Hello and welcome to the Smart Beauty podcast. I'm your host, Vyla Levy, beauty journalist
and founder of Copilot branding agency, Smart Beauty Creative. We're here to create your
brand voice and craft the story behind it. Today I'm talking to the amazing Sarah McCartney.
She has graced this podcast before so you can go back and listen to the episode I did
with her talking about her range for 160 Tuesdays. She is a perfumer so that was a really interesting
chat and she has so many amazing insights and opinions about the fragrance industry
and it's a fountain of knowledge so I do suggest checking out that episode if you haven't already
we'll include a link in the show notes. But today she has kindly joined us to talk about
Lush so before she started her own brand earlier on in her career she was the editor of the
Lush Times which I fondly remember as a student getting very excited when it dropped through
my letterbox. This was pre-social media days and today she is talking about a new collection
that Lush have launched called the Lush version. Slightly provocative, well not even slightly,
rather provocative and controversial, it focuses on the body shop's best sellers that Mark
Constantine, I have to pronounce that correctly as I was saying Constantine which Sarah pulled
me up about. Apparently he gets very angry as well if you mispronounce his name. I have
to bear that in mind if I ever meet him. Anyway Mark Constantine created this range because
he used to work with Anita Roddick and her husband at the body shop and he formulated
all of these products so you could argue that he has a prior claim but given that he is
now with Lush his own brand and the body shop are still going they were recently acquired
by the Aurea Group and have a new CEO so it's very exciting times for them. So it's a very
interesting move from Lush some would say quite a controversial one. So Sarah is here
to provide her insights and opinions having been a member of the Lush team and having
worked with Mark Constantine herself. She was one of the only previous Lush team members
to have not signed an NDA so she can speak a bit more freely than some others who have
worked there. I was very excited to hear what she had to say and really enjoyed this chat
and I hope you will too. So thank you so much Sarah for joining me once again on the podcast
and really looking forward to chatting with you as I'm sure you've got a lot to say on
this topic. So Lush have recently launched a new range called the Lush version which
is, they say in no uncertain terms, it's a fresh take on the body shop's treasured favourites
and basically for those who aren't aware Mark Constantine created a lot of these products
while he was working with the body shop or co-created them should we say. So he does have
a claim that he's not, you know they were the products that he created and you know
one could argue that he should be kind of celebrating his legacy but the body shop is
still going and that is why people have raised a few eyebrows because arguably you know it's
still a rival brand which is still in business and when you look on the website what they've
sort of said about it is kind of taken swipes in no uncertain terms talking about how customers
felt betrayed when the body shop was sold to L'Oreal and they say the body shop never
recovered from its former glory and I was like well give it a try it's still going it
could still recover and a change of ownership ultimately couldn't revive the heart and soul
and quality of a brand once loved by so many which yeah not exactly awash with ambiguity
and I wanted to chat to you because obviously you worked at Lush you were the editor of
the Lush Times and worked closely with Mark and the founding team so I'd really love to
get your thoughts because obviously it's quite a you know we all love a bit of industry theatre
but do you think this is more of this is an interesting move and that Mark has a right
to celebrate the products that he arguably created or do you think it's not really in
keeping with the Lush ethos like what are your what are your initial thoughts?
Knowing them as I do I would say that this is entirely 100% consistent with the way the
Constantine family always felt about the body shop and the end of their relationship with
them and even from the beginning of their relationship with them right through to the
point at which Nita Roddick sold to L'Oreal and onwards after that so I was involved in
all of that time so and I can tell you a number of things that came up which would indicate
I mean this just did not surprise me the slightest little bit.
Oh really?
Yeah it's as you only have to mention Nita Roddick it's Constantine by the way and
that was one of the things that kept coming up when people called him Constantine he also
used to slightly get annoyed so just so you know it's Constantine.
Good to know in case I ever meet him.
Thanks for the heads up.
Yeah just in case.
Yes so yes I'm not surprised there's a lot of stored bottled up rage about what happened
between the Lush founders who were supplying products for the body shop.
Can imagine.
Until a certain point at which it all fell apart which I can also tell you about because
I'm one of the few people who got out and didn't sign in NDA but this all comes from
a genuine powerful knowledge belief and it's that they know that they will write about
this.
They are absolutely certain that they're doing the right thing otherwise they wouldn't do
it.
They know they're probably they will have discussed is it a good idea and a lot of people around
would say oh I don't think so and they would have go well you know what I'm doing it anyway
because what they've done for this brand isn't outrage and it's not fair and we're doing
it.
