To wonder what happened to Body Shop?

[Handbaghag]

Where have they gone wrong? Why are their shops so dead on the high Street. They were buzzing in the 80s. Is it online shopping? Lush?

They completely lost their way, and much of their customer base when they were sold to L’Oreal

I went back after they left L'Oréal, but probably spend 75% less than I did in the past. When they sold out I had to look for alternatives and discovered that all the CoOp's own brand toiletries are BUAV approved. Why would I go back to paying a fiver for deodorant when I can get it for 89p?

The churn of discontinuation of products is a problem - another mourning Ice Blue shampoo and conditioner. Even things I've bought in the last two years seem to disappear overnight. It's no way to build brand loyalty. Can you imagine Heinz discontinuing tomato soup?

Japanese Washing Grains would sell especially well these days - totally biodegradable, no plastics dumped in the water. Renewable ingredient source.

A return to refills is long overdue.

Body Shop need to pull the schemes from 1990-98 from the archives and go retro.

Pushy staff and the stuff smells too sweet. Just seems very childish.

It used to be a pocket money shop.

I think the staff are just bored off their tits because no one ever goes in there. They just want company.

Quite possibly. It's like that scene in Toy Story where the little green aliens all swarm towards Buzz and Woody whenever you go in a store.

You could work out which year group corridor you were in in my secondary in the early 90s by smell alone - newly-pubescent BO was year 7 and 8, year 9 was dewberry central, year 10 was white musk and then year 11 was death by Lynx Africa (all girl school - but we were all soooo sophisticated drenching ourselves in the stuff - honest).

Because the fun went away. I used to love going in, now I rush in for vanilla perfume and run out again. The hard selling is awful.

I happily shopped there as a skint student in the 90s, I can't afford to now. It's far too expensive. I'm not paying £12 for a body butter.

IWasn’t the original premise that it was as free from unnecessary packaging as possible? They kept huge vats of stuff that you got refills from. Far from the case now...*

This. I have a teenage girl who has discovered body shop and it’s just another shop now.

I think i took her in firstly as she was looking for gifts, and I remembered the days of picking your basket, your coloured paper, a few bottles and a couple of those bath pearls and getting it all shrink wrapped. No more.

I too would go in far more if they went back to the days of refillables, it seems a step back to not do that anymore.

Some products are very good. Some of the discontinued ones were better.

I agree they need to go retro. That teenage market is huge.

I find it very overpriced now, I love their body butters but over £10 for not a very large pot is a rip off.

It's now owned my Natura.

I used to love the fruit scented animal soaps and the tangerine scented range which is still going. It was generally aimed at the child/teen going out shopping with your mates market. I remember when my sister spilt a whole bottle of vanilla musk in my dad's car 🤢

I can't in any good faith support MLMs, and since they started an MLM branch I stopped buying from their shops altogether.
It's also expensive for what it is, would rather spend the same amount on a brand that I prefer for better products

Its a shame but as PPs said they are overly expensive .

As a teen in the 80s we could afford their White Musk or Dewberry perfumes etc . I went in a few months ago and the prices .. I realise this is not a problem for all but on my income it is .
Not overkeen on Lush either ,
My best buy was in the sales in January . 4 Joules Bathbombs. £2 down from £6 . They were nice.

Rbee in a way, you're typifying the problem of big corporations not listening to what their customers say they want. Poster after poster has said that they don't like pushy sales assistants pouncing on them as soon as they walk through the door, so it would benefit the Body Shop to take note of that and perhaps dial back the fervour. They might be wanting to share their skin care expertise, but how do they even know that the customer has come in for skin care products and not hair, shower gel, soaps and so on?

I find it baffling that so many shops still use this sales technique when it gets such consistently negative feedback. I suppose it must work but I honestly don't know anybody who likes it!

It’s a completely different prospect to what it was in the 1980s.

Back then, what they had was unique. Boots etc. only sold toiletries that smelled of flowers or ferns etc., bubble bath and soap. The Body Shop was the only place where you could get those lovely fruity shower gels and soaps, and the perfume oil bar was a big draw too.

Even in the 1990s they still had an edge. Other retailers started copying the concepts and scents: Boots’ natural collection was almost a straight lift from TBS at the start and a few Body Shop knock-offs opened (eg a chain called Nectar, which was almost identical). However, TBS still did it better. I loved, loved their pink grapefruit glycerin soap and the fuzzy peach range: it smelled miles better than other grapefruit and peach ranges. The passion fruit gel was wonderful and I really rated those Japanese washing grains.

I didn’t care about the L’Oreal sale. By the time that happened, TBS was already looking a bit old hat. It could have been updated well and thrived, but instead it turned into a dull, generic beauty shop, obsessed with pushing the wretched body butter, with nothing special about it.

By that time, Boots, Superdrug, M&S etc had really upped their game and were making stuff that was as good, for less money. TBS just didn’t compete or innovate.

@Rbee1574 I work for the Tube and we are encouraged by managers to approach people and ask if they need help (customer satisfaction surveys on which performance related pay is calculated) and it is cringy every single time when the customer looks embarrassed and mumbles "no, I'm ok". It just turns awkward. I am often slinking away after the exchange feeling stupid (I have social anxiety which doesn't help). British shoppers/service users like to browse and figure things out for themselves, mostly. If they need help, they will ask.

I have been in Body Shops in Bromley and Brighton, both are usually empty.

@sunnybeachtime Out of interest, why do companies force the staff to be so intrusive?

Because someone in management (who will probably never have worked on a shop floor in their life) has decided that this makes for good customer service. The staff hate it, customers hate it (an acknowledgment of my existence in the shop is fine, as is being in hand if I need to ask a question but other than that leave me the fuck alone) but someone in Head Office (or possibly a consultant brought in) had a module on their management training course about staff interaction and has decided that an American-style more-is-better is the way to go. These people are idiots and don’t realise that they actually drive customers away.

You know, thinking about it I actually by a lot of skin care products and makeup from Waitrose, not because they are the best but because I can have a look a round at different things without being bothered, take my time to decide what I want, pick things up then put them back without anybody watching.

I think it might be THE most important thing to me when shopping!

@movingintherightdirection I hope you show this thread to your Head Office colleagues - there’s all the free market research you could ever want here!

Daffodil - the americanisation of shopping is so accurate.

Someone coming over immediately to hassle me/say hello makes me think:

1. The shop is desperate for sales, so the stuff must be shit and not selling
2. This random person is desperate for my custom, and will watch me to see if I buy anything
3. They will be annoyed if I browse and don't buy anything, so I'll just leave now and avoid the awkwardness

A lot of comments on here make me wonder why Sephora was never successful in the U.K. I know they were in slightly odd locations but you can browse and sample different cosmetics (not kept behind counters like here) and you’re left alone for as long as you want.

1. staff is on an almost illegal low wage and gets commission

I stopped shopping there when she sold out to L'Oreal as we don't buy Nestle. I've also had a couple of bits, a scrub and a body butter bought for me as gifts which, when they tried to buy the same again as I'd liked them, were no longer produced. If they stop making something in the time it takes you to use one product, you're not going to get people's repeat trade. They also need to do more about the "we're no longer Nestle" thing. I didn't know they'd been sold on.

Hi,

When and where(which branch) did you find 40% off? The max I ever got was 30% off.

Looking forward to your reply.