Will Body Shop still "love your body"?

I have been using Body Shop products since a few years ago. It all started with a bottle of lime flavoured Juice-IT shower gel. At HKD $88 / 250ml it was rather expensive, but I still bought and enjoyed it because of the lovely smell. Then came different shower gels, various creams and lotions for my face, hands and body, lip balm and shampoo. I have even bought hair styling products and two umbrellas from them. I am more loyal than many girls.

There used to be 2 reasons for my loyalty, other than their products' qualities. First, it is a british company. Second, they have 5 core values, 2 of which are printed in most of their products sold locally: they are against animal testing and support community trade. The local body shop branches even supported the Pink Revolution against breast cancer. I am aware that these may just be marketing plots, but, environmentally friendly or not, I still need to take showers, so I had to choose this "lesser of two evils".

Then on this April Fools' day something changed. I noticed that they have a new company logo.The old logo was something like a olive crown with 3 leaves on each side and small "THE BODY SHOP" text between the leaves. The new logo is dull and boring. The crown has been symbolized. The company name has a different font and becomes larger. Curious with such changes I went to their web site, and there I found this astonishing news that L'Oréal is buying the company for £652m (approx. HKD $8870m).

The customer statement assured us that "[t]he five values of The Body Shop will continue to be applied throughout the organisation", but will it really happen? Sharing its mother company's R&D, sooner or later those evil deeds will corrode the core values at the Body Shop.

Nestlé owns 26.4% of L’Oréal. We have to remember that Nestlé still has a double standard in GE food policies and is partly responsible for the plummeting coffee bean prices.