Body And Soul -- The Body Shop Sells A Cause

It was April 1984 and The Body Shop was going public.

Traded on the Unlisted Securities Market in London, the shares opened at 95 pence ($1.35 U.S.) and closed at 1.65 pounds ($2.34 U.S.).

Anita Roddick, a relic of the 1960s hippie movement who founded the natural hair- and skin-care products company in 1975, stood in the stock exchange, watching the traders cheer as her company's stock climbed higher and higher.

"I couldn't take it all in," she recalls, in her recently released biography, "Body and Soul." "We (she and her husband, Gordon, a one-time poet) were millionaires, but neither of us could really grasp that notion as being a measure of success."

Even today, Roddick says money is not important to her. What is important is the status and the power that comes with it, she said yesterday. That power enables companies to force social change. Roddick was in town to promote her book.

Today, The Body Shop is an international business with sales of $378 million and pre-tax profits of $33 million last year. It has 620 stores, including 54 in the U.S.; its first Seattle-area store opened last year in Bellevue Square.

But Roddick believes that companies should be measured not only by their ability to earn increasing sales and profits but also by their ability to make life better for people around the world - creating work opportunities in underdeveloped nations, for example, and protecting the environment.

Roddick didn't want to talk much about The Body Shop's financial success. Instead, she exuberantly described programs in her company to replace cardboard with wire baskets and to recycle plastic bottles into such things as highway construction cones, plastic combs and hair brushes.

From a massive attache case, she produced copies of an "environmental audit" that evaluates The Body Shop's performance in areas such as recycling and electrical conservation.

The company's annual report has a balance sheet, but it's also filled with pictures of The Body Shop's "Trade Not Aid" projects: a soap-manufacturing plant in a Glasgow slum, a paper factory in a Nepalese village and an oil-extracting press developed in a Brazilian village in which workers harvest nuts from rain-forest trees in an effort to save the forests from destruction.

Roddick believes that companies must assume some social responsibility. International trade, she said, can affect world poverty, security and ultimately the environment.

"It seems that, in the business world, people are frightened to embark on social programs," she said. "They see them as an economic drain."

But, Roddick says, The Body's Shop's success proves that a company can both make money for investors and help change the world.

In many ways, "Body and Soul" shows how.

The book, written with the help of a ghost-writer, came about because British publishers were eager to pay "great royalties," Roddick admits. At the time, she was looking for some "ready cash" to donate to such causes as a medical foundation that aids torture victims and an organization that speaks on behalf of un-represented ethnic groups like the Kurds.

Roddick says the book is aimed at telling the story of The Body Shop to the company's thousands of employees and franchisees. But in doing so, the book reveals the basic business plan on which the company was built.

At first glance, readers, accustomed to more traditional entrepreneurial success tales, may react to "Body and Soul" with shock. Her experiences among the Kayapo tribe in Brazil and the Nyinba tribe of Nepal are earthy and enlightening - more the stuff of travel books than business journals.

Also, in Roddick's book, brightly colored slogans scream out from the pages - "Against Animal Testing," for example, and "Stop the Burning" (in protest of rain-forest destruction).

But beyond these political statements, Roddick's message is simple. When it comes to basic merchandise trading, she is no different from any other entrepreneur. And The Body Shop, like any business, was built not on luck but on hard work and perseverance.

To get a bank loan, Roddick had to put up as collateral a hotel she and her husband owned. She worked seven days a week and calls herself extremely lucky because her mother lived nearby and could care for her two young daughters.

And although The Body Shop opened at a time when British shoppers were receptive to natural cosmetics, Roddick still had to work hard to lure customers.

Companies that want to follow The Body Shop's lead can start with what Roddick calls an environmental audit.

"Bring in an independent auditor, perhaps someone who has been an adviser or has ties to the environmental community, and audit each department. Then, appoint one person in each department to be responsible for making changes to comply with the audit."

The Body Shop undergoes an audit every six months. From it, Roddick says the company has developed an electrical system that causes lights to go on when a person enters a room and go off when they leave - saving energy.

It also has built a waste barn to treat water polluted through the company's cosmetic-making process and has replaced gas-guzzling company cars with more fuel-efficient models.