the ground. The anecdote is a small aside, recounted with a chuckle and a trace of outrage in a long interview. But although the battles got much big as Roddick grew her job into the multinational retailer it is today, anyone with even a enactment familiarity with the Body Shop story will instantly recognise the shaping characteristics of its fiery feisty founder in those early days of the business Ethical Anita versus the big bad world.There has never been any agree in Roddicks views on how business should be wear downe this is why her husband Gor tangle with was tasked with handling the City suits (they didnt like me talking nigh sexual tension at work) and why she stepped away from the business in 1998 when the shareholders said a campaigning chief executive was non what they wanted for Body Shop. You might think after thirty old age of business and the comfort of a healthy shareholding and a wedge of bills in the bank Roddicks hunger fo r campaigning might puzzle diminished. But little has changed since 1976. Her latest venture, a publishing start-up, produces books on respectable matters. It promotes her on the speaking circuit and all the profits going into campaigning. The sole(prenominal) difference is now she occupies the position of an icon for women and fe manlike entrepreneurs something I dont take lightly And there is still plenty to battle cry about when it comes to what she sees as an respectable vacuum in business today. suffocation She rails against the suffocation of UK businesses as we outsource to cheaper countries the failure to preserve the inevitably of shareholders in public companies the lack of respect for the responsibility of business to the residential area at large the ongoing need for women to conform to a male template in order to succeed the lack of recognition of the abide by that employees bring to a business. Being ethical in business is not about giving stuff away Roddick is emphatic about what this style in practice not sandals, beards and group hugs in the boardroom but the adoption of simple moral values. People use the excuse of business to leave their morals at the front door and I dont know how they get away with it.But plenty ethical business really fit in with the cut-throat world of today? Her business, she says, is keep proof. She describes Body Shop as a great business investigate which is still proving a point you can run an entrepreneurial business, bequeath a return 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 busi ness woman its because 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.