David Boynton of The Body Shop: ‘They say retail is dead. But we’re social creatures’

D avid Boynton says he is not one for slathering on a face mask, but the nattily turned out chief executive of The Body Shop may need all the relaxation techniques he can find with a difficult year ahead. On the weekend of what would have been Anita Roddick’s 80th birthday this Sunday, the chain she founded in Brighton in 1976 with a £4,000 loan is rumoured to be on the market for the second time in five years, with a £1bn price tag, after a pandemic boom reversed into a dive in sales. Boynton, whose accent swings between northern England and New York after years spent living across the Atlantic, has already been forced to take some tough decisions.

He shut a net 23 UK stores permanently during the pandemic as business switched online, while 90% of its 3,000 outlets worldwide were forced to temporarily close because of government lockdowns. Parent group Natura, the Brazilian ethical beauty retailer that bought the chain for an estimated £880m in 2017 , is thought to want to slim down its debts after spending an estimated £1. 6bn on buying Avon’s non-North American business in 2019, and balking at a 24% slump in sales at The Body Shop in the first six months of this year following a difficult end to 2021.

While most of The Body Shop’s own stores have roared back to life, those run by franchisees are only slowly recovering from lockdowns. Meanwhile the brand’s network of home sellers and online fans, built up as Covid kept everyone at home, have cut back, and the group took a hit when the invasion of Ukraine forced it to pull out of Russia, where it had 26 stores. The shift to working from home and lacklustre tourist traffic has also hindered city centre outlets, with sales in London for the first half of the year still well down on pre-pandemic levels.

CV Age 59 Family Married with four children, two girls and two boys. Education: State grammar in the Manchester area; Leeds University. Pay Not disclosed.

Last holiday Naples in south-west Florida: “A beautiful place, sadly recently destroyed by Hurricane Ian. ” Best advice he’s been given “Surround yourself with brilliant people who give a damn. ” Biggest career mistake “I should have been faster to move some high-potential people to roles where they could excel.

” Words or phrases he overuses Using the lyrics of songs to describe everyday business situations – for example: “As Ian Dury might say – there are reasons to be cheerful. ” How he relaxes Gardening, opera and playing golf with his wife. Boynton says that in many ways this year has proved more complicated to navigate than 2020 or 2021, when government help was in place.

Covid lockdowns in China and ongoing problems with international freight services mean products can still be delivered six weeks late. Inflation is also taking its toll: The Body Shop is committed to paying the real living wage in the UK, for example, which will mean a 10% pay rise next year for its workers, putting a further squeeze on profits. Boynton took on the task of reviving the business after the reputational hit that resulted from an ill-judged takeover by cosmetics giant L’Oréal in 2006.

The deal, approved by Roddick the year before she died, shocked Body Shop’s ethically conscious customers and staff and led to falling sales and profits. Boynton said he took on the job as a “real passion project” having watched events at the company with “interest and some sadness” while putting in a 10-year stint at beauty firm L’Occitane, followed by a short stint at shirtmaker Charles Tyrwhitt. A lifelong retailer who started his career as a graduate trainee on the tills at a branch of the now defunct supermarket chain Safeway in Edmonton, north London, Boynton says wanted the job because of Natura’s ownership.

He won’t comment on the speculation about a potential sale but says The Body Shop has a good relationship with Natura. “They are the ideal people to give us the space to be what we want to be and honour everything Anita and [her husband] Gordon wanted,” he says. Natura has said it is “not conducting any specific studies” on the sale of The Body Shop but that it “constantly evaluates all strategic alternatives for value creation”.

Any sale would come after four years of hard work rejigging many of The Body Shop’s products, upgrading ingredients and shifting to packaging made from more easily recyclable materials. Much of the range is now in 100% recycled plastic pots and bottles, the material for some of which is sourced from a community project in India. Old favourites such as the Vitamin C skincare range have been improved, while the newer and highly popular Drops of Youth has dropped the focus on age and is being renamed Edelweiss, after its key ingredient.

The revitalisation came after Boynton spent time talking to customers and Roddick’s former colleagues to try to build a set of principles for the business to follow based on: “What would Anita do?” We are social creatures and like being with other people. We like interacting David Boynton One thing that hasn’t changed is that the business still does not test finished products or ingredients on animals, and neither do suppliers or any third parties. And in a move that would no doubt impress Roddick, Boynton has reintroduced refill stations, where customers can bring back bottles of shower gel, handwash and shampoo – an idea Body Shop first tried decades ago, but scrapped in the late 1990s.

They were piloted on London’s Oxford Street in 2019, and now 172 out of 219 UK stores offer the service, and it will be in 800 worldwide by the end of this year. Boynton says refills are part of efforts to draw people back to high streets: “People have been telling me for more than 10 years that retail is dead. But our industry is highly experiential and stores fulfil that brief.

We are social creatures and like being with other people. We have been isolated in lockdown and that’s not good for people’s mental health. ” He is planning to open about 30 more stores in the UK in the longer term, as rents have come down by up to 30% in some locations, making new branches more viable.

Boynton says knowledgable staff will continue to be important, as will the chance to try products out, potentially learn about what is going on in the world and feel part of a community. “It is on you to deliver experiences or you will be dinosaurs,” he says of retailers. With households hoping to cut costs, however, won’t treats from The Body Shop be snipped from shopping lists? He disagrees: “We are not accessible for everybody but we are offering the performance of brands which are sold for two or three times higher amounts.

Everybody is looking for ways to economise in the coming months and years, and we could be well placed to take advantage of that. ”.