The Body Shop enters demise row | EUROtoday

The Body Shop is in peril of disappearing from the streets and business surfaces of the United Kingdom, after 20 years of steady switch of possession and rising competitors within the cosmetics sector based mostly on pure merchandise and different manufacturing strategies. The British division of the pioneering model has entered administrative suspension this week, leaving within the uncertainty the way forward for some 2,500 staff in a community of 200 shops, a distribution heart and the central workplace.

The readjustment has begun lower than three months after the entry into the worldwide agency of the non-public funding fund, Aurelius. This German platform, specialised in redirecting companies and business ventures in decline, acquired The Body Shop in an operation valued at 207 million kilos (about 243 million euros), which closed final November.

In January, Aurelius introduced divestment plans within the European and Asian networks of the legendary agency of lotions and perfumes with out artificial supplies or laboratory evaluation with animals. He has now entrusted the insolvency means of the British department to the administration firm FRP Advisory, which he has determined preserve shops open whereas in search of potential suitors in all or a part of the enterprise.

The administrative intervention has stunned analysts and it’s not dominated out that Aurelius retains management of a smaller portfolio of economic areas within the United Kingdom. The advisor has justified the drastic motion in gross sales beneath expectations within the Christmas interval and the beginning of 2024.

“This approach provides stability, flexibility and security to discern the best means to secure the future of The Body Shop and revitalize this iconic British brand,” FRP stated in an announcement.

The progressive Anita Roddick opened the primary The Body Shop retailer in 1976, in Brighton, a bohemian metropolis on the English coast. She quickly introduced her pure merchandise to Camden Town market and different areas in London. She finally gave up the franchise to be able to lengthen the enterprise all through the remainder of the United Kingdom and overseas, below the rules of honest commerce and moral administration all through the manufacturing and distribution chains.

The founder and her husband, Gordon Roddick, bought the model to the French multinational L 'Oreal for 760 million euros in 2006. The switch of the enterprise to a conventional firm within the cosmetics trade defrauded sectors of the clientele on the identical time that different different philosophy operators efficiently jumped onto the market.

Anita Roddick died the yr after dropping management of her influential enterprise method. Ten years later, the Brazilian home Natura would take possession of The Body Shop in a transaction with LOreal estimated at one billion euros. Natura failed in its worldwide growth and left the enterprise within the palms of the funding fund on the finish of 2023.

The Body Shop had recorded losses within the United Kingdom of round 80 million euros the earlier yr and a surplus of round 12 million within the earlier yr. The model was then current in additional than 70 nations by some 2,500 owned and franchised business premises, whose future is unsure. “The Body Shop has faced an extended period of financial challenges under previous owners, which have coincided with a difficult business environment for the sector in general“, factors out the administrator within the assertion.