International Trade as a Vehicle for Reducing Poverty: The Body Shop’s Community Trade Programme

Abstract

In the late 1980s The Body Shop International (BSI) became interested in global poverty. Anita Roddick, BSI’s founder, sought ways to involve her company directly in efforts to ameliorate the poverty faced by people in developing countries. She explored how BSI might source from these areas some of the ingredients and products sold in their shops. These initial efforts, under-taken with the Kayapo Indians in Brazil and a Boys Town in India, occasioned mixed responses. While BSI established trading relations that brought new wealth to these communities and considerable publicity for BSI, the company ran into unexpected difficulties. It was sharply criticized by some journalists and NGOs, who felt these projects served more to enhance the Body Shop’s image than to help the affected peoples. BSI expanded and refined its Community Trade programme over the next 14 years. Beginning in early 1990s, it linked its efforts to well-established Alternative Trade organizations (ATOs) and the Fair Trade movement. From its own Community Trade programmes, BSI learned a number of lessons about how to manage relations with their suppliers and foster the organizational capacities of the groups with which it worked. BSI demonstrated that regular commercial enterprises can source from developing areas in ways that are not only beneficial for their own businesses but directly help trading partners strengthen their own capacities and reduce poverty in their communities. By 2002 BSI was purchasing more than £5 million (US$8 million) in products and ingredients from more than three dozen producer groups in 25 developing countries.