Introduction
Lush is the mere passion for authentic fresh and manmade products such as seductive perfumes and cosmetics. A United Kingdom-based producer so liked lush products, that he named his company lush, after lush products. Lush, now a well-acknowledged company whose worldwide recognition has made many employees desire to work for the company to share in its success. Employees offer excellent services to their customers making every aspect of the lush brand connote fun. Lush is keen to offer discounted prices on their wide of beauty products, marketing promotions and packaging this keeps their customers who always check-in for new products(Larson, 04).
The brands’ trademark, Lush was in the interest of fresh authentic products. Products were made from natural things like vegetables and sweet-smelling fruits; this idea was novel and marked a start of what would be a widely accepted concept in beauty. The products became so attractive attributed to the shapes, colors, names, sweet smells and sizes such that anyone could mistake them as being suitable for human consumption. Some even resembled cakes. The store relied on advertisements from within and not the common marketing strategies. However, it was criticized that lush remaining independent and not going public could endanger its chances of remaining competitive. Lush had to compete with more bigger and powerful companies and established competitors (Larson, 04).
Background of Lush
A teenage trained hairdresser, by the name Constantine, innovated lush. In the late 90s, lush became renowned for its beauty products but since it did not have a marketing division, McCartney was appointed the head of marketing. As Constantine started developing interest in makeup, he faced some challenges since the opportunities for male makeup artists were limited but still developed natural bath and body products which he started supplying to different retailers. He together with colleagues came up with the idea of trying a successful retail shop but due to a non-compete passage with the beauty products shop, they had to wait for some years before opening the next one (Rawe, 03). Lush was financed through financial backups from well-wishers and self contributions from savings. It is at this point that Constantine met another young businessman with whom they did business together. Immediately a lush shop was opened in London, people interested in opening more outlets all over the world started approaching Constantine, which he initially refused but later gave in. Lush developed and even started scooping awards in health and beauty categories which surprised its competitors. The number of employees started going up parallel to sales (Larson, 04).
Lush offered many products which used natural ingredients. They were also handmade and most of them were sold fresh as they contained no preservatives. The products were appealing; some took shapes of cakes and other desserts. Their sweet-scented aroma was irresistible and attracted many buyers to Lush stores. Lush acquired its products shapes from local established bakers; Constantine invented fragrances of Lush products. Products from lush were prepared in places that resembled kitchens the main ingredients used were fruits, vegetables, chocolate, sugar, and milk similar ones to those found in kitchens that prepare human food (Mortimer, 06).
For more than 10 years Constantine was the major team player at Lush and led the production department to innovate more products. The team used their personal tastes and preferences to develop products that made them have no fear of making mistakes with the idea of making products that they would use themselves, and whenever a mistake was done, they learned from it. A good example is when lush introduced soaps that resembled a loaf of bread, which had to be sliced before they were sold to the customers, this process was tedious and time-consuming and made the customers wait for long. Lush opted to make the same product but this time in the form of sausages putting them in crates making it easy for the customers to pick. The result was more sales of the brand. Lush valued his customers and always listened to what they had to say about the products (Rawe, 03).
Lush argues that packaging is boring, it used less packaging and some products were not wrapped at all. Color was used to make distinction between organic and natural products, by leaving them open the customers were convinced that there was nothing to hide. Constantine explained how packaging was boring and that touching and smelling the naked products is fun to sense. He added that instead of using packaging, high-quality ingredients could be used instead (Mortimer, 06).
All of the lush’s products were priced less than the products from other companies resulting in great competition. Many brands were priced by weight, this made the customers admit that there was value of money. Lush stuck to its rules and was not easily influenced; this is what led lush into scooping many awards. Its location made it get more customers as the stores were located in posh and prime areas creating a good image. The aroma of cake shops made customers want to go in and once inside they were free to make any comment as they were encouraged to fill a guest book, they could touch and smell products before buying. The stores had cool music playing from loudspeakers , walls painted with warm colors, handwritten banners and floors tiled with natural stone which made the store look original; the customers thus enjoyed the experience of being in the store and felt more comfortable (Rawe,03).
Distribution channels of Lush
Apart from getting products from the chain of stores, Lush made it possible for the customers to make orders and buy products online. Lush times which resembled newsletters were sent to customers four times every year. They were environmentally friendly as they were prepared using recycled paper. The contents of the Lush catalog were product details, humorous cartoons, customer feedbacks, pictures of people using lush’s products and fair comments.
The employees used the mail orders to obtain information from the customers and pass it on to others. Unlike the catalogs, official lush’s website contained colored pictures of products and information about products with comprehensive guidelines. With time information on lush’s products was linked to other marketing and online shopping and auction websites like eBay. Lush provided excellent customer service and fine products and by so doing it only concentrated on existing customers when using mails orders. This was to influence the customer to buy the product again if it was impressive. Apart from not advertising through media, lush did no other advertising other than in-store advertising and good public relations (Rawe, 03).
Between franchisee network and partnership, lush opted for the partnership since the ownership of value and code of brand belonged to them. However, depending on different countries lush had different opinions on ownership structures (Larson, 04).
Conclusion
Lush’s success was not fully maximized since it could have opted for traditional advertising. Concentrating so much on in-store advertising was only limited to customers who somehow knew that such stores existed, but what of those who did not know? Those who did not know about lush could have been informed through other ways of advertising like mass media and traditional advertising. Lush also concentrated more on fun and forgot about the moral serious image with which could have brought better income. For example when emphasized much on the products being naked for the customer to touch and make the senses happy would have been substituted by something more constructive like quality. Displaying images of its products differently on the website in different countries jeopardized them of being more easily counterfeited. One brand across all countries could have been a better solution since the same display while marketing the product online could allow foreigners to buy the same product even when in visiting countries as the brand is the same globally. To prevent infections and death on animals, testing the raw products could have been conducted chemically. Lush could have concentrated more on other forms of communication apart from drawings. Marketing lush’s products through the internet had shortcomings but the good returns outweighed them, Lush recorded more sales after going global through the internet. All companies should therefore adapt to online marketing as it is inexpensive and reaches a wider range of buyers.
Work cited
Larson, Deanna. “Lush Life: a handsome, Cruelty-free Beauty Addiction.” 2004.
Mortimer, Ruth. “Lush: Purple and simple.” 2006.
Rawe, Julie. “Lush is no Rush.” 2003. Web.