Word: roddick
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Having agitated Britons with high-profile campaigns touting condom use, Amnesty International and her (widely unpopular) opposition to the Gulf War, Roddick has now turned her attention to the U.S., where she has 120 stores and plans to open 40 more this year. Last summer Roddick joined with three dozen U.S. firms -- including Stride Rite shoes and Ben & Jerry's ice cream -- to form Businesses for Social Responsibility, a politically correct alternative to the Chamber of Commerce with ambitions to "revolutionize how business in America operates" by promoting such progressive policies as family leave and environmentally sound manufacturing...
...recent visit to a Body Shop in Manhattan, Roddick looks more like a frazzled housewife than a cosmetics queen. But there is no question who is running the show. Dressed in a baggy white sweatshirt, sweatpants and sneakers -- her 5-ft. 2-in. frame dominated by a mass of wild, curly hair -- she circles the shop floor issuing compliments and critiques while staffers bustle to keep up. "Brilliant!" she pronounces a display of facial creams. "Fantastic!" for a pyramid of hair conditioner. But a tray of hair clips is "Tacky! Get rid of those." Later she sweeps into a meeting...
...third of four children in one of the few Italian immigrant families in Littlehampton, Sussex (a fading Victorian beach resort her family dubbed "home of the newly wed and nearly dead"), she was treated like an alien by her classmates. "They never smelled garlic before we came," says Roddick. Her stepfather, who ran the first and only American-style diner in town, died when she was 10 -- a loss that was keener for Anita and her younger brother Bruno than they knew. Eight years later, their mother Gilda confessed the truth: the man they called stepfather was actually their father...
...Gordon Roddick seems the perfect foil for Anita. With his Scottish burr and occasional stutter, he is steady where she is erratic and quiet where she is brash. London analysts believe he is the financial wizard behind Anita's success. But he is best known in Body Shop lore for a voyage he took a few years into the marriage. The young couple had just sold a struggling restaurant when Gordon announced that he wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream: to ride a horse from Buenos Aires to New York City, an adventure he figured would take about two years...
That deal aside, the Body Shop's explosive growth became a classic business- success story -- a case history studied by students at the Harvard Business School. The original idea was disarmingly simple: package cosmetics made from natural ingredients in small containers (in the early days Roddick used the cheapest ones around, plastic urine-sample jars). But from the start she showed an uncanny flair for marketing. She had an eye for the right location -- well-traveled streets catering to mildly bohemian crowds. She hung sweet- smelling potpourri in her shops to attract trade and laid trails of perfume...