Thursday, September 13, 2007

ANITA RODDICK, 64

She founded a little company called the Body Shop. She died this week of a brain hemorrhage. The Associated Press reports:
Roddick was lauded for trailblazing business practices that sought to be environmentally friendly. Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, in 2003.

"Businesses have the power to do good," she wrote on the Web site of the company, which was bought last year by the French company L'Oreal Group. She and her husband stepped down as cochairs of the company in 2002.

She opened her first Body Shop outlet in 1976, before fair-trade and eco-friendly businesses had widely taken hold.
Of course she wasn't as eco-friendly as she let on to be, and of course she sold out to L'Oreal, a decidedly non-friendly company to animals. But image was everything to Roddick.

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