From my research I have found that The Body Shop International Plc has over 77millon customers that transact through stores and plus over 1,500 stores selling over 400 different products in 50 different countries, listed in Appendix A.
Qualitative and Quantitative Objectives
The Body Shop has an internal indicators set up to measure the progress of objectives within the company. The indicators relate to both qualitative and quantitative areas of the business.
- Qualitative objectives are those that are difficult to measure because they are of an asthetic nature and do not relate to exact numbers of items. These include: Employee Satisfaction: as seen in the graph below.
Business Ethics: as seen in the graph below.
- Quantative Objectives are those that be counted and measured in number. These could be:
The amount of CO2 emissions from company vehicles.
The number of acres of forest preserved due to company initives.
Objectives: Roddick V Bellamy
Some of Anita Roddick’s objectives are as follows:
- Anita Roddick will not test any products on animals
- She will promote animal protection through out there business activities
- To dedicate the business to the pursuit of social and environmental change
- She will pay special attention to those minority groups, woman and disadvantaged people who are socially and economically marginalized
Some of Adrian Bellamy’s objectives are as follows:
- Adrian Bellamy will review all their operators to improve efficiency, lower costs and tidhten levels of working capital
- To improve the business sales growth and their margins
- Where it is core to their business model specifically product, marketing and customer services
- Provide good service to all their customers in ever sector.
The Body Shop Objectives have had change, with the stepping down of Anita Roddick as Chief Executive in 1998. Adrian Bellamy’s approach was more commercially based and has tended to drift away from the original vision of the Roddicks. Mr Bellamy has initiated changes and these have kept The Body Shop in a competitive position in the market place but has caused it to lose its political edge.
Statistics to Prove Objectives
The general financial trend for The Body Shop is one of intermittent periods of growth and decline. In May 1999 the Earnings dropped by 90% and the underlying profits fell from £38m to £24.5m. The company managed to maintain its final dividend at 3.8p. In October 1999 profits rose from £4.8m to £6.8m and shares rose from 3p to 114p.
The overall is one of continual growth, what ever the financial situation The Body Shop continues to invest in company growth. This can be seen in 1999 when £21m was spent restructuring the business.
The graph below shows the figures for 2001 and 2002.
The Advantages and the Disadvantages of The Body Shop being a Public limited company (Plc)
For a company to turn from a Private limited company to a Public limited company they need to rise over than £50,000 turnover and they need to have satisfactory financial track records.
Before The Body Shop turning in to a Plc from Private limited Company they had to fill in two types of forms, one is the memorandum of association and the other one is the article of association. The Memorandum and the Articles of association sets out the constitution and gives details about the company.
The information The Body Shop has to give as followers:
- The name of the company.
- The name and the address of the company’s registered office.
- The objectives of the company, and the scope of its activities.
- The liability of its members.
- The amount of capital to be raised and number of shares to be issued.
- The rights of shareholders depending on the type of share they hold.
- The procedures for appointing directors and the scope of their powers.
- The length of time directors should serve before re-election.
- The timing and frequency of the company meetings.
- The arrangements for auditing company’s accounts.
Advantages
- As a Plc The Body Shop raised its revenue by introducing more shares, to offset the expenditure incurred with the take over of BSI USA.
- As a Plc The Body Shop can redeem shares sold to encourage investment and there by regain control of the company
- As a Plc The Body Shop can issue unsecured loan notes, against the assets of the company, in order to raise funds.
Disadvantages
- As a Plc The Body Shop can be influenced by the share holders, and is accountable to them, as in the alteration of the original Broddick vision for the company.
- As a Plc The Body Shop is also influenced by the stock market and share performance, which can in turn influence the customers’ perception of the company, as in the drop in sales since the “Twin Towers” terrorist attack.
The objectives of The Body Shop
- The objectives of The Body Shop for the current year is to focus heavily on increasing the profit and the cash generation, with tight control of cost and working with the capital.
- They are seeking to increased efficiency through improved store performance, overhead reductions and reduction and reorganisation of the supply chain.
- The Body Shop Company is now underway to improve effectiveness between the regions and the corporate centre.
- They want to provide a total remuneration arrangement that is appropriate to the nature of the business. Total remuneration is linked to both the individual and the company’s performance, with the use of share options designed to encourage long-term commitment to the company success.
- The body Shop will further formalise franchisee involvement in decision making via a participative council in order to facilitate communications between UK Retail and franchisees.
- By the end of 2010, The Body Shop Uk’s distribution fleet will eliminate or compensate for all its CO2 emissions through tree planting and other initiatives.
- In 2-3 years time The Body Shop Plc, will increase the proportion of accessory products that utilise recycled plastic to 5% of their range.
- The Body Shop is going to improve their payment times for their suppliers by review, as a priority, the payment system for all suppliers, with a view to improving speed of payment.
- The Body Shop is environmentally responsible and is actively attempting to keep its wastes to a minimum with the implementation of re-use and recycling initives.
The different functional areas The Body Shop has
There are six different functional areas in The Body Shop.
- Finance
- Human Resources
- Administration
- Marketing
- Sourcing
- Logistics
- International and Global Development
FINANCE
The finance department of The Body Shop communicates with the all the department in order to get the information it needs.
For example if the finance department wants to know the working hours of the employees in order to set the wages, the department would communicate with the human resources department who handles all the employees working times and the finance department would send a documents to the human resources department listing out the names of the employees and hours worked and then the human resources department would complete it and send it back to the finance department who in return pay out the wages based on the human resources information. It’s important for the human resources department to give the right information to the finance department or otherwise The Body Shop will lose money on wages.
HUMAN RESOURCES
The human resources department for The Body Shop communicates with all other departments concerning the employees relating to pay, discipline, welfare and recruiting and training.
