Entrepreneur: Mark Constantine

MARK CONSTANTINE

MD AND CO-FOUNDER OF LUSH

FAST FACTS

LAUNCH DATE: 23 May 1995 BUSINESS: Cosmetics manufacturer and retailer ANNUAL TURNOVER: £63m STAFF NUMBERS: 1267 NO. OF BRANCHES: 73 in theUK

DID YOU KNOW? The creative team at Lush previously developed products for the Body Shop and mail order business Cosmetics to Go. The name was chosen in a competition run by the company. Elizabeth Bennett, a customer from Edinburgh, came up with the winning suggestion, Lush.

Where did the idea for Lush come from?

When I was seven I saw an advert about rat poison in some bread, and I remember thinking: if that could get into your food, then what else could? It put me off chemicals generally and pushed me towards more natural things.

What is the company’s unique selling point?

Up to 70 per cent of Lush’s products have no preservatives at all. Each product is completely fresh. If you look at other products on the market, they use masses of preservatives, which can aggravate your skin and affect the environment.

Why the success?

We made a bit of a stir because we were quite unusual. Designers like Jean Paul Gaultier were calling us fabulous and we had literally thousands of people asking if they could do business with us. We even had to set up an office to deal with them.

What do you stand for?

We believe in qualities like ‘fresh’ and ‘handmade’. We always try to do what we say. We’ve recently run our second major shop window campaign highlighting our stance against animal testing – it’s in all our shops around the world. We also tend to avoid packaging: that gives us more money to spend on raw materials and creates better quality products.

Tell us about the in-store experience…

We snatched the number one spot for ‘fun’ in the 2005 Sunday Times 100 Best Companies survey,despite being 22nd on the list. Most shops only seem to offer an intense selling experience, but we prefer to enjoy ourselves and create a party atmosphere.

What product would you highly recommend?

Dream Cream. It’s a loose emulsion with cocoa butter and it’s fiercely popular… especially amongst celebs like Halle Berry and Annie Lennox. It’s the product I’m most proud of creating and it works brilliantly on lots of difficult skin conditions. We’ve even had a doctor prescribe it.

Are you vehemently pro-environment?

We’re very keen on environmental issues. Our approach is, rather than recycle a bottle, don’t have a bottle! The impact can be huge. For example, we reckon several million shampoo bottles haven’t gone to landfills because people have used our shampoo baths. That said, we don’t really lecture people – we do it by stealth.

http://www.lush.com/

Words by Bella Chapman
Photography by Pete Millson