What has happened to Body Shop?

[puddingsforsandy]

Yes I know it was sold off a long time ago but it's unrecognisable in terms of products and prices. Half of the stuff I used to buy years ago like their body butter and perfume oil have really gone up in price. The perfume oil must have changed ingredients as the smell is so weak compared to a few years ago. Their makeup is Mac prices.

The sale stuff are rubbish and still expensive.

Does anyone here still shop there?

Oh oh I just remembered the bath pearls!! Oh, to be young again

SauceForTheGander Sun 05-Jan-14 15:40:11
I hadn't appreciated the nestle link to L'oreal

That is the very opposite of what Anita stood for

But she was very happy to sell to them. It made me loose respect for her and wonder just how much of what she did she really believed in, or whether it was a cynical marketing ploy.

Yes Red I agree

I'm actually quite surprised they are still going (store based). The store in the centre where I shop is always pretty empty, and even at Xmas with the crowds this store was really quiet. I just don't think it's "special" enough anymore to demand the prices it does. Ethically, quality wise and even packaging. You can go and buy far superior products for those prices at MAC/origins/Clinique.

There is zero originality in the products now.

I was a teen in the 80's. I remember Elizabethan bath balls, milk baths (in a lovely cotton bag) great henna powders.

Fantastic shampoo...

I could list things all day

Nothing interesting to temp me with these days.

The Body Shop seems expensive but that is offset by the constant half price sales. I love their cleansing balm and their Vitamin E cream as well as their body butters. I pick these up a few at a time every few months during one of their flash sales.

Wouldn't dream of paying full price.

The other issue is we all grew up and realised that dewberry was a fucking horrible smell.

It's all gone to rubbish nowadays.

50% and other offers always available online, so wonder if they can't get rid of the stuff, though it just seems realistically priced with discount.

Stores are awful. Staff on the hard sell, up sell, and trying to flog those loyalty cards (even after I told them, no thank you, and I shop there once in a blue moon).

The body shop now is so far removed from what it once was.

Many of the good products are no more and it is way over priced.

I miss the japanese facial scrub grain thingy, strawberry body wash/bath cream and many others. Used to love the old perfume oil bar too.

As a teenager I used to love the body shop, however two years ago I went in and spent a considerable amount on bubble baths etc only to find it bought my skin out in a terrible rash and I cant use it anymore

Yes, Dewberry was awful, as was the vanilla scent.

Haha Red, Dewberry was Ming!!!

Dewberry perfume- happy memories

The sales staff in my local store are incredibly pushy. It's a small shop and they pounce the second you walk in and then lurk constantly (and it's not cos I look like a shop lifter )

I think it's had it's day.

Does anybody remember the small bits section they used to have?

It was quite a large shelf area with plastic dividers and things like strawberry shaped pouches of bubble bath, black head removers, nail brushes, powder paper, tins of watermelon lip balm,miniatures of the perfumes.

And how they used to set out the perfumes on the round shelf with the glass dipping things

I get so many 'sale offers' emails from The Body Shop now that I cynically assume the full price pricing is somewhat inflated to take into account the reductions they seem to offer year-round to internet customers.

White Musk is still a lovely comforting fragrance, and I wish they'd bring back the old Rose Musk too, but sadly I agree that they've fallen somewhere between the teens at Lush*, and the nostalgia-driven older shoppers, who have different requirements/expectations in their 30s.

• still Cosmetics to Go to me...

The only thing I've ever bought in there is perfume oil (Japanese Musk) but I've stopped because the smell became weak about 3yrs ago.

I'm glad you mentioned it OP because I really thought it was just me!

Yes, sock I do...

That is how I will choose to always remember it

I loved the perfume oil bar! I bet the shop assistants hated it though - how hard must it have been to pour that nuclear reactive oil into teeny tiny 'I'll just have the littlest bottle, please. And yes, the plastic one, not the spendy glass one, thanks.' No wonder the glass dispensing bottles were all crusty and gloopy.

Might be rose musk tinted spectacles but the old Vanilla Body Shop smell was much softer and rounder than the current industrial Magic Tree version. Loved that, and the strawberry one too. I've got some Mango perfume oil on my old dresser back at my mum's house. I'm surprised it hasn't burned its way down to the cupboard over the years. That stuff was so strong you could smell it from the other end of the science block/dining room/netball court.

I had that 'mostly musk' perfume oil.

I used to alternate that with benetton 'colours'

I'm not that old

I don't understand what the point of Body Shop is anymore

I liked them when they had ethics, bath pearl thingies, animal soaps...

I loved the Body Shop in my teens and twenties. Rosewater and glycerin moisturiser (lovely pale pink colour), pineapple facial wash in a big white tub, Waves of White Musk perfume and bath oil... I have a friend who wore Rose Musk and always smelled lovely. For years I did all my Christmas shopping for friends and sisters there.

Haven't been in for years.

I converted to Cosmetics to Go in the late 90s, which went bust and then emerged as Lush with a much reduced range. I'd love to be able to buy Bere Regis shower gel again.

Anita Roddick and Mark Constantine from Lush used to work together in the dim and distant past when Body Shop was great and Cosmetics to Go was new. They shared some of the formulas so you can still find some old style BS products at Lush, eg the Charity Pot and a couple of the moisturisers spring to mind.
I used to love shopping there when I was a teenager, with the magical glass bottles of exotic perfumes and cute animal soaps.

They've never been cheap. Even in the 80s, it was over £1 for a tiny bottle of shampoo or shower gel.

I loved Dewberry perfume and Japanese washing grains