The Body Shop Look Set To Enter Administration

The Body Shop, which was founded in the 1970s in Brighton, is poised to appoint FRP as Administrators.  The company, which has more than 200 shops in the UK, was founded by the late Dame Anita Roddick, whose original vision was to sell products with ethically sourced, cruelty-free and natural ingredients. None of the products were tested on animals whilst the ingredients were sourced directly from producers.

This ethical stance first took a hit in the 90’s with a greenwashing claim made by The New York Times before suffering a further hit when the Roddick family sold the business to L’Oreal, who were not as green as The Body Shop claimed it was.

Natura & Co paid £880m for the business in 2017 but were only able to sell for £207m to private equity firm Aurelius late last year.  It emerged last week that the company’s former owner, Natura & Co, have asked their lawyers to write to Aurelius over unpaid bonuses of between £2m and £3m owed to former employees. 

Following a poor Christmas trading period, the future of the UK business now looks to be on its last legs.  Aurelius has already sold parts of the retailer’s business in Europe and Asia last week, which a statement confirmed was an agreement with “an international family office to sell its business in most of mainland Europe and in parts of Asia” as it moves towards “delivering a strong turnaround strategy”.  I think we can all read between the lines of that statement.

Parcel delivery firm Yodel has said it is in the "final stages" of talks over options for the company and that discussions with "interested parties" were ongoing and "constructive".

Yodel also defiantly said its operations, which last year delivered 191million parcels to your next-door neighbour’s hedge even though you were at home would “continue without any disruption".

The firm is owned by the Barclay family (owners of The Telegraph and not the Bank which announced it was buying Tesco Bank last week) and one of its largest clients is online retailer Very, which is also owned by the Barclays.

The Telegraph (and you think they might be well placed to know) reported that Teneo have been lined up if the business is to be put into Administration.