The Passing of Anita Roddick: There Was Nothing Like This Dame

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. Posted September 11, 2007.

I lost a friend, and the world lost a visionary social activist and human rights defender this week, when Dame Anita Roddick died at age 64 from the effects of a brain hemorrhage.

Roddick, the working class British daughter of immigrants, was an unlikely global business pioneer, who as founder of the socially responsible cosmetics firm Body Shop fought to bring sustainable and ethically-sourced products to the beauty industry long before it became fashionable, earning her the sobriquet "Queen of Green."

From its humble beginning in 1976 as a single store in Brighton, England, with only fifteen products, the company grew rapidly on the strength of strong demand for both those products and Roddick's in-your-face social activism. After eight years, the company went public and franchises spread all over England, and later the world. Today there are more than two thousand Body Shop stores in 55 different markets, serving more than 77 million customers speaking 25 languages.

How did it happen? By happenstance, according to Anita, who explained it all in 1993 in Third Way Magazine:

The original Body Shop was a series of brilliant accidents. It had a great smell, it had a funky name. It was positioned between two funeral parlours -- that always caused controversy. It was incredibly sensuous. It was 1976, the year of the heatwave, so there was a lot of flesh around. We knew about storytelling then, so all the products had stories. We recycled everything, not because we were environmentally friendly but because we didn't have enough bottles. It was a good idea. What was unique about it, with no intent at all, no marketing nous, was that it translated across cultures, across geographical barriers and social structures. It wasn't a sophisticated plan, it just happened like that.

But the success of her stores was hardly an accident -- and business success was just the beginning for Anita. Although it led to great wealth (her 'net worth' reportedly topped out at more than $200 million) and high honors (in 2003, Queen Elizabeth II appointed her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire), business itself was always merely a means to an end. And the end Anita Roddick had in mind was making the world a better, fairer place for all.

We first met nearly two decades ago, at a gathering of progressive business executives called the Social Ventures Network. At the time, my Globalvision partner Danny Schechter and I were producing the not-for-profit weekly television series "South Africa Now." Naturally, the program was anti-apartheid -- after all, at the time even the president of the United States, George H.W. Bush, openly opposed the racist underpinnings of South Africa's white minority government.

Nonetheless, we were deemed "activists" instead of journalists, our position was deemed too controversial to obtain support from public broadcasting bureaucrats, and we were forced to seek funding for the program elsewhere, such as from the United Nations, foundations, and business leaders like Roddick.

For whatever reason --most likely our shared working class backgrounds -- Danny, Anita and I instantly connected on a visceral level, and we spent much of the SVN meeting talking, laughing and plotting over drinks. Anita promptly invited us to visit her in the UK, which soon led to a whirlwind but typically comprehensive tour that included a brief stay at one of her London flats, a detailed examination of Body Shop production headquarters in Littlehampton, lightning-like visits to several shops in the Midlands, and ultimately a long, wet weekend tramping through high gorse in the Scottish Highlands. Soon we became fast friends and co-conspirators.

See more stories tagged with: anit roddick, body shop

Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor writes the Media Is A Plural blog.

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