Maria Ochoa
Brian Pujada
Melissa Adewunmi
Anna Bochkareva
Karen Rosario
Rutgers Business School
Carmen L Bonilla
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The Body Shop was founded with a vision to embody social responsibility and ethics. Founder Dame Anita Roddick was committed to making The Body Shop cruelty-free and environmentally conscious.
When The Body Shop started, the idea of having a business do good for the community was rare, but “over the years, more and more businesses have become purpose-led or values-driven. It has become part of their fabric to demonstrate that you can make a positive contribution to society" (Shatzman, 2017).
In 2017, The Body Shop was sold to Natura, an ethical Brazilian cosmetics company and also a cruelty-free brand. This change has allowed The Body Shop to think about the impact they wanted to make globally. Their blueprint to make a social and environmental impact in the world can be found in their 2017 Sustainability Report.
The Body Shop’s goal has always been to improve their quality of cosmetic products by making strides in creating and implementing innovations that can be beneficial to the world. The motivation for The Body Shop was to show that a company’s only aim should not be making the most profit but rather they should focus on being sustainable and ethical.
The Body Shop’s innovation became possible thanks to the British entrepreneur, Dame Anita Roddick, who was a firm believer that a business can be ethical and profitable at the same time. She was an inspirational leader striving to show that a business can be a powerful tool to change society. With a new business model, The Body Shop’s leader could make these changes happen.
Although animal testing was commonplace at the time she started a business, she meant to put an end to the cruel practices. A Fair Trade, which had never been a common practice before, meant to bring the labor exploitation to a stop and became an essential part of The Body Shop’s innovative business model.
The company’s ethical sourcing was communicated to its internal stakeholders, farmers, and producers in developing countries as an opportunity to get involved in producing ingredients for the company’s products and strongly benefit from the fair deals. The Body Shop’s natural, ethically sourced, and cruelty-free products were communicated to its external stakeholders as an alternative to conventional beauty products. The Body Shop managed to establish customer’s trust by being completely transparent regarding how their products are made and tested.
The Body Shop can be linked to multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals. The company makes a significant contribution to the decent work and economic growth while sourcing the raw materials by providing jobs to people in developing countries so that they can avoid unethical occupations (#8).
Thousands of people in communities receive a source of income by getting involved in Fair Trade with The Body Shop and can break away from poverty (#1). In addition to the significant business activity, the company supports health and education projects for producers who otherwise would not have access to these benefits (#3 and #4). The Body Shop was able to secure raw materials and labor as the resource for their business by making the sourcing process ethical and mutually beneficial for the company and producers from developing countries involved in the Fair Trade program. Focused on the environmentally friendly sourcing, The Body Shop secures the resources also for the long run using them wisely and enhances areas of biodiversity by preventing disruption to them.
During the interview, Store Manager Aaron Switzer-Perez mentioned, “the company never stops until they get to the goal."
Mateo, Keyholder at the same store, mentioned that what inspires him most about innovations to continue reducing waste in packages is to replace many things with glass jars. When we visited the store, we noticed many tester displays of glassware. Mateo mentioned that the shop looks much more upscale, higher-end and it looks excellent for marketing material. The innovations and changes that are occurring are happening very fast, and they both like that they are a part of a brand that is committed to its goals.
Christopher Davis, The Body Shop Director of International Corporate Responsibility and Campaigns, stated that their “long-term goal is to be the world’s most ethical, sustainable business" (Bonanno, 2018). In The Body Shop Sustainability Report of 2017, they have a set of short-term target goals for 2020. One of their target goals for 2020 is ensuring that 100% of their ingredients are traceable and sustainable. They also want to reduce their environmental footprint by another 3%. The Body Shop is committed to getting 8 Million people engaged in their Forever Against Animal Testing Campaign by 2020. The Body Shop is not only focused on enriching their product, but also “their people.” By 2020, their goal is to help 40,000 economically vulnerable people. The company also plans to invest 250,000 volunteer hours enriching local communities. Finally, yet importantly, The Body Shop also focus and is committed to the enrichment of the planet. They plan to reduce their total energy use by 10% and power all stores with renewable or carbon-balanced energy. Most importantly, their goal is to protect 75 million square meters of habitat by 2020. The Body Shop’s alliance with Natura has given the opportunity to continue innovating to reach their ultimate goal.
Near the end of 2017, Davis mentioned in an interview with Ethical Corporation that the switch to Natura would lead the company back to its “activist roots.” The constant effort towards having that social impact is evident in numerous endeavors. To start 2018, The Body Shop helped organize the first-ever animal protest outside of the UN in NYC. As mentioned previously, they obtained 8.3 million signatures for a petition to ban cosmetic animal testing. In July, they also directed proceeds from sales of their charcoal masks to the Red Panda Network in order to plant hundreds of bamboo trees for the struggling red panda population. Also in July, they released a brand new line of vegan and cruelty-free banana body care, which is just another example of the innovative efforts that the company is constantly churning out. The Body Shop also received the Responsible Retailer Initiative of the Year award from the annual World Retail Awards, which acknowledges that their impact has been witnessed all over the world.
While The Body Shop is an expanding global company, recently they opened in Bangladesh adding a “70th market” to the brand’s global reach, the impact from its local stores are still helping to make a difference. Mateo mentioned that portions of sales are constantly being “donated to charities all the time” and that the company “isn’t just focused on business, but you (people) too.” Aaron also mentioned The Body Shop’s focus on reworking the packaging of its products, with “shifts towards less cardboard” and minimizing the usage of other wasteful materials “that can be harmful to the environment.”
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Aaron Switzer-Perez, Store Manager
An innovation that The Body Shop has implemented is to reduce the use of fossil fuels in their product packaging, and they have managed to have 55 % of the product packaging to be fossil fuel-free in 2017 according to their 2017 Sustainability report.
The Body Shop also has created a business innovation that has made a substantial impact on members of the communities that are involved in the production of ingredients used in The Body Shop’s products through their Community Trade program. The Body Shop has made an effort to stay committed to putting an end to animal testing in cosmetics worldwide by creating The Body Shop’s Forever Against Animal Testing petition with the goal of garnering 8 million signatures in hopes of implementing an international agreement with the help of the United Nations.