The Body Shop

[thursdaygrumbles]

Reading the news today, the body shop was bought recently. They’ve just announced that it’s gone into administration.

What the hell, is this a tax dodge, asset stripping or something else?

every company has to do it’s due diligence, the financial position would have been very clear, banks would have to sign off on it.

It just sounds so dodgy, can anyone enlighten me on why they would have done this so soon after buying it

Like many others here I’m in my 50s now and the Body Shop was an absolute staple for my pals and I in the 80s and early 90s, especially as I was a passionate environmentalist as well. Their ethics and products were new and exciting and affordable. The rot set in when Roddick sold out to L’Oreal and…well. Pretty much every move they’ve made since has been utterly disastrous, the finale being their bizarre alienation of their absolute core customers, adult human females, with the JKR fiasco.
I feel sorry for their shop staff but this has been on the cards for a very long time now.

The Hemp hand cream was the best. Then they reformulated it (along with most of their products) and it went to shit.

Literally these days no company ever reformulates anything because they are actually making improvements to the product. They're doing it to save money. And often parading the reformulation because they're 'going Vegan' when in reality they're removing naturally occurring moisturisers and ingredients with fake chemical ones.

L'Occitane reformulated their amazing immortelle divine face cream in the yellow jar that is been using for years. It's awful now. My face feels dry after using it.

My favourite concealer (by Sleek - just a cheap drug store brand, but it was amazing) has been reformulated and it's awful now as well. The reviews on Boots.com all agree.

Both reformulated to be bloody vegan Now using cheaper chemical / created ingredients in their products instead.

I had about £150 worth of stuff in my basket at the point they attacked JKR. Emptied it and not bought from them since.
Sane with Lush when they apologised for accidentally giving a grant to a Woman’s Place UK. Go woke, go broke.
Until these companies reign in their revolting blue-haired social media interns and realise that it’s the brand-loyal middle-aged women who buy the gifts and toiletries for the whole family, they’ll continue to come a cropper.

They've failed to identify a market, and it's been that way for a long time.

It's not nice enough for a luxury brand, and not cheap enough for an everyday brand.

It doesn't know if it's targeting the women who shopped there as teens, or current teens, and doesn't much appeal to either.

And there is a lot more competition in terms of ethical brands.

And just in general with places like Sephora where you can get both Sephora lines and other high or mid range products, and little sample sizes that appeal to teens. It's also more sophisticated in terms of branding.

And once you start taking a stand on divisive political questions you will cut out part of your customer base. Ethical products was a niche that was directly related to the product itself. Gender ideology and Palestinian politics are not.

I do use a body butter they make. I need to find a substitute, for the cost if nothing else.

Lush won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. I think a few Mumsnetters on a forum that has a cohort of transphobic posters who pile onto the same threads piling onto a Bodyshop thread doesn’t speak for the nation as a whole and isn’t indicative of why Bodyshop has become a cropper. It was simply wildly expensive and not luxurious , inventive or natural enough to warrant the prices.

https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/lush-delivers-record-breaking-trading-month-thanks-to-new-retail-strategy-206200#:~:text=Lush%20UK%20%26%20Ireland%20has%20reported,to%202019's%20pre%2Dpandemic%20figures.

I gave a shit. Boycotted along with Lush. Misogynist fuckers

Kiwi lip balm! I also had the Morello Cherry one - in the days when they came in actual glass pots. As pp have said, the quirky little products they used to do when we were young would probably go down really well in today’s youth/teen market, but they don’t do them any more.

I also boycott brands who go big on the gender nonsense. It’s insulting, and I don’t buy anything from brands that think it’s okay to insult their customers.

As everyone else said, it was fantastic in the 80s and 90s, but overpriced crap now. I remember my boyfriend at uni bought me a massive gift basket one Xmas, you could pick out what you wanted in it and then they made up the basket for you. I was using stuff out of that basket for years! I didn't like Dewberry because every other girl in my school wore, it, the rest fuzzy peach or White something? I remember buying another boyfriend the Ice Blue shampoo that was meant to help with hair loss, he wasn't pleased! Loved the banana shampoo that was impossible to get out of the bottle, and of course the bath pearls. The Hemp hand cream was good too, I'm disappointed to read its crap now as I often buy it for my husband.

