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?

On the other hand, I wouldn’t use anything from Lush if you paid me. Even passing the shop makes me wheezy.

Agree - Lush is grim!

@ ravioli not sure if you've tried it but there is an almond milk and honey range? Off to bed now, up in 6 hours .

Thank you @Fruityb ! Sadly BS will never drop MLM because it’s a lucrative stream for them (at the expense of the individual Hun).

Movinin any chance BS will end their product based pyramid scheme in the interests of better ethics?!

They really need to see the way the world has moved on.

If they relaunched with a range of refillable products, little soaps and old scents like Fuzzy Peach then I think people would fall over themselves for it.

They completely lost their way, and much of their customer base when they were sold to L’Oreal. I haven’t set foot in one since.

As a teen I used to spend hours in there. And all girls got at least one gift basket as a present.

I haven't quite forgiven them for getting rid of the lemon body butter. Really worked on my dry skin without leaving me smelling like a boiled sweet.
I do like peppermint foot cream, aloe moisturiser, shea body butter and camomile oil cleanser.
Please, please bring back the passion fruit cleansing gel. 🙏🏽🙏🏽

movingintherightdirection - it's not the same But that's okay now CorBlimeyGovenor will see me right come January with everyone's unwanted Christmas presents!

So a little info to share.

Anita sold to Loreal to infiltrate. To act like a trojan horse. To some extent she made significant impact.

The "mlm" side...The Body Shop At Home had actually been around for 25 years, it's just that arm of the business has grown massively.
When you look into their business results, the at home business is its strongest sales distribution

Australia is growing massively and Natura, the new owners are Investing and actually in negotiations to also Buy Avon too.

I became a Body Shop fan when they campaigned with green peace for "save the whale" that was an incredible campaign. I was around 9 yrs old.

Last year BODY SHOP worked close with Cruelty Free to take animal testing ban to the United Nations.

This year they have launched their plastics for change campaign where by the end of 2020, all plastics will come from.recycled plastic washed up in India.

This is a global first and they are educating others around the world on this.

Currently teamed up with "bloody good period" a charity which wants to see no woman in the UK unable to purchase sanitary towels. Liverpool is statistically the worse place in this country for women in desperate need for sanitry towels and unable to afford them

In this day and age, that's awful

The activism days of the body shop where shut down when wonder by loreal and they were "silenced"

It's clear to see that Anita's Legancy is well and truly back and on the up again.

The brand is a lot more ethical than you realise.

P.s.....the guy who started Lush, used to be a business partner of Anita Roddick. Funny how things work out

I have been reading this thread and reminiscing about buying animal shaped soaps which I collected.

I loved going around the shop sniffing soaps and learning about animal testing and the animals in danger.

I used to buy the Grapefruit shampoo, the Orange and Wheat spray conditioner and the Face scrub in the little cardboard tube regularly and a few other things from time to time.

I stopped buying the eye shadows because they changed colour and kind of vanished but the items above were discontinued, and that is when I stopped shopping there because the replacements were unpleasant and left a film on my hair and scalp and I can make my own face scrub which is the same thing as the Body Shop one.

L'Oreal issue didn't encourage me to go back either so that was it for me. Can't bear the smell of Lush.

I used to buy those little oil balls and miniature bottles of stuff with my sparse amount of silly money.

Ex-BS employee too, hi. Customers asked daily for the return of: unscented shower gels, Earth Lovers range or more SLS and silicone free, perfume oil bar, specifically Mostly Musk-had a Facebook page asking for it back-Roma,Dewberry,Fuzzy Peach,Ananya, the original strawberry oil and yes to REFILLS! Also passion fruit cleanser, ice blue shampoo, Japanese washing grains, better range of sizes mentioned daily. Bath pearls fondly mentioned! Hope that’s helpful to head office. Would hate to see the demise as predicted here, still a customer! Anyone remember liquorice bath bubbles?

Japenese washing grains!

Japanese washing grains were brilliant.

Haven’t bought anything there since they sold to L’Oréal years ago.
I always research which companies and products are definitely cruelty free.

Being made to feel like a criminal when you go in. Last time I went I was pounced on 3 times within 3 minutes. That said, their aloe vera cleanser and toner is the only thing that keeps my rosacea under control and there are often three for two offers on. If you know a student get them to order it for you through UNiDAYS (a student discount app).

Brazil nut body butter was my favourite but has been discontinued. The almond one was good too.
They were quite expensive when I was last in the Body Shop to buy them , and at the same time Boots, Superdrug and then the supermarkets started producing body butters that were nearly as good and quite a bit cheaper so I switched. I have an M+S one sitting on my bedside table- it's half the price of the Body Shop ones.

Refills might get me to go back and also could hook a new generation of younger customers too....going in for refills could be the new cool thing to do. Or whatever the word for cool is now :-)

Dewberry perfume, kiwi palm, bath pearls, banana conditioner - my youth! I also used to love the oil blotting sheets they did, they smelled lovely and helped my oily skin to look less greasy. I had a few of the cotton bags as well as a teen, it's a shame that it has gone downhill. The scents now are limited and rubbish.

Everyone fainted from the smell

Dewberry anything ARRRGH, that's my second-most hated smell after the smell of fucking rice cakes.

That ice blue shampoo...I remember it well. It was the best thing out there to get the accumulated spot, sweat and grime caused by a day on a steam locomotive footplate out in only two passes.

Anyone remember getting the tube in the morning when EVERYONE smelt of Body Shop Dewberry 🤢?
The return journey was better when everyone smelt of sweat

Forgot to add, I bought DH their hemp butter when he was on chemo because his skin was really flaky. It worked a treat and isn't greasy. So they do still sell some hidden gems!

Also if BSHQ are taking requests, forgot to add the Linco beer shampoo sachets, cooling leg gel (my nan used to love it for cooling down her varicose veins), and yes to the perfume oils where you could mix your own!

@DanielRicciardosSmile (& indeed anyone else plagued with unwanted unguents) -
If you’ve not binned your body butter mountain/you find yourself with a new one this Christmas, Give And Make Up is a project donating unwanted toiletries to women’s shelters in Wales (it’s been so successful that the London side of things hasn’t been accepting donations for a while now). There’s also a link on that page explaining how you can donate to a local shelter if you’d rather. Definitely preferable to binning it.

I too miss the Body Shop of my youth I could never bring myself to actually use the cute wee animal-shaped soaps, but having eco-minded parents meant that most of our bath stuff came from there. Ice Blue Shampoo was what I graduated to from baby shampoo... Does anyone else remember the range of stuff they did in the mid-late 1990s that smelled like sweets? I think there was a Cola shower gel (or maybe bubble bath) & then a marshmallow SOMETHING, which had & know I loved... I think it was moisturiser?

Return of refillable bottles; starting to do bar shampoos & returning to offering range bar soaps; & ofc making use social media platforms (as well as some form totally voluntary non-harrassy in-store way of polling customers) to get people to tell them which products they’d like to see make a comeback... surely all that = good business sense in current climate? If they managed it right they could get a huge amount of people engaging - positively - with the brand for minimal outlay...
@movingintherightdirection - please let your bosses know that my genius is available in exchange for a reasonable amount of Body Shop products...

Heatup165 l'Oreal sold The Body shop in 2017.