The Body Shop is to close 75 stores across the UK in the next six weeks with the loss of 489 jobs, according to administrators who are overseeing the restructuring.
The closures are spread across the country, from Swansea to Glasgow, and mean that nearly 800 people will lose their jobs in total when the 300 redundancies at the head office are taken into account.
However, 116 Body Shop stores will stay open under the changes, which affect only the company’s UK operations, the administration firm FRP said.
Body Shop Denmark has declared bankruptcy, while its division in Belgium, with 16 stores and 50 employees, has reportedly also been declared bankrupt. The Irish business is expected to go into liquidation next week. Before the closures, the brand had about 1,000 company-owned stores worldwide and a further 1,600 franchise branches.
Last week, the administrators at FRP laid out plans to retain more than half of Body Shop stores in the UK as they announced the closure of seven shops. On Thursday, they told staff an additional 75 stores would close over the next four to six weeks.
The retailer, which employs more than 2,200 people in the UK, called in administrators in mid-February, just months after being taken over by the restructuring firm Aurelius in November.
Tony Wright, the joint administrator, said: “In taking swift action to right-size the Body Shop UK store portfolio, we have stabilised the business and are providing the best opportunity for this iconic brand to have a long-term, sustainable future.
“The UK business continues to trade in administration, and we remain fully focused on exploring all options to take the business forward.”
Aurelius is the main creditor, with secured debt that will ensure it gets paid by administrators before most other creditors. One option is that it takes back the chain after the shop closures and job cuts.
Alternatively, the administrators could begin a formal sale process for the remaining stores. The UK fashion retailer Next, which has snapped up a host of brands, from Cath Kidston to Fatface, is thought to be among industry names that are interested.
The Body Shop has had three owners since it was sold by its founder, Anita Roddick, shortly before her death in 2007.
Roddick, who set up the business in Brighton in 1976, campaigned against animal testing of cosmetics and promoted natural products sourced ethically in a way that would support small producers around the world.
She shocked fans of the brand by selling up to L’Oréal in 2006, the cosmetics multinational that owns Maybelline and Garnier, for £652m. The brand was then sold on to the Brazilian natural cosmetics group Natura, which already owned the Australian Aesop beauty brand, for €1bn in 2017. After Natura built up debts in buying the home-selling cosmetics group Avon, it sold off Aesop to L’Oréal and then The Body Shop to Aurelius late last year.
The Body Shop’s popularity has waned in recent years as competition heated up from rivals in the natural beauty market, including Lush and Rituals, and the boom in internet sales has affected bricks and mortar retail.
The group’s Irish, Japanese and some of its mainland European divisions were sold to a group called Alma24 in late January, whose main director has close links to Aurelius. The German division of The Body Shop, which has about 60 stores, was put into insolvency two weeks ago.
The Irish operations, where 50 people work at seven stores, was expected to go into liquidation next week and employees refused to work on Thursday after being told they would not be paid for the last three weeks of their employment, the Irish Examiner reported.
The Body Shop’s Denmark division was declared bankrupt on Wednesday, with 15 stores to close and 90 job losses. Anders Hoffmann Kønigsfeldt, a lawyer at the law firm Bech-Bruun, has been appointed as administrator. There are a few Body Shop stores owned by franchisees that are not affected by the bankruptcy.
Tine Mohr Jensen, a senior retail manager at The Body Shop in Denmark, wrote in a LinkedIn post: “It’s tough to say goodbye to something that has been such a big part of my life for over 12 years. The Body Shop will always be cherished. I hope from the bottom of my heart The Body Shop will stand strong again all over the world.”
The UK stores due to close in the next six weeks
Aylesbury
Banbury
Barnstaple
Basildon
Battersea
Bedford
Beverley
Bexleyheath
Blackburn
Blackpool
Bournemouth Commercial Road
Bolton
Brixton
Broughton Park
Bury
Camberley
Carlisle
Carmarthen
Chippenham
Cirencester
Croydon
Didcot
Durham
East Kilbride
Edinburgh Gyle Centre
Edinburgh Princes Mall
Epsom
Fareham
Farnborough
Glasgow Braehead
Glasgow Fort
Glasgow Silverburn
Glasgow Station
Grimsby
Halifax
Harlow
Hastings
Hempstead Valley
High Wycombe
Huddersfield
Hull
Ilford
Ipswich
Isle of Wight
Islington
Kendal
King’s Lynn
Leeds White Rose
Lewisham Centre
Lichfield
Loughborough
Luton
Macclesfield
Middlesbrough
Morpeth
Newton Abbot
Northampton
Oldham
Perth
Peterborough Queensgate
Portsmouth
Regent Street
Salisbury
Stafford
Stansted Airside
Stratford Upon Avon
Swansea
Telford
Thanet
Trowbridge
Wakefield Trinity Walk
Walthamstow
Wigan
Woking
Wolverhampton
