Lush - how do they get away with charging so much?

[Marissa5]

I've never shopped at Lush before. Not my kind of thing and they're a bit of an odd brand. However I just asked a friend what her child wanted for his birthday, and apparently he's after lush Mario products. I've just had a look online:

• £21 for a relatively small shower gel (290g).
• £12 for an egg bath bomb.
• £35 for a bottle of body spray.

This just seems absolutely insane to me! I buy mostly Korean bath products as they're a safe zone for my eczema, they have decent ingredients such as hyaluronic acid and have hardly any chemicals (they use ceramides instead) or weird colouring. The ingredients are far superior yet they're half the price.

The lush products have SLES listed as the third product so obviously have a lot of it, three different fragrances and tin oxide (glitter) which aren't great.

Do people actually spend this much money on gimmicky products? Are they actually good? Do they smell incredibly to justify that price.

£21 for shower gel just blew my mind.

It's a combination of marketing and the fact that their products have short shelf lives so they have to offset the costs somehow. I don't use their products. Shit ingredients and the smell is revolting.

They charge it because people pay it.

Not me, I might add. Plenty must pay it or they'd be out of business

I agree! I live in the back of beyond so was excited to go in the one at Paddington station. I couldn't believe the prices. I bought a teeny tiny shower gel for £8.50. The smell was OK but not for that price. I bought a solid shampoo bar which was very good.

I don't know, the products reek and the company's branding and marketing are obnoxious. Perhaps they fill the tween/teen market that The Body Shop no longer meets and rely on pester power for parents to pay the stupid prices.

Probably because they are boycotted by many so have to make up the shortfall somehow.

Any time I go in they are always very busy. Lots of people buy their products.

How does any brand succeed when overcharging for its products?

There are entire university courses on Marketing, I expect they cover this aspect.

The massage bars are nice, rest of it is stinky gives my mum a migraine the smell in there, it’s sickly sweet. I’ve not been in for ages - the bars last for a long time. You also get hounded by staff showing you tonnes of stuff. I avoid it but people mist buy stuff as it seems to always be busy

I use to be a lush obsessive about 20 years and use to use them almost exclusively as a skint student.

I went in a few years ago to look at gift sets for a friend and couldn't believe the prices of things. I know obviously things have been increased in price in 20 years but I genuinely don't remember their products ever being as ridiculously overpriced as they are now.

They must have some customers who are happy to pay. I never step foot in their shops due to their promotion of breast binders for confused girls and their political stance against Israel.

Because people will pay it. Products are only worth what people are willing to pay. Lush products have such a foul pungent stench to me I cant stand them and I love perfume. Their vanilla scent for example smells really pungent like it was extracted from wiping a baboon's arm pit after a full day of exercise

I recently did an ingredients comparison on chatgpt (verified it in other ways too) and it found that a skin care product worth £24 had far better ingredients in it than a new product just out that costs £120. The two were the exact same type of product. Its all marketing hype and I wish people would pay more attention to ingredients

I can’t even walk past their shops without having an asthma attack. The fragrances are so strong.

Their prices have gone up insanely the past 20 years. Used to be quite a big fan and found it an affordable, fun luxury during uni days. The price of a bubble bar or bath bomb has tripled since then, and it's definitely not purely due to inflation or shelf life. I think they just realised they have a unique brand experience and can charge the same prices as luxury companies. I'd say they're similar to Rituals or many of the brands in Sephora.

A big misconception with LUSH is that their products need to be cheap because they're bright, colourful and targeted at kids. In reality, they have a very solid fanbase of adults who have the money to spend on quirky, branded products. I'd also go as far to say that a significant proportion of their target market are neurodivergent adults who don't like the sterile marketing of typical high-end beauty brands. Parents are also more likely to buy for their kids since they like the brand themselves.

I also feel a lot of LUSH marketing is targeted at ND sensory needs. The smell of their stores is a love-hate thing, but lots of ND people and kids use specific smells as stims or to regulate themselves. There are definitely a few LUSH fragrances that are hugely popular as regulating scents (eg Snow Fairy or American Cream).

They claim to have 'ethical' values and be pro-workers rights and their target customer will pay a premium for this.

They are 'occasion' purchases - for birthdays, Christmas etc and again the customer will pay a premium and many will enjoy the experience of shopping there.

Their target market (teen girls I guess) have relatively high disposable income (as a proportion of their overall income) - it's not like they're worrying about rises in petrol costs or mortgage rates - this is one of a few things they spend their money on. Plus they are an easy gift for any teen girl or young woman - a very difficult market to buy for.

They’re vile. You can smell it from 20 feet away.

Why is anything the price that it is? Because people will pay it. Selling 1 shower gel for £21 is better than selling 10 for £2.10

Plus I’m not a fan but their stuff is made in relatively small batches, you can’t compare the price to something mass produced in a Korean factory.

This. Stinks, very artificial smell.

They claim to have 'ethical' values

Yep- but are their products ethical? loads of their stuff is so highly coloured with glitter and nuclear strength perfume. I cant imagine thats good for sensitive skin or the environment (I note they use a lot of SLS as well which is super harsh)

Yeah, they are not ethical at all - I have no idea about their product content but they have forced their staff to work in the nude and promote breast binders and gender bollocks

I used to like some of their products, back when you could buy a bubble or bath bomb for £2.75, but I don’t go in there any more. I went in once and was accosted by three different shop assistants in quick succession asking me what my favourite smell was-it felt like an attack! I haven’t been back since!

Genuinely interested who the target market is for lush. It’s not food ingredients, too smelly, not results driven . So unsure who would buy it at that price point? I don’t even consider it as brand I would use. When I was at uni , I do wander into their high street shop a few times to buy £8 gift sets as the packaging was nice and the price for a present. But that’s my only experience with it!

I imagine a large % of that is the licensing of the Mario brand because that is above what Lush normally charge

Because fools and their money are soon parted.

Lidl do a snow fairy shower gel dupe that is really nice

I stopped going in there when they launched the anti-police campaign. The gender nonscence and breast binder stuff just cemented my distaste for the brand too.

Although I am one of the strange ones that loves the smell.