Plans to attend the Banksy exhibition at Waterloo station were thwarted this weekend, when I was confronted with a 50-minute Alton Towers-style queue snaking around barriers to get into the exhibition.
It was a sad day for graffiti aficionados everywhere, whose respect for an artist whose daring, anarchist point of view and sense of humour gained him notoriety has dwindled since his canvases began to adorn the walls of every Z-lister in celebland.
The questions being asked in graffiti circles up and down the country are these: How can someone who preaches anti-capitalism sell his work for hundreds of thousands of pounds? And how can something with an underground message have such mass appeal?
Many businesses will sympathise with Banksy’s plight, though, because his is a problem faced by them every day: how can you retain your core ethical values, while catering to a growing market?
Of course, it’s great to have people queuing down the street for your products – but could Banksy have done a better job of balancing big money with sustaining the identity that made him?
Wholefoods Market is one example of a company which dumped its ethical values in a lay-by somewhere on the road to success.
The company started in 1978, when college dropout John Mackey and his girlfriend Rene Lawson started The SaferWay in Austin, where they were eventually forced to live after they were thrown out of their apartment for storing food.
These days, Wholefoods Market is still toting its produce on the basis of local, ethical, wholesome goodness, but when it bought out UK-based company Fresh & Wild, the chain’s employees were shocked to discover the amount of just out-of-date food the they had to throw away.
We spoke to one former employee, who said when Wholefoods took over, she was surprised they didn’t give the food away. “If Pret a Manger can give food to homeless people, why can’t Wholefoods? It’s not that difficult to organise,” she said.
On the other hand, Anita Roddick managed to keep her values at the centre of her brand all the way through – and by the time she sold The Body Shop to L’Oreal in 2006, the core principles were such an integral part of the brand, there was no way they could change it without turning the company into something entirely different.
Similarly, Innocent has kept their hardcore followers happy by sharing their profit with various good causes, raising money for charity and ensuring all their ingredients are sustained ethically. Unlike Wholefoods, they also send excess stock to a homeless charity.
It’s always difficult to keep your initial ethical values at the core of your business when it begins to grow, but stick with them and your customers will respect you a lot more.
