The Aurelius fund continues the turnaround announced at the end of last year. The German investment fund declared The Body Shop insolvent before the Paris Commercial Court. The cosmetics chain employs more than 250 people and has more than fifty of its own shops and seven franchises.
In February, The Body Shop's German subsidiary was placed under insolvency administration, putting up to 460 jobs at risk. In the case of Germany, Aurelius appointed an insolvency specialist from the law firm White & Case to manage the process. Although not yet confirmed, this could be a premonition of what will happen to subsidiaries in Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland, where The Body Shop's websites are suffering from irregularities and are not functioning normally.
The situation is getting even worse in the UK. As it pointed out at the end of February, the British division of The Body Shop began a process of closing 75 shops that will last until mid-April and will leave up to 489 people unemployed. These redundancies are in addition to the 300 job cuts at the London headquarters, although there, they stated that the 116 shops they own would continue to operate as normal.
This is not unexpected for the company's employees, who could already sense The Body Shop's next steps after the declaration of intent by the investment fund Aurelius. The German fund indicated that it wanted to sell part of its business in Europe and Asia. In the case of France, as 'Fashion Network' explains, some of their products had been out of stock in the physical shops and online for some weeks. Just a fortnight ago, Hugues Laurençon and Andrew Mccrea, the co-directors of The Body Shop France resigned and the Aurelius fund appointed Martin Rivers to head the company in France.
Aurelius acknowledged earlier in the year that the Christmas campaign had neither been able nor sufficient to turn the company around, leading to a decision to cut 300 jobs at its headquarters. The company's latest turnover figures, for the second quarter of the 2023 financial year, show a reduction in turnover of up to 12%, which is some 152 million euros less, and its revenues were reduced by 15%.