The Body Shop is back
The Body Shop’s popular bath and beauty products are back on the Island and now being sold at Brown & Co, which has taken over the brand in Bermuda.After 25 years, retailer Ellen Brown closed down The Body Shop store in the Washington Mall last Christmas, citing poor sales and high costs.Brown & Co general manager Nicole Warren said yesterday the department store had successfully negotiated with UK-based The Body Shop to take over the brand locally.She said they had begun selling a limited selection of The Body Shop products in the few weeks before Christmas in an area near the fragrance section at the Front Street entrance.Ms Warren noted almost all of the products they had in stock, including the popular gift sets, had sold out in the lead-up to Christmas.“We did really well with it,” she said. “I would say we sold out of 90 percent of the products in the few weeks before Christmas.”Early in the New Year, Ms Warren said Brown & Co planned to create a special new space to display and sell a much larger range of The Body Shop’s natural and ethically produced products. The Body Shop now has stores in more than 60 countries and best sellers include its scented Body Butters, Peppermint Foot Lotion, Tea Tree Cleanser, White Musk Perfume and Satsuma Shower Gel. Its parent company is L’Oréal.Retailer Ms Brown last Christmas had said she was “bowing out” of retail having lost her foot traffic and due to increasingly high overheads, including taxes and several thousand dollars a month in rent for The Body Shop’s former prime retail space facing Reid Street in the Washington Mall.She said she had also been left burned out by working long hours in retail and it was time for a change.The former The Body Shop space is now occupied by Atelerie clothing and accessories boutique.