Job Losses Likely as the Body Shop Lines Up Administrators

The Physique Store, the skincare and cosmetics retailer based by the campaigner Anita Roddick within the Seventies, is ready to nominate directors in a transfer more likely to end in misplaced jobs and store closures.

The pan-European personal fairness investor Aurelius purchased the corporate six weeks earlier than Christmas however mentioned buying and selling over the festive interval and early January had been weak.

The retail chain, which has greater than 200 retailers, additionally didn’t have sufficient working capital to proceed buying and selling in its present kind.

Directors at FRP Advisory are more likely to be appointed as quickly as this week to deal with an insolvency course of, Sky Information reported, citing sources who mentioned they anticipated the closure of a major variety of the shops. The Physique Store’s worldwide companies have already been bought to an unknown household workplace, in line with Retail Week.

Roddick, an environmental campaigner, activist and entrepreneur, based the Physique Store in Brighton in 1976. The corporate remained beneath her possession for 3 a long time, till she bought it in 2006. Roddick died the next 12 months.

By then, The Physique Store had turn into synonymous with its moral positions, together with a refusal to inventory merchandise examined on animals and a sourcing of substances from pure merchandise which can be traded ethically.

Roddick’s choice to promote the enterprise to the French company L’Oréal for £652 million ($822 million) attracted criticism from those that noticed it as a departure from the corporate’s values.

The Physique Store has modified arms twice since then, ending up within the possession of Aurelius in November.

By Rob Davies

Study extra:

Brazil’s Natura Sells The Physique Store to Aurelius in $254 Million Deal

The Brazilian cosmetics maker mentioned the settlement features a potential earn-out of £90 million, including that each the sale worth and the earn-out could be paid inside 5 years of the transaction closing.