We Do It Our Way

What we do take seriously is our product development. Here we have one rule of thumb--go in the opposite direction of the cosmetic industry. We do not market our products as if they were the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We do not want to take part in what Helena Rubenstein calls the nastiest business in the world, and also the most racist. Tell me when you've seen an Indian or a black person on the cover of a beauty magazine. We don't want to be part of creating needs that don't exist, trying to seduce the customer into believing this makes your breasts larger or your thighs thinner.

I have never met a cosmetic scientist who is 50 years old that looks 20 or even 10 years younger. There is no one ingredient that I'm aware of that alleviates stress, grief or anger, or happiness. It's just puffery and we want no part of it.

We travel to cultures and to communities picking up materials and anecdotal ideas that fuel the electricity and passion in the shops.

We use no photographic images, just illustrations and graphics, and we don't advertise. Advertising is like a monologue. We create dialogue, create conversations. We let the customers spread the word by word-of-mouth to their friends and neighbours. All we want to be High Profile in is the community--it is better than outspending the competition. Dior spends $40 million to launch.

The clue to The Body Shop's success is the way we view our employees. They are expected to inform and educate our customers, if asked, about the products and vision of the Company. They are there to answer questions with humorous anecdotes, videos, graphics and the light touch.

Our staff are mostly young, mostly under 30, whose ethics are care. For them, their work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishing rather than torpor. They are looking for leadership that has vision. And if you have a company that has an itsy-bitsy vision you have an itsy-bitsy company. You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers. The only thing the young understand is behaviour. In our company we don't preach--we may cajole and beg, but we behave. You have to live the message.

They are saying they want a job that values them more than the gross national product, they want work that engages the heart as well as mind and body. They want something in their life to believe in, not only to invest in. They want to be inherent in the process, to be told what is going on, to be listened to.

Franchise Selection

And who spreads the word better than the franchisees. How we select is curious and bizarre. But it gives them a clue into what we are about. What we care about. Do we only care about our growth and profits? Isn't it more important to know what we are building with our growth and why? And here is the greatest challenge for our franchisees. Measuring more is easy, measuring better is hard. Measuring better requires value.

All we are doing is setting up little micro enterprises that benefit the community, to trade honourably. In short, to do just what Mahatma Gandhi said: "Whenever you are in doubt apply the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him a control over his own life and destiny?"

I spend a lot of time in Nepal, which is a sexy country for the aid industry, and there we have set up a perfect grass roots micro enterprise project.

Communication Windows

What we know and what we think comes in five different ways. Words, pictures, actions, deeds, what we see and what we hear. Nothing, but nothing, is more central to The Body Shops' success than our ability to communicate in these ways. It doesn't matter one hoot how much you know about your company if you cannot communicate to your people. In that event, you're not even a failure.

We believe shop windows are one of the most important factors in determining the image of our company--almost more than the product--we use poetry, great thoughts, and often they are controversial--enough to be a topic of talk.

We go onto the highway with our messages--moving billboards. What we do well is communication with passion because passion persuades. We also know in this decade, to educate and communicate you have to be daring, enlivening and different.

Body Shops all around the world (except for Austria) are involved in community action. They do it on company time. Each shop makes its choice. What is required is a new kind of civic culture for which there is no precedent, no books written about it.

A culture in which people don't only ask themselves how much time was spent work this week on job, family or leisure, but also how much time was spent on civic duties. People don't want to escape responsibility. They understand to be a human being is to be in a state of responsibility.

Soapworks is an example of a moral decision. I could have set this project up in a safe suburban industrial park. By investing in one of the worst areas of housing and unemployment in England, Easterhouse was a moral choice. I would rather employ the unemployable in Easterhouse than the already employed in West Sussex And the fact we are putting 25 per cent of the profits made in Easterhouse back into the community is another moral choice. It is better for my company. It keeps the soul of my company alive to have such examples. Not one shareholder has complained.

When I visited the Wodaabe Tribe in the Sahal they had never heard of the word desertification but they knew better than anyone that their soil was exhausted. They, too, were living out the experience.

All we want to do in our campaigns is humanize the issue, we are not here as an authority. We are here to attract attention, by the window posters, and start the educational process, through the leaflets we print or the videos we make. The customers or passers-by then make an educated choice. It is simply a new form of public education where the shops are arenas of education for social and environmental issues. During the last seven years we have had campaigns with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Survival International and Cultural Survival on such issues as the ozone, acid rain, recycling and the rainforests.

Our resources plus the audience of millions passing by on the pavement and through the shops have forced consciousness. Consciousness-raising has become part of our language.

Democracy is not a spectator sport, but you wouldn't know it judging by levels of citizen participation today. Too many of us just don't get involved. Some say it's apathy. I don't. People want to clean up the environment, they want to support human rights They just don't believe they can make a difference, they aren't aware of their responsibilities or they just don't know how to act.

"Most of you know that our bureaucracies, our policymakers--the people who govern us--are not at their best, nor do they actually want to be when left to their own devices. The citizen's job is to keep his mouth open. This I need not explain to anyone and I personally believe this country has failed to educate its civilians on their duties and opportunities for participation.

What we have found with our campaigns and activities is you don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. You seize common occasions and you make them great. You find the simple effective ways for people to make a difference and you make them exhilarating.

The Body Shop is no more than an experiment founded on principles. If we ever become like those giant corporations, our experience will have failed. In our experience, we are looking to show other people that you can run a business differently from the way most business is done; you can share prosperity with your employees without being in fear of them. You can rewrite the book on how a company interacts with the community, the book on Third World trade and global responsibility, on the ole of educating the company customers and shareholders without losing your sense of joy.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Sarah Band, Retailer, Owner of Bianco Plus, and Past President of The Empire Club of Canada.