The international beauty brand made a foray into Sri Lanka last year, much to the glee of everyone who had to previously wait for trips abroad to pick up Body Shop stuff. With high quality natural products for women, men, children, and everyone in between, their stuff is super but doesn't come cheap.
Products
Body Shop's tiny lip balm tubs are the stuff teenage girls' existences depend on. At around Rs. 800 a tub, we're impressed. That's how much you'd pay anywhere else in the world (give or take like Rs. 100) so we're glad for the lack of ridiculous mark up.
With heaps of amazing natural scents and ingredients, their themed products are brilliantly (and colourfully) branded. Regardless of what kind of fragrance you're into (mango? raspberry? coconut?), or what function you want your product to serve (anti-blemish tea tree oil/ deep moisturizing shea butter/etc), they've got you covered.
Their prices appear to generally be on par with their international standard, which isn't cheap by any means. However, you're paying for ethically-sourced and very high quality ingredients, so it's worth it. We love their new tea tree range, and picked up a wash-scrub-mask at Rs. 3400. With actual tea tree oil as an active ingredient, it's a decadent and incredibly effective purchase.
We were also intrigued by their makeup range, especially the multipurpose BB Cream. It's quite pricey at around Rs. 2800 for a miniscule little tube, but the skin-clarifying results were excellent.
Ambience
The shop is bright, appealing, and has very cute little display corners. The location is also very convenient (especially if you manage parking out front), and you can continue on your shopping spree at the neighbouring Charles & Keith, Mango, or Nike.
Special shout out to the beautiful colour co-ordination. It's like a rainbow you can slather on your face.
Service
This is one aspect we weren't really impressed by. The two-member staff have clearly been told to follow customers around, but whether it's to assist or to ensure nothing is stolen, I couldn't quite tell. As it is, the shop is quite small, and being closely followed was incredibly uncomfortable. Everytime I looked up, or turned around, there would be a staff member mere inches away. I couldn't turn back, move, or try and pick something up without being bumped into or intruded upon.
Since Body Shop's branding is so on point, there's instructions, prices, and ingredients clearly displayed so you don't actually need any assistance. The only thing the staff did was read out from the bottle or display – which I could have done myself.
They were also not too keen to give out the free little samples (despite us spending some Rs. 7000 or so), and we had to awkwardly ask for them. We would have been a lot happier given some personal space.
Overall
Apart from the claustrophobic service, we love the Body Shop. It's great to see a company so dedicated to ethical practices, and lovely natural ingredients. It's expensive, but it's high quality, and probably one of the easiest gift options out there.
