Lush (company)
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| Private limited company | |
| Industry | Cosmetics |
| Founded | November 12, 1995 |
| Founder | Mark and Mo Constantine, Liz Weir, Helen Ambrosen, Rowena Bird and Paul Greaves |
| Headquarters | Poole, England, U.K. |
| Products | Skin care |
| Revenue | £282.5 million (2014) |
| Website | lush.com |
Lush Ltd. is a cosmetics retailer headquartered in Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom. The company was founded by Mark Constantine, a trichologist and Liz Weir, a beauty therapist. They met in a hair and beauty salon in Poole, England. A few years later, they decided to branch out and start their own business selling natural hair and beauty products.
Mark Constantine, a herbal trichologist, and Elizabeth Weir, had an interest in beauty therapy and thus, formed a company named Constantine & Weir. In the early '80s, Constantine read about Anita Roddick, who had just started The Body Shop. He called her and offered some of his products. She initially placed an order for £1,200 to start with. Constantine & Weir developed a number of recipes for bath and beauty products and were a major supplier to The Body Shop, until Roddick was consulted to take more products in house. The Body Shop then paid £11 million for the rights of Constantine & Weir's recipes. It was at this point The Body Shop decided to buy their product formulas.
The Body Shop's purchase of their product formulas forbade Mark and Liz from opening another retail shop for five years, so they set up a mail order cosmetics company called Cosmetics-To-Go. It was a successful although complicated venture that ended up burning out. The company went into administration and sold to someone from Poole, who took the product formulas and the Cosmetics-To-Go name.
Mark and Liz, along with Mo Constantine, Helen Ambrosen, Rowena Bird and Paul Greaves from Cosmetics-To-Go, spent what money they had left on fresh fruits and vegetables at the market. In a shop in Poole, they hand made products upstairs that were being sold downstairs. They had previously been paying another company to come up with the fragrances for their products, but found out the perfumes weren't always pure, so Mark decided he would create the perfumes himself. A competition was launched for customers to give the company a new name. One customer suggested LUSH, which is defined as being fresh, green, and verdant.
In December 2010, Mark and Mo Constantine were awarded the OBE in the New Year's Honours list, for services to the beauty industry.
Lush is a privately owned company with a small number of shares available on an invitation basis only. The company's growth is based mainly upon partnerships. There are two different types of partnership. The general partners own and operate the business and assume liability for the partnership, while the limited partners serve as investors only; they have no control over the company and are not subject to the same liabilities as the general partners. Lush is structured in the latter way, namely a limited partnership.
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