The Body Shop will shut almost half of its UK shops and axe a whole lot of jobs because it battles for survival.
The firm had 198 outlets in Britain and a pair of,200 workers when it tumbled into administration final week in a serious blow to the High Street.
In a bleak replace yesterday, the directors stated the shop property ‘is no longer viable’ following ‘years of unprofitability’.
The assertion from FRP Advisory added: ‘As an immediate step, seven stores will close today, with additional closures to follow. It is expected that at the conclusion of the restructuring, more than half of The Body Shop’s 198 shops will stay open.’
That set the scene for as much as 98 retailer closures throughout the nation.
Collapse: The Body Shop had 198 outlets in Britain and a pair of,200 workers when it tumbled into administration final week in a serious blow to the High Street
The seven shut instantly included websites in Bristol, Nuneaton in Warwickshire and Ashford in Kent in addition to 4 in London at Canary Wharf, Cheapside, Oxford Street and Surrey Quays.
The directors additionally introduced plans to chop 40per cent of workers on the skincare retailer’s head workplace at London Bridge. This represents round 300 redundancies out of a 700-plus workforce.
There will now be a renewed deal with on-line gross sales because it seeks to ‘return to financial stability’.
The collapse of The Body Shop comes almost half a century after it was arrange in Brighton in 1976 by Anita Roddick earlier than turning into a agency favorite of the center courses.
Announcing the shake-up, FRP stated: ‘This swift action will help re-energise The Body Shop’s iconic model and supply it with the very best platform to realize its ambition to be a contemporary, dynamic magnificence model that is ready to return to profitability and compete for the long run.’
The shops that shut yesterday had the very best rents and different payments.
The Body Shop has suffered from declining gross sales amid warnings that it had misplaced its means lately.
Roddick and her husband Gordon confronted criticism after they offered the corporate to L’Oreal for £652million in 2006. A 12 months later, Roddick died aged 64 after a mind haemorrhage.
Under L’Oreal’s possession, the agency noticed its enterprise mannequin shift barely, with manufacturing transferring to the Philippines and reductions used to drive gross sales.
After elevated worldwide growth, in 2017 the enterprise was purchased by Natura & Co, the Brazilian house owners of Avon who specialised in direct-to-consumer gross sales, for £880million.
Six years later, in November 2023, the corporate shifted possession once more, being offered for a cut-price £207million to German-based non-public fairness agency Aurelius.