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A number of years ago Anita Roddick - founder of Body Shop International published her autobiography – ‘Body and Soul’. If one quote within it could typify its author, it is perhaps this: ‘Show me a company with itzy-bitzy vision and I’ll show you an itzy-bitzy company’.

It is a sentiment that Roddick certainly seems to have acted on. The vision that prompted Roddick’s success was profound and is still in evidence today. Business and lifestyle concepts are spun into a coherent web. There is integrity here and despite her critics – and whoever put up a statue to a critic – her vision has stood the test of time.

The themes of the Roddick vision are first vision itself – a sense of purpose; not merely travelling but travelling hopefully and making use of the time along the way. Another strand to the web is social responsibility in business (a practically unheard of concept when Roddick opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976). However, consciously or sub-consciously, the vision of the first Body Shop extended social responsibility to customers, animals and the environment. From there it was a logical step to campaign actively for the values the business believed in and indeed to involvement in many other campaigns as well.

The resulting journey has been fast and eventful, at times uncomfortable. There have been steps back as well as leaps forward. But there is no doubt whatsoever about Anita Roddick’s status as a pioneer, someone who stimulates others to try even harder. She has brought an icebreaker to the frozen and hostile sea of business ethics and cut a channel for the world to follow.

How was it done? How was the vision made? What are the lessons? The history is simple. Anita Roddick was simply irritated that you couldn’t buy natural, inexpensive cosmetics of the kind that she had seen on her travels around the globe. ‘Why were cosmetics considered luxuries and packaged so expensively and wastefully?’ she asked herself. Always a doer, and full of energy which she put down to an Italian heritage and a love of tomatoes, she realised that the only way of providing what she and other young women were wanting was to provide it themselves.

And she did. Her conventional business skills were non-existent. If this had not been the case she would not have surrendered half her company in order to expand. But without this happy accident the Body Shop most likely would have been no more than a footnote in the commercial history of Brighton. Convention is frequently wrong.

The rest, as they say, is history. With 1000 retail outlets in 40 countries the Body Shop has kept its vision. The Company Foundation is a major donor to charities. The Body Shop has now inaugurated a major International Human Rights Award. The prize of $300,000 has this year been divided between four projects in India, Central America, West Africa and Brazil. More details of Body Shop International and the Human Rights Awards can be found at http://www.the-body-shop.com

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