In-store Retail Experience

Last week I spoke at a Commerce Future event about how I believe physical retail spaces on high streets and shopping centres have an opportunity to create lasting memories for visitors to ensure the high street lives on. For anyone who missed it or is interested in what we're doing at Lush to ensure our visitors have a good time when they enter our stores, here's what I covered.

What is the right role for our stores, and how much value do we expect them to deliver over digital?

70% of Lush’s sales come from our retail stores and that’s arguably because of the value we place on the physical aspect of our business. We know customers love coming to our shops whether that’s for an in store experience like one of our parties, exploring a new product range or simply to chat with our shop teams; customers see Lush as destinations on high streets and in shopping centres so we really believe it’s our responsibility to show people a good time and make lasting memories for them.

Our shops are the perfect setting for creating hubs within each local community. For the past 15 years we’ve been selling a hand and body lotion called Charity Pot where all the funds, minus the VAT go directly to small grass root charities. Our stores have the autonomy to connect with their local grassroots charities and host them in their stores and raise money within their local communities. On weekends especially, you’ll often enter a Lush store and see a local charity hosting an area of the shop trying to raise awareness for their group. And when times get tough, you’ll find Lush managers supporting their local communities through it, whether that’s through direct campaigning or being donation drop off points for local food banks. We can’t replicate that community spirit in the same way online; our shop teams know their areas best and know what’s going to be most beneficial for their communities.

Our incredible, enthusiastic shop teams are also the best placed to communicate our core brand values to our customers. Whether that’s showcasing our fresh cosmetics off on beautiful ice tables, raising funds through charity pot or telling customers about how by buying our rose oil from a family in Turkey we’ve been able to support that community in building a school for the local children. We do so many incredible things for communities around the world at Lush and sometimes, text on a screen or a video don’t do those stories justice, but the passion from our team members is what really get’s that message across.

"We have been described by customers as an oasis of kindness on the high street and this is what we’ve always strived for, offering expertise and kindness to make people’s day.  Our shops are a space for the local community to get together, our retailers and shop staff are involved in their local communities and we believe that high streets have the opportunity to become community hubs." Paul Wheatley, Global Property Director, Feb 2022

How are our stores designed to deliver both magical experiences and profitable sales?

Physical spaces are super important when it comes to creating magical experiences but we place an equal amount of importance on the structure of our shop teams. At Lush, we have fearless business managers running our stores who, in my opinion, are the best marketeers on the high street. Our managers have the autonomy to run each of their locations in a similar manner if it were their own business. As a result of that approach, they’re able to evaluate what their customers want from their in store experiences and react to those needs. They use their marketing skills alongside their physical spaces to create their own magical experiences for their customers, whether that be in store themed parties, product making workshops or eye catching displays. During refit and relocation projects our managers are brought into the projects very early on so they can give their input and wish lists when it comes to the design and layout of their store. A recent example of how our managers use their autonomy to create magical experiences for their visitors is when Austin, our Aberdeen manager, when celebrating the freshness of the cosmetics he sells turned his window display into a wordle puzzle with FRESH being the 5 letter word answer. This localised approach is what creates memorable experiences for our customers; it certainly is what gets them chatting to their friends and family about Lush.

Photo by Austin Christie, Lush Aberdeen Manager

The design of the physical stores plays a big part in creating those magical experiences. Above, you saw our fresh face masks on ice, these are made in Poole fresh and delivered to our stores the day after they’re made. When in store they’re displayed on these ice displays, the inspiration for these displays came from meetings happening around our founders kitchen table. Katie Tabrim, our Creative Director really wanted that homely feel throughout our stores and it’s why the fresh table is at the heart of our shops for those interactions to take place between customers and staff. Another similar innovative way of displaying our products comes in the form of a sushi belt. Customers can interact with each of Lush's bath bombs and bubble bars touching and smelling as they go around in the hope to pick out their perfect bath product. These interactive, eye-catching displays play a huge part in creating these experiences; they add to the theatre and spectacle that retail can and should be and again get our customers talking about their experiences in Lush.

It wouldn't be right to talk about magical experiences at Lush without mentioning our Lush spa. Eight of our UK stores (Oxford St, Birmingham, Bath, Poole, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, and Edinburgh) have spas where Lush products are used in various different treatments from full body massage to reflexology. Our therapists are all trained in house to perform tailored and unique spa treatments on their clients. Each treatment has it’s own magical piece of music that has been composed by our Lush in-house band and each has its own little surprise whether that's a product to take home to continue the experience or a special refreshment after your treatment. Once you’ve experienced a treatment in a Lush spa, believe me you’ll want to visit and re-visit. We have plans to open more spas in the UK&I so we can help create these experiences in more areas of the UK&I. 

