Detailed SWOT Analysis of Lush – Famous For Its Purest Skin Products

Quick Stats on Lush

Founder	Mark Constantine & Liz Weir
Year Founded	1995
Origin	Poole, Dorset, UK
No. of Employees	4,581
Company Type	Private
Market Cap	$ 638.45 Million
Annual Revenue	$ 533.45 Million
Net Income/ Profit	$ 22.6 Million

Products by Lush

(Lush Cosmetics Products, Source: Pinterest)

Lush has a wide range of collections from cosmetics to bubble bars. Some of Lush’s best buys are Snow Fairy Body Spray, Intergalactic Bath Bomb, Cinnamon Roll Bubble Bar, etc.

• Skin-care 
• Make-up
• Bath Bombs
• Hand-made Soaps
• Personalized Gifts

What’s new with Lush

Check out some current news about Lush:

• Lush is among a number of UK beauty and fashion brands joining India’s Fashion Forum 2023.
• Lush Cosmetics opening a Lush Hair Lab salon in Brighton.
• Lush taps into the Barbie craze with a limited-edition collection. A comprehensive selection of personal and beauty care items in the iconic pink colour of the doll is available in the Barbie x Lush Collection.

Now that we know about Lush let’s understand the target customers of Lush.

Target Audience of Lush

Young professional women between the ages of 18 and 45 make up Lush Cosmetics’ main target demographic. These women have advanced degrees and make middle-to-high salaries. They often live in cities or close by as well.

Look at the buyer’s persona for Lush provided below for more clarity:

Now that we understand the company’s key business, let’s look after the SWOT Analysis of Lush.

SWOT Analysis of Lush

A SWOT analysis compares an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats against those of its competitors. It’s a fantastic tool for determining whether a company is prospering, failing, or expanding. So, let’s look at the SWOT analysis of Lush.

To better understand the SWOT analysis of Lush, refer to the infographic below:

Now first let’s begin with the strengths of the company from the SWOT analysis of Lush.

Strengths of Lush

• Customer Experience: Lush has proven to be the no:1 cosmetics brand in the United Kingdom because of the marvellous experience that it provides to its customer. While walking in the store customers can sample any product before buying one. The products are placed without any packaging for customers to observe and breathe the aroma of the products.
• Corporate Social Responsibility: Maintaining a healthy CSR is one of the most important steps a company can take into consideration. Since the birth of Lush the company has maintained a strong CSR. It has started a few campaigns in support of environment-friendly products, and eco-friendly packaging processes. 
• Unique Production: Lush is using organic natural vegan ingredients to manufacture almost 70% of its products whereas 30% contains animal ingredients unfertilized eggs, beeswax, and honey partnering with suppliers to bring them the best available raw materials. They believe in keeping it 100% natural. These products are carefully experimented with and tested on real human skin before they enter the market.
• Packing Budget: Lush prefers selling their product either without packaging or with unique inexpensive and eco-friendly packaging. They use something called starch-based peanuts instead of polyester beads which is, without doubt, the most affordable option; however, do not start chewing it between your teeth. 

Weaknesses of Lush

• Store Location: Lush has around 900+ stores around the globe; however, the majority of them are not located as individual stores in less popular cities as well as in highly popular cities. The store is located within shopping malls. The maximum number of people would not prefer to visit a shopping mall merely to buy from one shop.       
• Unable to Catch Up: In earlier years, Lush was a brand that had fewer competitors as their products were limited to bath bombs and hair care. The disadvantage was that there was not much demand for these products. In recent years, Lush started introducing skincare but that didn’t even result in immense profit.
• High Store Designing Cost: To be in the first position regarding customer service, Lush has set high budgets for designing, decorating, and colours. These efforts Lush has made have proven to be successful, but facts cannot be hidden. This budget size is one of the main expenditures of Lush. 
• Weak Advertisement Strategy: Lush has not considered bringing innovation in its advertisement strategy. After having various digital platforms, it is a must that businesses use these platforms in their favour. The gate to opportunity is wide open if Lush considers innovating their advertisement strategy.

Bonus Tip: Don’t consider taking the example of only one company, if Lush has set back its foot from social media then this is not the same for all. Digital Media works as a strength for many other big companies. So, learning various digital marketing skills will always benefit you, just like IIDE 13+ short-term courses in digital marketing are benefiting many of the students to upgrade their skill set.        

• Costly Products: High-cost products are always a disadvantage for businesses, the same is the case with Lush. Even so, Lush has irresistible manufactured products. It is still a disadvantage to keep pricing on the higher side. 

Opportunities for Lush

• Phobia of Chemicals: In this era, people are demanding natural products. In the future, people will even pay a bit higher to protect themselves from chemical reactions and skin problems. There is a chance that overall sales for Lush might increase gradually.    
• Investing in Marketing: Lush barely spends any money on advertisements. Their advertising expense is 0%. It is important for customer engagement, but Lush has been solely relying on ‘brand advocates’.  
• Enhancing their Vegan Product Line: Lush has an advantage of a wide range of vegan products with natural-vegetarian ingredients researched, experimented and tested on real human skin by experts. Nowadays, People are showing interest in buying vegan products. 

Threats to Lush

• High Competition: Despite their excellent products, Lush has been unsuccessful in defeating this market competition since the very beginning. Lush must try new innovative strategies to excel in this competitive industry; otherwise, It will lose many customers and sales.
• Building Brand Trust: Lush has taken an initiative in the manufacture of make-up products. Lush is not expertise in manufacturing make-up products as compared to already existing competitors, gaining and building trust among its customers is time-consuming and requires a great amount of effort. 
• Competitors Going Digital: Digital marketing is benefiting the competitors of Lush and disappearing from social media will bring lots of drawbacks for Lush. In terms of consumer engagement, advertising, sales, and many more the competitors are an advantage.

Competitor Analysis of Lush

Let’s have a look at the competitors of Lush:

• Natura & Co: Natura & Co is a Brazilian global personal care cosmetics group headquartered in São Paulo.
• Body Shop: The Body Shop is a British company that creates fragrances, skincare items, and cosmetics.
• Sephora: Sephora is yet another large-scale French retailer that sells cosmetics and personal care items. To learn more about the brand, look into Sephora’s marketing approach.
• Bath & Body Works: An American retail chain that sells candles, soaps, lotions, and perfumes is called Bath & Body Works, LLC. It was founded in New Albany, Ohio, in 1990.

Lush needs to have a well-planned marketing strategy if it wants to outperform the competition and keep up with shifting market trends. Lush must be current with fashion.

Before concluding let us see any campaign of Lush that did not work well or faced any backlash.

Failed Campaign

Go Naked – A Marketing Campaign of Lush

Lush is constantly looking for innovative methods to reduce waste. One of these discoveries led to the company starting to offer its goods using basic packaging.

Lush promoted its new program with a “Go Naked” commercial. In an effort to promote body positivity, it featured four naked women of all sizes and shapes standing with their backs to the camera.

In Australia and New Zealand, Lush Cosmetics and the Advertising Standards Board had a falling out over this campaign. The image was labeled “pornographic” and “inappropriate for the family environment of the shopping center,” in accordance with a number of complaints that were received by the Advertising Standards Board.

As a result, the advertisement received harsh criticism and was later removed.

This ends our detailed SWOT analysis of Lush. Let us conclude our learning below.