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Business as Unusual: My Entrepreneurial Journey - Profits with Principles
 
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Business as Unusual: My Entrepreneurial Journey - Profits with Principles [Paperback]

Anita Roddick (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 296 pages
  • Publisher: Anita Roddick Books; New edition edition (13 April 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0954395956
  • ISBN-13: 978-0954395957
  • Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 13.5 x 1.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 88,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Anita Roddick
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Product Description

Synopsis

Dame Anita Roddick is one of the world's most outspoken, controversial and successful entrepreneurs of the age. Business As Unusual charts the story of Roddick and her company The Body Shop, through all the highs and lows since 1990. It also examines the parallel growth of vigilante consumerism and predicts how businesses can evolve in this millennium. Roddick tackles a wide range of personal and political issues from self-esteem, to human rights abuses associated with globalisation and offers her own vision for dealing with the demands of an ethical economy.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I like reading different types of books including horror, detective, science fiction, finance, self-help and business. Over the years, I have read "business biography" type books on many companies, including, Dell, Intel, Virgin, Cisco, GE, Coke, Mars, Microsoft, some manufacturing companies, several airlines, supermarkets, retail companies and a few trading banks.

Having read so many business books, I find that most of them repeat much of the advice offered in other books. The result is that each new book provides me with only a small incremental amount of useful information. "Business as Unusual" is a welcome exception. It is so original that it is shocking at times (in a good way). The author's way of running her businesses is radically different to how most businesses are run, and her way has worked successfully for her. I suspect that her way would work for many other companies, if only people would keep their minds open enough to try some of the techniques discussed in this book.

This book is not just a business biography. It is also the biography of an activist. It is difficult to separate these two characteristics of the book since Anita Roddick combines her social activism with her businesses. Indeed, I picked up this book thinking it might be a good read about social activism. I was pleasantly amazed in reading the book to discover how her social activism was compatible with (and sometimes, necessary for) excellent, although unusual, ideas for running a business.

There are hardly any books that make me cry. However, when reading this book, I often found tears in my eyes. Sometimes this occurred when reading the details of particular social injustices that the author had met (and fought). But just as often tears of joy and recognition came when reading of business practices that made me think "Thank goodness I am not the only person who feels this way about how a business should treat employees and customers".

If you are interested in social activism then I think you will find this to be an interesting book but be forewarned that it is not a step-by-step manual on how to be an activist. If you are interested only in good business practices and are apathetic to social activism then I think that you will find this book to be invaluable. This is because the business ideas in this book are excellent but so unusual that you will be hard pressed to find them documented anywhere else. This is why the book's title ("Business as Unusual" instead of "Business as Usual") is so apt.

If you like this book and find the author's unusual way of doing business to be fascinating then you will probably also like "Banker to the Poor" by Mohammad Yunus.

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book was well worth buying! Not only as there are some great tips on running a successful business, but because its an inspirational and very interesting story. Great to see how business can be successful by being decent, having principles and a purpose. It's also good to unravel the myths and truths about Dame Roddick and how she got where she is today. She took on industries, brand leaders and won. An amazing story about an amazing woman and amazing business. I can't recommend this book enough!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While Anita's principles, and the ethos with which she ran the Body Shop, are highly laudable and an example to us all, I'm afraid that I found the book extremely hard work and rather dull.

I'm a member of a book club, and this was our book for the Summer holidays. I knew very little of the Body Shop - refillable bottles, expensive shampoos made from strange things that you usually only buy out of curiosity or for presents, and was curious to find out more.

It started freshly and excitingly. But that quickly wore off. I'm a big fan of good writing, and this isn't it. The layout of the book did not really help: I mean, from time to time the text suddenly gets big, sometimes it's part of the text, sometimes it isn't, but it just breaks the flow. And after a while I got rather bored with how Anita was always right and everybody else was ganging up against her, and how she worked with some obscure jungle community to take their product and make it into a luxury cosmetic. As I said - laudable, and every company needs a conscience at least as big as the Body shop's, but I am glad to have got to the end.
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