I was her first shop worker: she was my inspiration

Annette Boulter When I started working for Anita Roddick I was 16, broke, and impressionable. She was inspirational and scary, like no one I had ever met.

It was 1976 and the first Body Shop had just opened in the Lanes in Brighton: not the expensive, snooty antique shop area but North Laine – edgy, atmospheric and, at that time, cheap. Just down the road, near the Clock Tower, was the first Virgin record store, which I remember as scarily, achingly trendy, with mattresses on the floor and a constant haze of purple smoke, which we young teenagers were all convinced (whatever the facts) were illicit substances.

I was looking for a Saturday job when I saw the Body Shop. Worth a try. In I went, and asked Anita Roddick for a job. The following Saturday I became her first employee. She was a blur of energy, racing from one idea to the next with Cat Stevens trilling in the background, and I loved the atmosphere immediately. The shop was damp and very smelly in the basement, and full of these interesting potions and jars.

We wrote labels and filled bottles until our arms ached. The local paper, the Evening Argus, ran a double-page spread about the new shop with its ethical values, and that day we worked so hard she gave me £5 because she was so delighted by how busy it had been: a fortune to a schoolgirl then.

A new concept in British retailing unfolded in front of me, but you try being 17 and telling people in the local nightclubs that you work for the Body Shop, a household name now but, believe me, not then: “Can I buy one, love . . ?”

I lay claim to one of the early successes. It was my idea to combine various related bottles in one basket, covered in shrink-wrap that we made with a hairdryer, and so selling several products at one go. My boyfriend was working at a local market and had surplus raffia baskets. Anita, ever the genius behind the operation, came up with the name Beauty Baskets – a marketing concept that continues to be a huge success.

One morning she arrived with a great new recipe for beauty grains, wheat germ and oatmeal, and sent me to the local health-food shop to buy them. I spent that Saturday in the basement with a tiny food grinder, mixing the two together and putting them in small dark brown jars to sell at a huge profit. On another occasion she was putting coconut oil into cooking oil as sun lotion. She told me it was the coconut that promoted a tan and I remember mixing a half and half bottle for myself to get really brown. All I did was attract all the wasps with the overpowering smell, and clear the beach.

Another morning when I arrived for work she exclaimed: “Great! You haven’t got pierced ears.” She had acquired one of the new ear-piercing guns and needed to practise. Her daughters were in the shop, both done, and I was the next victim. Despite my protestations, my mum would be furious etc, she pierced my ears there and then and set the die for my own future working in the jewellery business.

Her friends visited regularly. I remember the supplier of the printing trays in which we used to display tiny bottles of perfume, and I remember the bloke who brought in his tiny daughter, a few weeks old at most: he had named her so her initials were LSD.

Anita once gave me a lift home. We hared down a one-way street in Brighton the wrong way before screeching to a halt outside Dayville’s (ice-cream, 40 flavours – remember?) “Ice Cream,” she yelled. “What flavour do you want?” All I could think of was vanilla, which I hesitatingly murmured as she disappeared into the shop. A moment later she came back to the car and, with disgust in her voice, she muttered to me: “They don’t dovanilla.” I had to let her choose: as in so many occasions in her company, I was fascinated but out of my depth.

I loved my job. Anita often left me the keys and I had complete control of the shop, a feeling I adored. I played around with displays, promoting different products in different places in the windows and by altering my handwriting on the labels. She showed me the fun of retailing, and how truly inspirational people behave. I adored her.

I never took her up on her offer of managing the shop when she opened her second branch in Littlehampton. I was, after all, doing my A levels.

Now, of course, I am not so sure my mother’s words of wisdom were the right ones. During my university years and beyond I watched wide-eyed as the Body Shop grew, and when I started my business, Toko, in 1984 I knew that it was with her in mind.

I almost met her again ten years ago, at the party of a commercial agent who had invited us both, but regrettably for me she was unable to come. I always hoped to meet her again. She had a profound effect on my life, and I am very sorry not to have done so. Thanks, Anita, for your inspiration.

Annette Boulter founded Toko in 1984. She runs it now with her sister, Geraldine Purves. They have ten branches selling silver and semiprecious stone jewellery in London and the Southeast