Feb 13, 2024
The Body Shop: Its rise and fall
Once a trailblazer for championing ethical trading and cruelty-free beauty, The Body Shop appears to have stayed still as rivals in the natural, clean beauty space, such as Lush or Neal's Yard Remedies, have moved ahead. So what has gone wrong? Until Dame Anita sold the business to L'Oreal, a beauty behemoth that appeared to some to be the antithesis of what The Body Shop was all about. More than 10 years later, L'Oreal decided to sell The Body Shop to Natura of Brazil for £880m. Fast-forward to November 2023, and Natura offloaded it to Aurelia for a fraction of what it paid for it. As The Body Shop was being shunted between different owners, rivals with their own natural brands were emerging. Ms Wehrle reckons: "I think what's happened over the past 20 years is a huge number of entrants have come into that sustainability, natural space that The Body Shop once solely occupied."The Body Shop itself hasn't really evolved its concepts but all its competitors have come up behind it and not only have the advantage of sustainability but some also have really beautiful branding," she said.
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