Body Shop has lost its soul, says Roddick
By Ed Cropley

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EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Body Shop founder Anita Roddick says the ethical cosmetics chain has lost its soul since floating on the stock market and has no place as a cog in the international financial system she despises.


"The Body Shop is now really a dysfunctional coffin," Roddick told the Edinburgh International Book Festival, adding that the company had lost its political edge.


"I wanted every shop to challenge the World Trade Organisation (WTO), to ask every Member of Parliament, and they won't do that," she said.


Speaking on Friday, Roddick also questioned Bodyshop's future as a publicly quoted company, saying relentless drive to maximise profits for investors was killing the 25-year-old company's spirit.


"Did it (flotation) work? Yes it did. It gave us money to build manufacturing plants. Does it work now? I don't think so," she said.


There had already been two attempts to the take the company she founded in her kitchen private again, Roddick said,
where it could avoid the harsh light of investor scrutiny and pressure of market forces.


"The market controls everything, but the market has no heart," she said.


Giving a lecture to promote her book, "Business as Unusual", Roddick also came under a scathing attack from a former employee in the audience who said she had been callously laid off in contravention of Body Shop's own employee-friendly practices.


But Roddick said that since handing over the reins to the new chief executive, Patrick Gournay, she had no say in the day-to-day running of the company which was once touted as the model of an ethical business.


"I can't interfere, I'm not allowed to interfere," she said.


GENOA, SEATTLE "A WASTE OF TIME"


A tireless environmental campaigner, who joined anti-capitalist groups protesting at the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting, Roddick said demonstrations aimed only at governments like those at the recent G8 summit in Genoa were ultimately pointless.


"You will not see another Genoa. You will not see another Seattle because its a waste of time," said Roddick, who says she is getting ever more radical as she gets older and wants to take the fight straight to the boardroom.


"The protests are going nowhere. We should be directly pointing the finger at businesses, not even bothering with the governments," she said.


"You've got to direct it at the companies. The only thing they really fear is consumer revolt," Roddick said.