IT WAS another bad day at the office for Anita Roddick yesterday Or at least it would have been had she been there. Ms Roddick is now co- chair of her beloved Body Shop with her husband, Gordon. Her role is more one of roving product controller than full time executive these days, heading off to Borneo to check root vegetables for life enhancing essential oils and the like. Yesterday she was more prosaically in Dublin where the Body Shop store is apparently quite nice. So the job of delivering the latest grim tidings fell to Patrick Gournay, the Frenchman recruited last year to help haul Body Shop out of the rather less than fragrant mess it has found itself in. Profits are down sharply; 300 jobs are going at the Littlehampton head office, and even the upbeat Mr Gournay was warning that the recovery would not be “a quick fix.”
Can this business be fixed at all, is what the rest of us would like to know? Body Shop’s problems have mostly been self-inflicted, with years of poor management, over-expansion and lack of innovation taking a steady toll. In the meantime, rivals like Boots and the supermarkets have caught up and stolen Body Shop’s clothes in eco- friendly products.Like two other retail strugglers, Laura Ashley and MFI, Body Shop is vertically integrated, manufacturing its Peppermint foot lotion as well as selling it That is changing with the manufacturing sites up for sale.

The structure is also being addressed with more franchises being bought in to increase control.All this has the backing of Gordon and Anita who sent out a little note with the results under the heading, “Statement from the Co-chairs”. It was the usual new-age mumbo jumbo with its talk of “shared values” and having a “sense of humanity”- all printed on paper with a “defend Human Rights” slogan at the bottom. Mr Gournay will need more than this to pull Body Shop out of its present hole.. A FRESH clampdown on abuses in the ice-cream market was signalled yesterday after the Competition Commission said that it had found evidence of monopolistic practices by Birds Eye Wall’s and other suppliers. In a letter sent to the main players in the pounds 600m industry, which is dominated by Wall’s, a subsidiary of Unilever, Mars and Nestle, the Commission said that it had identified both scale monopolies and complex monopolies, where a number of companies operate together to distort competition.
However, the Commission said it had not reached any conclusion on whether these operated against the public interest and it invited comments from interested parties such as manufacturers, distributors, retailers and consumers.The nine-month inquiry into the “impulse” ice-cream market – ice-creams bought from corner shops for immediate consumption – follows an Monopolies and Mergers Commission report last year which found that Wall’s wholesaling practices were anti-competitive.This latest investigation has established that a monopoly situation exists in favour of Wall’s, which has an estimated 37 per cent of the market.

It has also identified a number of complex monopolies in favour of certain manufacturers including:n The supply of freezers on terms which prevent retailers from stocking rival brandsn The use of volume-related bonuses to encourage retailers to buy from particular suppliersn Supply agreements which prevent retailers stocking rival brandsn The recommending of retail prices.The Commission said that matters for further investigation included the operation of Birds Eye Wall’s new sales and distribution network, Wall’s Direct. This was launched in March following last year’s MMC report and enables retailers to buy from 200 wholesalers and distributors who are not part of Wall’s Direct. Companies that provide sales and distribution services to Wall’s Direct can also provide the same services to other ice-cream manufacturers.This is the fourth inquiry into the ice-cream industry in the last 20 years. The last time the MMC investigated freezer exclusivity in 1994 it ruled that the practice was not against the public interest although the European Commission has ruled it breaches EU competition law..

HAMLEYS, the toy retailer, yesterday announced the departure of its chief executive after a disappointing financial performance and a series of rumours that the company might be seeking a replacement. Chris Ash is leaving after just 18 months with the group. He will be replaced by Simon Burke, head of Virgin Entertainment and a former main board director of WH Smith.
A spokesman for Hamleys said: “There were serious concerns at group level about the performance of the business last year.”Hamleys has suffered a series of problems in the past two years, during which its share price has fallen from a high of 469p in 1996 to just 183p, up 2p yesterday.The integration of the Toy Stack high street business was handled poorly while the House Of Toys concessions in stores such as Debenhams also suffered. Meanwhile, the flagship store on London’s Regent Street was hit by a fall in tourist spending caused by the strong pound and the Asian crisis.In March the company announced a fall in full year pre-tax profits, down to pounds 6.4m to pounds 7.6m in the 12 months to January.Mr Ash was employed on a 12-month rolling contract and was paid pounds 214,000 last year, excluding bonuses.