Gordon Rodddick:
"Here was this young Irishwoman determined not to go away until I said yes. She prevailed on me to give her an order for 2000 footsie rollers a month a year ."

The beginning
Amanda Murphy was born in Ulster, Northern Ireland. Her childhood ambition was to become a vet. Unfortunately, after three years at the Royal Veterinary College in London she failed an exam for part of the course, took it again, failed a different part and had to leave. At 23 years of age her ambition was over. She spent time learning to ride a motorbike and taking a management course before working for the Body Shop in Stratford and helping local farmers during the lambing season.

Deciding that she would like to travel and "do something useful" she enrolled with Voluntary Services Overseas and was given a posting as a livestock officer in Sierra Leone. Just before she was due to leave the posting was cancelled because of increasing civil unrest there. Instead, in May 1989, she took herself off to India with the idea of working in an orphanage. When she arrived she was so appalled by the sexual abuse of the boys there that she moved on, looking for other work whilst worrying about finding someone to do something about the plight of the children she had seen.

Amanda spent four months in Southern India, falling in love with the country and the people in Tirumangalam, a village south of Madurai in Tamil Nadu province. She met and married a local man and set about looking for an opportunity to make money to help set up some form of social welfare. She soon recognised both the skills of the local people and the availability of useful resources - wood and cotton - in the area. Her time at the Body Shop had made her only too aware of how business could be used not just to make money, but to bring about change for the most disadvantaged communities. Amanda returned to Britain determined to get the Body Shop interested in placing orders for wooden massage rollers which could be made in Tirumangalam.

The business started with just 5 people working from a small mud-built hut in the village - conditions were very basic and progress was slow. The lack of health facilities meant that Amanda was forced to return to England for the birth of her first child. After her son Teddy was born, she went back to India, only to discover that her husband was already married to another woman with two children. She separated from him but decided to stay in India, concentrating on the business. As profits began to come in, she shared them with her employees, hoping they would use them to start a school. Many had other priorities however, and bought themselves things like TV sets or mopeds. In 1991 the Teddy Trust was set up so that future profits could be used to invest in local community welfare, especially education and health.