Body Shop to shut 75 stores and cut hundreds of jobs

The Body Shop will close 75 shops in the UK over the coming weeks and cut 489 jobs, according to the firm overseeing its restructuring.

It means that, combined with cost-cutting at the company’s head office, between 750 and 800 people will be made redundant.

However, The Body Shop will keep 116 UK stores open.

The UK arm of the global beauty chain was put into administration earlier this month.

Shops will be closed over the next four to six weeks. FRP Advisory, which is managing the restructuring, said it would “support all impacted staff with claims to the Redundancy Payments Service”.

“In taking swift action to right-size The Body Shop UK store portfolio, we have stabilised the business,” said FRP Advisory’s Tony Wright.

“We remain fully focused on exploring all options to take the business forward.”

The Body Shop was founded in Brighton in 1976 by the late Dame Anita Roddick who opened a single shop in the seaside town. Known for its natural beauty products and its stance against testing on animals, it expanded rapidly in the following years.

Dame Anita and her husband Gordon sold the business to French beauty giant L’Oreal in 2006, much to the chagrin of some loyal followers who viewed the French beauty giant’s business at odds with The Body Shop’s ethos.

Since then, The Body Shop has changed hands twice, most recently to private equity firm Aurelius in late 2023. Within weeks, it decided to place the UK arm in administration following poor sales over Christmas and January.

Wildly popular in the 1980s and 1990s, The Body Shop appeared to fall out of fashion as competitors arrived in the natural beauty market including Lush and Rituals.

The UK shops closing are: