‘Go woke, go broke’? Lush doubles down on activism and says it’s good for business

Monday, 10 November 2025

In a world in which being “woke” has become anathema to many businesses, global body care and beauty chain Lush is doubling, some could even say tripling down, on the label.

In just one example, many of its stores, including some in New Zealand, closed for a day in early September in solidarity with Gaza.

This meant not only forgoing a day of earnings - more than £300,000 across just the UK, as well as the cost of paying staff - but also attracting the furore of those that disagree with the stance. And there were many, said Rowena Bird, one of the six original founders of the company, who is conducting a whistle-stop trip to New Zealand this week.

“The day we closed our shops in the UK, the founders’ inboxes were full of over 4000 emails complaining,” Bird, who is still involved in the business, told The Post. “It was the same email, but they would just top and tail it a little bit differently, and it came from different people.

“But as we said, it wasn't an attack on them, it wasn’t taking sides, it was just conveying a simple message - ‘stop starving people’. If you can write that email to me with a full tummy, I really don't think you have any right to write it.“

The issue, which has seen Lush sell its fundraising Watermelon Slice soap across its stores to raise money for medical services and prosthetic limbs in Gaza, is perhaps one of the most controversial, but far from the only campaign Lush has embraced over its 30 years in business. General causes it’s championed have included mental health and environmental causes, as well as more local causes - in Texas, for example, its stores partnered with a local nonprofit to raise awareness of school shootings, while a previous Texas campaign saw it agitate against banning books.

And in New Zealand, early in 2025 the company launched an in-store and online campaign supporting a Ngāti Whakaue petition to take a stand against the Treaty Principles Bill, with its marketing material calling the bill a “direct threat to Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.

Bird says one of the outcomes of embracing these causes, apart from the complaints, is that “you win an awful lot more friends.

“It’s not why we do it, but I’m just saying that in describing this it might encourage other businesses to take stands. The thing is, the [day following the closure for Gaza], people came in and said ‘I don’t know what you sell, but I’m coming in here to buy something … I just want to contribute to what you are doing.’ People felt like something was being done. Sometimes it's not about the sales, it's about the effect you have.”

Lush understands, however, that chains in each of the 50 countries it operates have to tailor what they do to suit local sensibilities. In the US, for example, feelings can run particularly high, especially in red states. “People have guns and they are prepared to use them,” Bird says. It’s the only country where staff undertake special training for when a person has entered a mall with a gun.

A pointed, but suitably subtle campaign took place in US stores after it became obvious that the second Trump administration was outlawing and clamping down on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, for example. The company decided to come out with three new bath bombs in its US stores - “Diversity”, “Equity” and “Inclusion”.

Different structure

Part of the reason Lush can do what it does, including closing stores for the day, is that it is not owned by institutional investors. It remains privately owned by the six co-founders - Bird, Mo and Mark Constantine, Helen Ambrosen, Liz Bennett and Paul Greeves, all of whom have remained active in the business since founding in 1995. Lush is also 10% employee-owned, with a plan to eventually increase employee ownership to over 30%.

From its head office in Dorset in the UK, the business runs 113 stores in its home country, as well as having licensed the brand to an entrepreneur in each of 23 countries. Another 30 countries come under the UK business, but have their own local management. The New Zealand business is one of these. It has six stores here, and Lush believes the country could absorb another three.

Through sales as well as licensing revenue, Lush generated about £680 million in the last financial year; the New Zealand operation generates sales of $10.24m a year.

The business - which was established with £45,000 of personal savings - has become a global success in 30 years, but the co-founders did not have international aspirations to begin with, said Bird.

“Our aim really was just to have shops in London - we thought if we could have them within the M25 [greater London] we would be quite happy with that,” she said. “And from opening our second shop in London on the King’s Road, people started to see us. We had some Canadian entrepreneurs coming in, wanting to take the brand to Canada - and we were like “well we don’t know anything about that, we hardly know anything about retail to be honest!’

“We were a mail order company and a production company before that, so [we said] ‘you’ll have to sort it all out yourself’.”

Bird points out Lush took a potential risk in this arrangement, as it was very focused on maintaining a brand that was true to its founding principles of natural, ethically sourced cosmetics, without partnerships with companies that did things like testing products on animals. But the plan also allowed the partners in each country to take the financial risk, ensuring more stability.

“Where a lot of people go wrong is they get people excited, and take a big investment, and suddenly go from a couple of shops that they started to 50, and they think, ‘Oh, I'm expanding, and I'm doing really well’. But you don't know how to run that size of business. Even if Lush suddenly doubled our shops, we’d find the same thing.”

Future plans

The company may not be growing like a rocket, by design, but it is building its network incrementally, having just opened a new location in Cyprus in two weeks. It will also head back into India this December after trying to launch there and failing several years ago.

“We're always looking for new locations for stores, but it's about finding the right location. We invest pretty much all of our money back into the business, so it’s not like lots of money is being taken out by shareholders, as lovely as that would be.

“We’re always growing, but at a nice, steady pace, and not for the sake of it.”

There is, of course, huge competition in the beauty and cosmetics space and a need to maintain a position, at the very least. In markets including New Zealand, Mecca and Sephora have captured enormous market share. But while Bird agrees there is a lot of competition, Lush remains “without competitors” on quality and sustainability (the company now uses the word “regenerative” rather than sustainable). She says greenwashing is rife.

“I can say that only because I know how we source our raw materials, how we compile our products together, what our formulations look like - using fewer preservatives, preserving only for the life of those products, making them by hand and making them fresh.”

The drive to ensure materials used come from every corner of the globe - beeswax from Kenya, sea salt from Turkey, tonka beans from Brazil and Brazil nut oil from Peru for example - and the fact the products are made for a six-month lifespan and actually removed from sale after that amount of time, makes them pricey. Bird acknowledges they are premium priced and the cost of living crisis, seen in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world, has been felt by the company.

“But we’re also part of the lipstick effect … if you are feeling really down and low and need something to lift you - so many people come in and say I’d love a bath with a lovely bath bomb in it , so we benefit from that as well.

“What I would say is that we are a luxury brand, but we don't necessarily look like it. You’d normally think of a luxury brand in lots of packaging and wrapped in cellophane and hugely expensive. We are sold in a black plastic pot that seems pretty non-descript, but the luxury comes beyond the pot and it comes in the ingredients.

“If you look behind the pot, you see the value for money from the quality of the ingredients that we're using.”