Lush: Fresh handmade cosmetics

Known as the cosmetic’s grocer and the ultimate beauty delicatessen, Lush, located in Riyadh’s Faisaliah Mall, at first seems far more a food retailer than a cosmetics company. Appetizing chunks of colorful soaps and solid shampoo, ready to be sliced, are presented on rustic wooden tables. Bubble bath soaps looking like giant lollipops and a myriad of fizzing bath balls are equally enticing.
“I’ve always loved the way fruit and vegetables are displayed in a grocery store” says Mark Constantine, Lush’s managing director who created the company in 1995.
“The plan was to make cosmetics that were as natural as possible and to avoid using synthetic preservatives”. All Lush products are made with the highest quality and organic ingredients: Herbs, fruit, flowers and essential oils.
This is specially the case of the so-called, Bath Ballistics which transform a boring bath into a sensual fantasy. The Dragon’s Egg is a grapefruit, jasmine and lemon oil scented treat that swirls around the tub leaving a trail of fluorescent orange foam. Multi-layers of color, glitter and popping candy explode in the water for a serious wake-up call for all the senses. The Avobath is a real moisture treat, containing olive oil and fresh avocados to hydrate, nourish and soften the skin. Olive oil, a refined vegetable oil, contains antioxidants and lemongrass to stimulate and revitalize.
For children, Lush has prepared a soap topped with a layer of deeply moisturizing solid beeswax and packed with loads of honey. This creamy and delicious soap that smells of Crème Brulee, has many benefits for the skin. It helps soothe inflammation, can relieve eczema and moisturizes the skin.
Dream Cream is Lush’s best-selling product worldwide thanks to its emollient qualities due to the presence of olive oil and cocoa butter. This luxurious hydrating cream also contains rose absolute and rose water for their soothing and calming properties, chamomile to reduce redness and also, tea tree and lavender for their mild anti microbial action, gentle enough to keep the skin healthy but not stripped of its natural flora.
Another international best-selling product is “Angels on Bare Skin”. This facial cleansing “clay” contains kaolin and ground almonds, together with glycerine (which helps retain the water on the skin) and a blend of soothing essential oils to stimulate cell regeneration.
Solid shampoos are also gaining momentum. “Lush’s solid shampoo bars are shampoos for our time. We’ve been making them for years and they have now become a really important category for our customers, as more and more people feel they want to do something to help the environment. By buying something as simple as a shampoo bar they are helping to do their bit” says Helen Ambrosen, Lush Product Creator & Co-Founder.
A solid shampoo cuts out the preservatives and the packaging, A 55g shampoo bar lasts for up to 80 washes, as long as 2 bottles of 250g liquid shampoo. And the joint shampoo and conditioner bars are even better, as there is no need for a bottle for the conditioner.
Currently, 46 percent of Lush’s product range is “naked”. In 2009, in the UK alone 5.9 million naked items were sold and 200,000 of these items were shampoo bars, meaning that 15 tons of plastic were avoided.
“Lush is such an evocative word” says Constantine. “It can mean green, make you think of the rain forest or a passage of poetry, a piece of music… It has wonderfully addictive feel about it…The whole point of lush is that it should be fun for our customers and fun for us, while at the same time offering original products that work and give value for money”.