Name: How Lush took on the cosmetics industry | FT
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T03:51:46.000Z
Duration: 7 min 43 s
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he only have to follow your nose to find a branch of lush retailer has been making soaps, shampoos and bath bombs for almost 1/4 of a century in Pulled on England's South Coast, and it's long try to build a reputation as an ethical brand.

Nowadays, that's a trend that the rest of the High Street would also like to buy into lush shuns automation.

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All of its products are made by hand, and it uses only vegetarian or vegan recipes.

Today, the private company turns over $1 billion but cofounder Mark Constantine's journey to this point wasn't easy.

I was homeless for a period of time and I lived in the woods.

I had a job, but he didn't pay enough to get the basic room.

I was given money by a charity just a small sum.

But it made such a dramatic difference to my life.

I meant that I could continue on in my employment.

I was fortunate enough to meet Anita Roddick when she had one shop, so we became body shops, largest supply on.

We learned an awful lot of lessons from them then we had a business collapse of that.

I just had to pay the mortgage payments, and I'd put my savings into this other house.

But part of it collapsed on the back of some beaches and they sued me, and I eventually sold it for half white, board it full.

And then I had to pay the loan sharks off and I had back 45 grand.

And that's why I started clash with just small sums of money.

Mark Constantine wants to create what he calls a cosmetics revolution.

To save the planet, we have to do it through influence where 0.5% of the cosmetic industry even it a 1,000,000,000 turnover.

Yeah, So we have to influence the others as well.

They have to move off of plastic packaging.

They have to move to more environmentally friendly things.

What you're gonna do is we're going to recycle it.

We know we've got to change, but we got far too much plastic hanging around.

We all know we have used it for other companies to lead that by saying, Actually, we no longer doing this.

I don't see how they're going to survive.

If you've got climate refugees all over the place and the shops are shutting, it's all bad for business that they have to change just a question of when and how quickly luscious prices will put off some customers.

So the ethical campaigning brand is important to the lush product, and people are prepared to pay a premium for it.

There's many reasons not to come in to cosmetic retailer that isn't offering you a good deal.

It's a relatively pricey thing, and so I think the ethics can sometimes tipped the balance business.

Considering the climate is good, the banks are not lending.

They've not been doing that for 18 months.

They certainly aren't keen on retail British retail, even Japanese banks are telling me they're not keen on British retail on at the moment in Britain were plus or minus 2% on like for like so Not too good, not too bad, you know, just just okay?

Couldn't be There are people out there with minus two any minus 10 all sorts of dreadful things going on bricks.

Uncertainty isn't helping luscious business in the U.

We try and turn the products around through a warehouse with a 28 day used by date on, so it has to leave the warehouse within 28 days, and then it sits on the factory floor for four months.

If you go into regular retailers, beauty retailers, you'll find products.

There have a shelf life of 23 years because where light on preservatives and indeed many of our products don't have preserved it is at all on dhe.

Then we like to get it through as fast as possible, so you gonna have the best possible experience.

Staffing is probably the biggest thing, and then the next thing will be the taps.

But we might describe it's gotta be very fresh from the ingredients and everything, so any delay in those supply chains can affect our product of a businessman.

I don't understand how increasing my costs, increasing red tape, Andi.

Generally stopping me, being able to get a proper workforce on cutting the eggs of markets that I was quite happily in before and having tariffs.

Europe is great area for me to be able to increase business.

Germany, France, Italy, Spain, great places for us.

So we got increased, like for likes in those guys, I would say Biggest pressure point is Hong Kong.

I quite like the idea of doing a big department store of last, right?

I've got one nearly there in Birmingham on that means having quite a lot of interesting things that people would like to come to sew a spar with original treatments, hairdressing with maybe recycled water, the whole floor of just naked product, with no plastic on the whole floor.

At a time when many big high street retailers are struggling to compete with online rivals, sounds like a bold move.

But then Lush isn't a typical high street retailer.

The founders still own most of the business, and there is no desire to follow in body shops, footsteps and sell to a big brands such as Loreal.

I think most Customersorders is selling, and I think it well.

Body Shop lost 20% of its sales, so it speaks for itself.

Doesn't 20% of the customers no longer shop there?

Luscious founders looked at how Body Shop exited and decided it wasn't for them.

So they decided instead to launch an employee benefit trust, which is designed to give work as a stake in the business.

In the future, when you've got finders who at some stage you're going to want to weigh the leave or they will die on their shares will be up for sale.

Traditionally, you would go to the city or you would get private Investment businesses have done that are very, very highly geared, got too much borrowing.

So if you have a new employee benefit, trust the DVT that on you have an agreement between your shareholders as to how much you're going to increase your profits to sell your shares that we have five times, then you can still sell to your E Bt instead of selling outside on, keep a stable business that can can be privileged enough to offer things that may be unethical things that maybe are not quite so commercial.

But if you take loads of money out on, you have lots of borrowing and big bonds and all that sort of thing that it's much more hard, harder to run.

This sort of set companies, such as Lush are increasingly part of the mainstream, and it's worked in the business trends.

Such a veganism and zero packaging have come to its way of thinking rather than the other way around.

 From its headquarters still above its first shop in pool to its intention to sell a controlling part of the business toe workers, it still doesn't feel like an outline for now, whether or not it can continue to compete as successfully to set its baths. 