Anita Roddick
PublishedMarch 12, 2012 CategoryProfiles of our Business Greats

Anita Roddick

Anita Roddick

She trades in Beauty, sells delight
In Earth’s old fruits for bathroom bowls;
Helps Nature put its shop to rights,
Ride high the skin-and-shampoo polls.
Yet Body Shop’s symbolic lights
Burn less for Bodies than for Souls.

Scourge of myopic Corporate Man,
‘Profits-with-Principle’ the prize,
She made old nostrums hit the fan
And Footsie dinos demonise
Such dangerously cool élan
For mixing Care with Enterprise.

She’s thrived, this Phoenix-from-the-Ash,
On constant gloom from City ghouls,
Tut-Tutting on the Cult-of-Cash
Writ deep in Holy Market rules.
She floats, uncluttered by the trash
She never learned at business schools.

She’s whetted appetites to go,
By roads less travelled through the door
Marked Ogoni and Kayapo,
And peasant-mums in Changapur;
Dared mention ethics in the glow
Of Earth Com.’s Global SuperStore.

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