Anita Roddick – The Role Model For a Woman Entrepreneur

Anita Roddick is one of the most exciting and inspiring of the women entrepreneurs. Her biography and her books are a wonderful reading for a woman entrepreneur. Having founded The Body Shop as a business unusual, she managed to grow her business to a large multinational company present in more than 50 countries of the world. She did not sacrifice her personal principles on the way of her business becoming multinational. On the contrary, she managed to maintain the original core of The Body Shop as a business with principles.

The Body Shop opened in Brighton in March 1976. The approach to business was determined by the shortage of money. The design of the logo had to be cheap, the friends helped Anita with filling the bottles and handwriting the labels. The cheapest bottles Anita could find, were the plastic containers used by the hospitals to collect samples. Because there was no money to buy enough bottles, the customers were offered to refill the empty containers. Refilling, reusing and recycling became the company’s way of life even before it became fashionable elsewhere.

Anita’s business approach was: doing the research to see what the competition is doing and then see what can be done to be different. The Body Shop became a different kind of business: business drawn to innovation and creativity, instead of the commonly used principles of marketing and organization.

The Body Shop became famous for its green color and “green” policy. At the time it was founded, however, this color was the only means to cover the damp, mouldy walls of Anita’s first shop.

Anita’s ambitions as an entrepreneur were also different.

“I have no interest in The Body Shop being the biggest, the most profitable or the largest retailer. I just want The Body Shop to be the best, most breathlessly exciting company – and one that changes the way business is carried out.”
– Anita Roddick.

After 30 years, The Body Shop had become a multinational business with over 2.045 stores in 51 countries of the world.

In 2006, The Body Shop was sold to L’Oreal Cosmetics for 130 million pounds. Anita Roddick donated 30 million pounds to her charity foundation.

In contradiction to the common opinion about the famous entrepreneurs, Roddick had never had a goal about making millions of dollars profits. She was convinced, that the greatest entrepreneurs had never been money driven. It is there vision and their desire to make it come true, that bring them to the top.