Now is also the perfect time to briefly touch on the magic that are our anchor stores. In the UK we have three, Oxford St, Liverpool and Birmingham. 

Our anchors have been designed with experiences and innovation at the core. Each of them have a spa where clients can be truly immersed in Lush. They sell products that you can’t get in our other locations like exclusive cosmetic products, Lush merchandise and even fresh flowers. Our flowers are sourced in Britain so you can create beautiful, ethical bouquets. They each have a personalisation machine where customers can go and personalise the labels on their products to enhance that experience further. Our Liverpool anchor even has a hairlab so if you’re in Liverpool, and fancy a blow dry I highly recommend you pop in and ask for a tour! Liverpool and Oxford St currently both have a cafe where customers can sit and relax whilst enjoying ethically sourced snacks and drinks. I spoke earlier about our Lush stores being the perfect setting for creating community hubs in our towns and cities. Well Liverpool has taken that one step further. They have an additional floor, where at Christmas time it’s turned into a ‘Christmas floor’ to enhance the magic that is Lush at Christmas. Throughout the year, Sandra the Manager turns this space into a community space where different events are organised and networking within the community can take place. Most recently the team hosted local art in that space to celebrate artists in and around Liverpool. If you don't believe me, take a watch of Caroline Hirons talking about her experience of Lush Liverpool where she describes how she's never seen "a more impressive retail set up."

Our customers love our anchors and want more of them so they don’t have to travel as far to get this experience so we have big plans to expand this offering around the country so watch this space!

Why I believe customers choose to visit and re-visit stores?

I believe customers choose to visit physical retail spaces because it can give them an experience, retailers on the high street and in shopping centres have an opportunity to help their customers create lasting memories with friends and families, or simply make someone's day with an interaction. At Lush we generously staff our shop floors (on average 20-25% of our top line sales is spent on staffing) and this is to ensure we can deliver exceptional customer service. Our staff are trained to go above and beyond through active listening and building a rapport with their customers. Each store is given a generous sampling budget so our customers can try before they buy and we even have a random act of kindness policy where our staff throughout the business are encouraged to make someone's day through an act of kindness. I mentioned earlier about our Lush Spa, our spa therapists have carried out training to all of our UK&I stores so that are shop floor teams are trained in providing customers with hand and arm massages; you can’t experience that if you shop online and so yes, once you visit a lush store, it’s very likely you’ll want to return.

An incredible initiative that encourages both new and return customers are our Lush parties. Our parties last an hour and a half and it’s an opportunity to get hands on with the products, explore parts of Lush you didn’t know existed, receive exclusive party products and you even get to create your own fresh, handmade product! Since restrictions have eased we’ve hosted over 11,000 party guests in our UK&I stores, all have had an incredible experience with their friends and family. Our parties are the perfect tool to future proof our business through creating life long customers!

Like many retail businesses, we also have different initiatives that encourage customers back into our stores. At Lush a big one for us is our packaging scheme. We have a closed loop packaging system where our pots are chipped down and turned into new pots. Before the pandemic if you bought 5 back into store you’d get one of our fresh face masks for free. We’ve recognised the need for flexibility when encouraging return custom and so recently we’ve adapted this scheme so that customers can now receive money off their next purchase. Similarly, we’re in the process of launching click and collect across all of our stores so we can merge the digital and in store experiences. Currently 40% of our UK&I estate offer click and collect and we should have the majority of shops up and running by the end of the April! I think it’s important that we continually evolve these types of schemes to keep up with what customers want and expect.

I thought I’d finish with some kind words from one of our customers who visits our Leicester store, their words basically sum up why we put so much emphasis on physical stores.

"The customer service is amazing beyond words! The past few times I’ve gone in, the staff have been absolutely beautiful inside and out! Today, I was struggling between a bath bombs and bubble bar, I went with the bubble bar in the end. Then as I was leaving the staff member who had spoken to me about the two products previously gifted me the bath bomb so I could experience them both🥺❤️ I honestly could have cried, such a sweet, thoughtful gesture! Whenever I go in I’m greeted with a smile and love, the whole atmosphere of the shop is magical and I would go in every day if I could! I’ve never felt so loved, from strangers too! I will forever shop here over anywhere else, always leave with a smile on my face and finding excuses to go back in for more. The lush staff deserve all the love and praise, thank you all."

So there we have it, my whistle stop tour on how at Lush we're creating magical memories for our customers and why I believe retailers should be heavily investing in their in store experiences. If anyone would like to chat about anything I've covered please reach out and we can set up a virtual coffee.