And also I think you mentioned that the ingredients they're using a much higher quality whereas
the body shop kind of diluted them to get the cheapest version that they could and Lush
is kind of bringing that quality element back.
Yeah what's actually happened I'm pretty sure although obviously I wasn't in the room but
looking at the picture of the product the Lush version it's evident that there are actually
bananas in it again.
I'm suddenly like dawn while we're talking I was thinking to myself oh of course this
is the original formulas which they fell out of use because the original formulas that
Lush made were made with fresh fruits and all the naturals that they could squeeze into
them to try and get the best effect.
Because of course over the years body shop the original kept that formula but over the
years these things have been tweaked looked at changed altered such that body shop the
name no the brand name remains the same but actually what they stood for when the Lush
guys were making the products that's completely different.
So the fact that these formulas were in effect lost the real genuine products had been lost
so I think what's happened is that taking the originals the very originals remaking
those it's not even the same product at all in fact it's miles away product wise and I
think that the constant times are going to be going right this is what the body shop
ought to be whoever you are who's bought it you need reminding of what the body shop
actually stood for and the quality that the products had and so we're just going to show
you how it's done.
Yes, that's the thing.
And once this happened once before and it was coming up to 2020 when everybody suddenly
had to declare the product ingredients on the label and that hadn't happened before
and Lush was saying coming up to that point they were going to be crossing the line into
the new millennium and the products the ingredients list the QI lists Lush were already listing
all the fruit and veg and essential oils they're going to put in there and they said just wait
till people start reading what's actually in the body shop because the obsession is not
new then wait they start reading the ingredients list then have a look at them and then they'll
think aha that's the difference the Lush products are way superior but actually nobody
really looks and nobody really notices and that was a big disappointment to them you
know 2001 is like actually nobody reads ingredients lists but they were helping that there'd be
a you know clear blue sky is it clear blue water whatever a big gap that people would
notice the big gap between what Lush was actually doing with the products and what the body
shop had done with the products and I I begin to suspect that what's actually in it the
quality of it is the most important thing to them and it's just to realise of course
they put the bananas back in they've actually gone back to the genuine original really expensive
really difficult to make have to be made by hand genuine natural materials and I think
that's way more important than than the IP and everyone's obsessing about the IP how
dare they know how dare they in effect encroach upon the body shops IP but it's more about
the quality of the products that's that's what that's what finally I think this is all
about it is a kind of dodgy legal territory I mean they might feel like they they have
that moral high ground and which many people will agree but they're not even being they're
not even you know being subtle about it they're like yeah this is the body shop we you know
we did these products and we're gonna make them we're gonna make our versions of what
our rival brand the products that made our rival brand's name and arguably I was gonna
say that they are kind of iconic not just because they're great products but because
of the brand that Anita Roddick built that's what kind of made them the icons they are
today so I think for them to sort of claim that they are kind of now under the lush umbrella
is a little bit unfair in that respect would you agree well I would imagine that when they
decided to do this it looked like the body shop was ended and finished forever and so
they thought right we'll take it forwards they're gone and then by the time the products
are ready to come out the body shop hadn't gone it's you know it's lingering we'll see
what happens and so they thought well we'll do it anyway I'll give you a little bit background
which was I mean there's much but when when Anita Roddick sold to L'Oreal I mean Mark
was incensed there was steam coming out of his ears for months and he decided that because
they'd developed Ice Blue Shampoo because when they first started working together
body shop didn't have a factory they didn't make any products they bought in products
and they bought in products which were made by the team which then went on to form Cosmetics
the Go and then went on to form Lush when Princess Diana came to visit they bought themselves
in new lab but they didn't have anything in it so they had to bring in the whole Lush
team with a load of equipment to make some stuff in front of her to make it look like
they were actually manufacturing so it's not as simple as somebody said oh Mark was working
for body shop it wasn't they presented products they developed the top selling product that
the body shop did and then the body shop marketed them as their own Mark maintains that Anita
Roddick wasn't the slightest bit interested in animal testing for example until they brought
that principle with them and told them you should you should do this it's really important
and she went she went yeah okay because before that Mark had worked with Beauty was called
Beauty Without Cruelty BWC and it was the kind of 1970s cruelty free brand Mark had
worked with them and Anita Roddick hadn't heard of it the non-animal testing thing was you
know according to the Constantine they introduced her to that idea she thought well that sounds