Yes, the hemp hand cream is meant to be a pallid mockery of the beautifully rich cream of old.
I too buy it for my son, and have done for years. {Won't be buying any more now they have changed the formula..idiots to destroy their best selling product!

I used to love it but then they were purchased by L'oréal who happily fund support Zionists and murdering in Palestine so on my boycott list since years and years back. Good riddance.

@alwayscrashinginthesamecar1 Yes, I remember those little gift baskets made up of stuff you chose yourself...and the old lip balms in glass pots with black lids.
Why oh why did they have to stop making those fun affordable things?

Also Io stopped going into the shops {apart from hemp hand cream} when it became more ''Give me your email!'' and doing the hard sell.

Lush smells so off-putting...harsh and chemically smelling for many metres outside the store.
Headache inducing.

I don't understand how they managed to get it so wrong. Everyone says they would love to be able to buy the old favourites, everyone finds them overpriced. Back to basics would have been such a simple way to turn the business around.

I quite like a few of their fruity smelling soaps and body butters but the prices and the JKR nonsense meant I stopped buying them. I hate all the 3 for 2 stuff as well, just set the price fairly instead of inflating prices to support endless "offers". And asking for my email address. I'm buying a bar of soap, you don't need my personal data. I found it easy to boycott them.

It’s a good point made up thread that they don’t really have a place in the market. Not nice enough to be a luxury brand but not cheap enough to be every day.
Lush has stolen their lunch with the teen and youngsters. Us middle-aged women are going elsewhere.

I use Fat Cow body cream, they don't do a specific hand cream but I use it on my hands too.

Well I’m clearly a terrible mumsnetter as I always liked Body shop, bought their new refillable products (which come in metal pump bottles so less recycling of plastic) , couldn’t give a shit what they said about JK / men / women (everyone needs toiletries no matter how they identify) and loved that they made all their products vegan (disgusting that people feel animals should be harmed for their hand cream!)

They missed a trick by not focusing on nostalgia, the bath beads, Ananya and Fuzzy peach. They lost their market because it’s not posh enough to be high end or cheap enough to be high street. (And the terfs)

And the MLM arm sucked.

They did bring out a retro range maybe 10 years ago- Raspberry or apple shower gels, Banana and Ice Blue shampoo, Passion Fruit cleanser, that sort of thing. I can’t remember if they brought back Dewberry or Fuzzy Peach. Anyone remember?
We bought a few but it was limited edition. The only one they kept in the range was banana shampoo.
The outlet stores used to sell their current products with big multi buy discounts so you could stock up and use your Body Shop card for another 10% off.

The only animal product in the old Hemp hand cream was beeswax.

Can't get 100% vegan with Beeswax. A silly certification to chase IMO. They also redid their packaging to include more glass and metal - expensive for them I would have thought and money that could be better spent elsewhere.

The beekeepers I have met look after their bees beautifully, placing hives in apple orchards and other meadows, and are totally devoted to their bees.

Honey doesn't seem 'cruel' to me, nor beeswax.

The Hemp hand cream {oldskool} was one of their best selling products.
Now that has gone down the pan..

Well quite. A collosal waste of money that hasn't improved the world one jot.

That’s not where big companies source honey and beeswax from through, is it.
It would be hard for Body Shop to claim to be cruelty free (since no longer being part of L’Oréal) whilst using beeswax and honey from commercial producers.

The prices seem to have shot up more recently without improving the product and the change of ingredients is disappointing. I used to use an almond and honey body yogurt which was a brilliant consistency and smelt amazing. Then they went vegan and it's now just almond and nowhere near as good.

Why couldn't they leave the products alone, bring back some old favourites and create a few vegan products for the vegan market?

because some ‘bright spark’ decided that consumers are buying the brand not the product, then decided ‘the brand’ was an irritating preachy teen with mommy issues.