The Body Shop Names Its First Global Brand Director

Philip Clough is the new global brand director of The Body Shop. The new position, reporting to The Body Shop CEO Peter Saunders, is L'Oreal's first big appointment since acquiring the green chain earlier this year for $1.14 billion.

Clough will officially start at The Body Shop in December and is currently president of Kiehl's, another chain owned by L'Oreal. Prior to that, Clough was general manager for L'Oreal's Kerastase skin care brand. Rob Robillard, currently general manager, will take over as Kiehl's president.

In Clough's three-year tenure leading Kiehl's, the brand has branched out from only freestanding stores to include cosmetics counters at such U.S. department stores as Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Nordstrom.

The Body Shop currently has about 2,000 freestanding stores globally. In its last annual report filed as a public company this year, it reported 7 percent annual growth, and sales of roughly $1.3 billion. Earlier this fall, L'Oreal President Jean-Paul Agon said he plans to more than double the number of Body Shop stores to 5,000 within a few years.

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Regions of particular interest to Agon for expansion include France, Eastern Europe, Asia, India, Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

Anita Roddick founded The Body Shop 30 years ago in the U.K. on a then-unique platform of human rights, animal rights and recycling. It had come under financial pressures in recent years with competition from other specialty beauty shops such as Aveda and Bath & Body Works. Aveda was also founded in the 1970s as a green company, and Estee Lauder bought it nearly two decades later.

Both Roddick and The Body Shop brand drew some negative attention for selling to L'Oreal, with concerns raised that the environmental- and animal-friendly company had forgotten its ethics. L'Oreal stopped animal testing of its products in 1991. Although it still uses some ingredients that ultimately require animal testing, Agon has said L'Oreal is looking at ways to test chemicals on artificially produced human skin.

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