good and took it on so there's a lot of what Lush people did that informed where the body
shop stood and what everybody knew about it so anyway they had made Ice Blue Shampoo
on the day the sale was announced Mark said he was going to make a product called Ice
Blue Cube and that would be indicative of his feeling that Anita Roddick could actually
go and sell the brand to the people who were doing more animal testing than the rest of
Europe's cosmetics companies put together at that time he was like I say he was he was
incandescent he was uncarmable he wanted to turn the whole front page of the Lush Times
Black which actually he did because I was away for one meeting and I came back he printed
the whole Lush Times with a black front page and of course nobody in the shop picked it
up and the sales went down but that was kind of that was less important to him than than
making a statement about it because that was something he genuinely believed in and
going to say was it more that he was angry on principle or was it more that she'd thrown
his brand under the bus and his name by doing that oh no that's that was they'd separated
a long time before that I could tell you about that if you like but it was so there was already
bad blood you're saying oh yeah they okay history so the body shop was set up when Anita Roddick
had been to San Francisco and had seen a shop called the body shop which had wooden floors
green packaging they refilled the bottles and it was kind of very hippie and she thought
her big business idea was oh I know I'll do that in England so that's why they couldn't
open the body shop couldn't have a US company they were in Canada but they couldn't work
in the US for a long time because the brand body shop was owned by the two women who established
the actual original body shop so that became quite a difficult time for them they wanted
to do something in the US so Gordon Roddick Anita's husband asked Mark Constantine because
they were working together at the time and they're the Constantine's their company with
this myth this myth no the Constantine's with Liz Weir at the time who went on to form cosmetics
to go and then lush they were working very closely together making lots of products for
the body shop. They're formulators at the time. Yeah but also manufacturers yeah but
yes they had a company called Constantine and Weir Mark Constantine and Liz Weir his
business partner they were they were manufacturing they were also formulating but they started
off by doing manufacturing. So their formulas were like top bestsellers the body butters
the ice blue shampoo they were consistently number like one two three in the body shop's
bestselling list so this made it a bit of an odd relationship because they the lush team
as they are now they owned the formulas. Body shop did not own formulas their top selling
products they did not have the intellectual property for. So there they were unable to
go into the US and Gordon Roddick said to Mark do you want to go into partnership we
can open a shop in Seattle and they called us shop bodkins they went over they put a
lot of products in they opened it up and at the launch party I quote Mark he said to Gordon
so is there a need to not coming and Gordon Roddick said to Mark oh I haven't told her
about this yet. Well anyway the thing did not see well Gordon Roddick set up a business
of Mark Constantine he haven't told his wife. Why haven't you not told his wife? Well he
didn't in case you didn't like the idea so he did it anyway. Oh okay. So this is where
the difficulty started is that then Gordon got back on said oh by the way Mark Constantine
made me set up a business in Seattle and it's lost I've lost all of this much money and
so she was absolutely fuming and in order for them to stay married and I mean obviously
I speculate but I get I got this this is a story that Mark told that Gordon had to blame
him otherwise he would his situation would have been not possible to continue so. Domestic
situation you mean? Domestic situation yeah and so for that reason they then didn't speak
so then the body shot it was quite messy but anyway so bodkins was that shop which started
and failed in a very short period of time I think and they both of them had put in 200,000
pounds each Mark said and they I have a memory for facts okay so I mean I left 14 years ago
but some of these things, unless you're so full of drama and gossip all the time but
all of these things seem so important that they stuck in my memory but that was the kind
of parting so at that point the body shop offered to buy out Constantine and Weir to
buy the formulas from them and separate so they sold those original formulas so that
was the point at which these formulas that the Lush team as they are now had developed
those then changed hands and went to the body shop now they're not the same formulas because
you can't use exactly the same things no because of the little wrinkle yeah things will have
changed but I'm sure they'd be very similar and so then they lost those the rights to
all of those formulas they went with body shop now on the tiny tiny level I've had that
happen to me somebody bought a formula from me and then discovered that they couldn't
afford to to reproduce it to big quantities and just reformulated makes somebody something
completely different and people come to me and say oh but I really used to like that
one I can't make it can't make it it's not mine I sold it and it really drives me not
so that's on a tiny tiny tiny scale so I imagine when a whole load of your formulas get bought
and is then a like unable to be produced.
International property doesn't take as big a role as emotional input when you've been
through all of these dramas with somebody and you've lost stuff and you think it should
be yours that's why I think they do it I don't think they're doing it in any kind of cynical
business way they don't need that.
