Ethical trailblazer The Body Shop faces administration

When Anita Roddick sold The Body Shop in 2006, she left behind not just a thriving cosmetics and skincare empire but proof that a business could follow strict ethical guidelines and still make healthy profits.

- Rob Davies

But yesterday, the private equityowned stalwart of the British high street filed its intention to appoint administrators.

The process is likely to trigger dozens of shop closures, putting jobs at risk and threatening a crucial source of sales for a global network of small farmers and producers.

Such a fate seemed impossible when L'Oréal agreed to pay £652m for the business, a deal that saw Roddick along with her husband and business partner Gordon - relinquish control just 18 months before her death. The decision to sell to a global corporation shocked many loyal customers.

Roddick, the daughter of ItalianJewish immigrants, had opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976, expanding rapidly through a franchise model.

In an industry dominated by lab-tested synthetic products, ethically minded shoppers flocked to a brand that didn't just eschew corporate rapaciousness but campaigned against animal testing and for ethical relationships with suppliers.

The challenge to corporate and social norms made Roddick one of the most recognisable figures of the 1980s.

Mark Constantine, a former supplier to The Body Shop who went on to found rival Lush, said he had been both "inspired and terrified" by Roddick's combination of iron principles and whip-smart business acumen.

"She did things that nobody else had the nerve and the balls to do.I don't think B Corp [the ethical business standard] would exist without.