When it comes to Christmas, British beauty brand and bath bomb pioneer Lush has its work cut out for it.
Over 1,176 tonnes of Snow Fairy products, Lush’s hero holiday item, were created in 2023 out of the brand’s humble Poole-based manufacturing site.
This includes over 725,000 Groovy Fairy bath bombs, 249,600 Snow Fairy Bubble Bars, 129,300 Snow Fairy Lip Masks and 810,511 bottles of Snow Fairy Shower Gel.
It is a scale of production which is not fully appreciated until actually stepping into one of Lush’s manufacturing rooms, and seeing these products being made entirely by hand.
And with Lush in the midst of repeating this process all over again for 2024, Daniel Hendey, Manufacturing Director at Lush, reveals just how integral Christmas is to the brand’s overall sales strategy.
“If you look at the top line, a third of our sales come from the latter three months of the year,” Hendey tells Cosmetics Business.
In 2023, Lush Manufacturing's sales to Lush Retail and Digital accounted for 41% of the total income for that year.
“It is all about making the money in that Christmas quarter and maintaining it for the next two quarters,” Hendey adds.
So how does the brand’s Manufacturing arm keep up with the pressure during the lucrative ‘Golden Quarter’.
Handmade through hard work
The ‘Ballistics Room’ where Lush makes its signature bath bombs
The prep work for Christmas starts around six months ahead of production, with Hendey assessing the previous year’s top trends and ranges.
Snow Fairy stands as the most popular product released during the holidays and makes up more than 10% of Lush’s overall Christmas sales.
But Bûche de Noël, a hydrating cleanser made with almonds, dried cranberries and cocoa butter, and Sweet Pudding, a bath bomb made with a tonka absolute, fill out the brand’s festive line-up.
Once the Lush team has all of the data and an idea of how they would proceed, Hendey says this is when “the magic starts happening”.
“Our decision will drive the raw material demands, headcount and, in particular, recruitment,” he adds.
Temporary employment can be one of the bigger challenges for Lush during the holiday period, as Hendey explains that Poole is not the “biggest place in the UK”.
The brand has often relied on European staff, but Brexit has made it more challenging to recruit people out of the UK in recent years.
“This year has been better, however, and we have definitely got a better calibre and a pool of people to choose from.”
Being able to bring on a strong roster of staff for 2024 has also been fueled by several products, including Sticky Dates, Honey I Washed the Kids and Super Milk, going viral this year.
“Some products are up 900% year-on-year, and there is not one forecast team or person, or crystal ball that can plan for that,” says Hendey.
“So it has been a miracle to even get those sales in and manage to facilitate the extra people.”
If you look at the top line, a third of our sales come from the latter three months of the year
Daniel Hendey, Manufacturing Director at Lush
Hendey notes that Lush typically doesn’t do a lot of traditional advertising, but TikTok, unsurprisingly, has significantly benefited the brand this year.
“We have seen some of those viral moments in the past where someone wrote about Dream Cream, and we have had a bit of a bump in sales,” says Len Tichy, Lush Manufacturing Director.
“But this is just unprecedented and massive, sustained growth that just does not seem to be coming to an end.”
The boom in sales comes as Lush integrates additional markets into its UK business, which now includes France, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and more recently Germany.
Hendey says: “It is about 25% to 30% extra volume for us, give or take, which is on top of the growth we are already seeing.”
He adds that having those viral moments has made Christmas feel easier this year as it has taken some of the guesswork out of what products to focus on for the holidays, but stresses that the increased demand can become a double-edged sword for the manufacturing team when the products rely on specific ingredients.
“Take Super Milk, which has tonka in it, of which there is only a limited amount in the world and can also suffer from things like crop failures – it creates a different kind of challenge,” Hendey continues.
Lush's tonka beans are wild harvested by indigenous and local communities in the Amazon forest, including the Kayapo people of Brazil.
But to meet Lush's demand for this year, the brand has been using its own processed beans and Tonka absolute purchased from trusted suppliers.
“These suppliers are rigorously assessed for compliance with our NAT standards and must meet strict quality specifications,” Lush’s buying team said in a statement
Getting it just right
Lush’s Snow Fairy range
Between juggling staff, keeping up with viral product demandand managing varying ingredient levels, how does Lush manage to create just enough of its products each year without going overboard?
Hendey says there is an art to managing production during the gifting season, which he has built over his 26 years with the company.
“I am not sure we could probably quantify it, as in a lot of cases it is about going with your gut feeling,” he explains.
“We know what our best sellers are, we know what is not maybe selling as often and it is just being smart.”
The underlying pressure is still there, however, due to the fresh nature of Lush’s products.
“We are making it that day to leave that day, so we have to manage the risk there,” Hendey explains.
Lush Manufacturing has a self-imposed freshness policy, which means that once made, a product must be sent to its shops within three months.
“Anything that passes this freshness policy will not be sent to our shops, and will instead be donated to charities via the Lush Green Hub,” according to Lush.
Lush uses fresh fruits and vegetables to create its products
This emphasis on quality also extends to the ingredients used, including fruits, vegetables and nuts, which can have inconsistent behaviours due to their fresh nature.
This is where the brand’s Compounders step in, who are a vital part of the process and assess how a particular product batch is looking and if it is meeting the correct standards.
These same Compounders are the faces featured on stickers attached to some of Lush’s products and serve as fun marks of quality.
Amidst all of this, Lush has also been expanding its collaborations this year, including ranges based on Shrek, Minecraft and its recently launched Wicked collection.
This has placed new and separate pressures on its holiday operations, however.
“For Lush’s seasonal products, there is a standard time frame for production, but when it comes to collabs the pace is far quicker,” says Hendey.
“Once the formula is signed off we most likely will need to be able to make it the next day, which generally doesn't give you much time to plan for materials.”
People power
Lush staff create thousands of products by hand each day
Tichy reveals that over 650 new individual products have been released since January this year, so how is this increased workload being managed by staff?
“Our staff take it in their stride most of the time, but we are very aware of all the extra stuff they have had to do this year,” says Tichy,
“Collabs have definitely put the extra pressure on.”
Hendey’s mantra, however, is that “people and product are intrinsically linked, you can't have one without the other in the world of Lush with our handmade products".
This means a strong priority on the welfare of employees at the company, particularly during the business Christmas period.
“When we have had a great Christmas, how are we going to recognise that and reward it?” says Hendey.
It is the careers people can make in Lush, in particular, which Hendey is proud of, as he reflects on his entry into the company on the shop floor at age 16 to his position today.
“To me, that is a massive thing that we don't probably talk about enough or celebrate, and I am very proud of the teams already,” he adds.
Ultimately, Hendey’s ambitions for the remainder of the year are to see the six weeks through until Christmas and celebrate another year of success.
“There are sales out there and customers wanting our product, so our job is to make sure we can fulfil them,” he adds.
“At the same time, I want to have a moment to say thank you to our staff and properly recognise our achievements.”