The human resource will communicate with the finance department on issues concerning the pay of employees as discussed above.
If there were any problems with the employees other departments would send e-mail to the human resources department and the human resources department would take care of the problem.
ADMINISTRATION
As the admin department deals with paper work and mailing and it is important for this department to communicate with all the other departments because the admin department receives all the mail every day and the have to sent these mail to the right department and if the don’t then there would be problems from customer and suppliers who sent the letter and also its important for department to deliver the letter because some of them sometime contain invoices.
One way of the department communicate is that the admin department keeps list of all the letters and mails received and for which department, then sent these documents to each department to tick every letter or mail that they have received and if there are missing letters or mail the admin department investigates the locations of the item.
MARKETING
The marketing department in The Body Shop has to communicate with other department when they are about to improve a product or design a new product.
They communicate with the finance department to find out their budget for the product.
The also communicate with the administration department about the photocopying or mail suppliers for the right materials.
They communicate with the production department about the possibility of producing the new product.
This is how the departments communicate within The Body Shop, with each other to make the business more successful.
SOURCES
The Body Shop has a policy of sourcing its raw materials and goods from ecologically sound and environmentally safe supplies. Also they are committed to using only suppliers who comply with The Body Shop’s human rights criteria.
The Body Shop sources raw materials for inclusion in some of its best-selling products, from cocoa butter in Cocoa Butter Hand & Body Lotion to babassu oil used in White Musk Body Lotion, as well as accessory items including massagers from India and loofah products from Honduras.
LOGISTICS
The Body Shop needs to think of logistics on a worldwide scale with the co- ordination and supply of goods and raw materials from many countries. This can only be achieved with good management of the various transportation and administration facilities available.
GLOBAL AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The Body Shop has a commitment to Company growth on a national and international scale. The Body Shop increased its worldwide stores by 124 between 2001 and 2002, as shown in Appendix B. The development strategy also encompasses the environmental and human rights campaign involvement.
Appendix A
- Republic of Ireland
- Americas
- USA
- Antigua
- Bahamas
- Bermuda
- Canada
- Cayman Islands
- Mexico
- Europe, Middle East & Africa
- Austria
- Bahrain
- Belgium
- Cyprus
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Holland
- Iceland
- Italy
- Kuwait
- Lebanon
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Norway
- Oman
- Portugal
- Qatar
- Romania
- Saudi Arabia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- UAE
- Asia Pacific
- Australia
- Brunei
- Indonesia
- Japan
- Korea
- Macau
- Malaysia
- New Zealand
- Philippines
- Singapore
- Taiwan
- Thailand
Hong Kong
Appendix B
Management Style
The Body Shop style of management is consultative, being that it is middle of the road between autocratic and democratic. In as much as the employees have an opportunity to express their views and opinions of the company’s policies and can bring about change, the ultimate decision is in the hands of the management. Employees are given the access to means of making their opinions know through the company’s framework of representation. A couple of examples can be seen in the graph below.
The graph below shows the different areas that employees can put forward their views and the effectiveness of those comments.
Company Culture
The Body Shop encourages a company culture of personal and company responsibility, growth and awareness. The company actively encourages and supports many environmental and humane causes and perceives itself as a strong voice for change on a global scale.
ICT Internal and External Uses
The Body Shop makes considerable use of modern technology in the operation of business on a day to day basis. It is also a way to preserve valuable resources as in the preservation of forests because of the less paper consumed. Many of the company’s correspondence methods have been converted to ICT based methods as in the case of emails, internal memos, and even video conferencing on a global scale. This allows for faster and more efficient control of information and better awareness of the conditions prevailing at any time, even on the other side of the world.
The external benefits of the ICT use can be seen in the instant access that can be achieved to and from prospective suppliers and the quicker transfer of vital information. This can greatly improve the business response to market changes and enable the company to be in step with the worldwide market.
Production Process and Quality Control
The Body Shop company policy for the testing of products is kept within very strict guidelines, for example, in the area of testing on animals where they have a strict no animal testing criteria.
The table below shows that the tests are conducted on volunteers from the public and employees. The number of tests that were carried out on employees rose by 232 between 1995/96 and 1996/97.
Making Judgements
The Body Shop has many objectives. In the company there are some objectives have ready achieve, some in the progressing to achieve and some of the objectives didn’t achieve.
The Body Shop has 181 different objectives. The objectives are dived in to ten section, the are listed blow:
- Employees 56 objectives
- International Head Franchisees 14 objectives
- UK franchisees 13 objectives
- Customers 24 objectives
- Suppliers 30 objectives
- Shareholders 5 objectives
- Community Involvement 25 objectives
- Environment 11 objectives
- Animal Protection 1 objectives
- New Stakeholders 2 objectives
Analysis
The key objectives of The Body Shop are centred on the awareness of the impact of the company on the environment, ethnic cultures and ecological systems in all areas that The Body Shop is involved. The company has created a framework of checks and monitoring systems to ensure that it makes as little adverse impact on any area of business in respect to the humane and ecological status.
The management is encouraged and encourages employees to be actively involved in the humane and ecological campaigns that the company has found to be needed. The company, as a financial institution, uses its size and power to further the causes that it has chosen, and influences other companies and communities to follow the company recommendations. This is evident in the criteria that a prospective supplier must adhere to in order for The Body Shop to accept the goods.
It could be argued that the strict criteria that The Body Shop adheres to in their company objectives could be a detriment to the company growth. This however has not been the case, due to the companys’ advertising and the public awareness that has come about because of its involvement in campaign issues, they customer base continues to grow. This coupled with a product that the customer can trust and rely on to cause no harm themselves, the environment or the humane situations across the world, and of good quality ensures that the company will continue to grow.