That's what I thought and given like Lush's ethos that they're they you know they seem
very much like this hippie-dippy brand that not you know for lack of a better phrase but
that you know it doesn't seem in keeping with their kind of their spirit that it's kind
of driven by what they think is right or mostly for the planet and animals not necessarily
for individuals who have a different idea from what they want to be doing but they are
driven by what they think is going to be the greater good for the planet the animals and
the plants on it and the constant time family that's that's the constant drive but and there
was a document once I think I shredded it I wish I kept it but Mark wrote a document
called why Lush is a legendary company and he spent quite a lot of time on it and it
describes how he believed that every single cosmetics company pretty much it set up after
he started had copied them in some way and so that Lush is singularly responsible for
every brand following that to have copied them now there are a lot they know the solid
shampoo bar without doubt that's that's the thing now it's all over the place but they
invented it yeah the bath bomb they invented it and so there are lots of companies who
don't even know that they are inspired by or copied Lush and they they were so inventive
but there are some other things which is perfectly possible as I know and others know when you
start making things somebody else makes pretty much exactly the same thing as you just develop
it in your lab you they don't know you you don't know them and they come out at the same
time and you might both have got your inspiration from the same place but I think that I mean
something something's happened in Lush meetings sometimes whether they like we've developed
this brand new product and we're going to call it this and there's one particular one
where Mary had a process had to kind of put her hand on say um that's an Estee Lauder
trademark that's their biggest new skincare but have you not have you not do you not how
do you not know and they just didn't go at the shots so they would they would get inspiration
from lots of other places but not from anybody else's product ever so sometimes they had an
inspiration for a product but and it already existed but um yeah that that that used to
occur in meetings sometimes we'd have to talk them down because Mark and Elizabeth we are
they were real trailblazers when you think about it in that sense that they didn't vent
these these products that now are kind of ubiquitous on the shelves and they were the
pioneers behind it but then I'd argue that why not just celebrate that legacy as opposed
to directly ripping off the body shot it just feels like it's beneath them given beneath
Lush given you know the amazing brand that they built they could just be celebrating
the the legacy of their founder in a more yeah I guess classy way at the moment yeah yeah
they used yeah there were a lot of things that um could have happened that would have
indicated the very much more emotional side um I forget about the IP this is what's important
a lot of things didn't happen that could have happened when we used to have the big creative
team meetings and if it was like there'd be 40 people in the room you know and if it was
39 to 1 and Mo actually turned around to Mark and said really no you can't do this he might
not do it and it was only like Mark Mark's wife yeah Mo Constantine the inventor of
the bath bomb yeah he I mean he truly believes that Mo is the most creative person on the
planet and also the best writer the only reason they employed me was because Mo was busy so
I mean there is this you kind of have to understand if you want to work with the Lush team that
they do honestly think that they are powerhouse creatives like no one else and they have the
proof you know but they don't really need other people it's just found a way they have
to employ other people because they're busy I've worked at a work at companies like it's
founder syndrome where the kind of the founding team are placed kind of on a higher on a higher
plane of worthiness to the rest of us which is lucky to kind of be within their be within
their aura shall we say would you say that and if you understand that then you can kind
of toggle on I know people who were there before me who are still there and you know
fit fit nicely in with that I was a bit too much of a I think that's not right but if
you were there was the phrase out of the room out of the deal if I missed one meeting then
I come back and find something I've done have been completely rewritten in a way I've
been told I published that oh too late but I mean I got lots of marks once when I come
up with this headline about Easter and say there was an Easter bunny product that they'd
made and I wrote on it the headline was take the bunny and run this happened to coincide
with Anita Roddick selling to L'Oreal now this was separate and but Mark thought it was the
most brilliant thing I'd ever done because he thought I was talking about the the buah
non animal testing bunny and Anita Roddick taking the money it was coincidence I was
happy to sit back quietly and not and say oh yeah great but I I didn't I didn't write
it because Anita Roddick had sold to L'Oreal I wrote it because it was Easter and there
was a bunny bath ballistic so um happy coincidence but but you think it's the best intentions
it wasn't a case of just taking the bunny and running as you would say exactly but I've
heard this directly from Mark Constantine who had been told by Gordon Roddick after Anita
died they spoke again and he told Mark that he thought she basically died of a broken heart
that she got to L'Oreal for her first meeting and they said I'm sorry you're not invited
now this is this is two stages of PSA of course so Gordon got it from Anita who turned up for
the meeting she came home absolutely devastated because she thought she was being invited in
to give them all of her expertise and changed the way L'Oreal did everything and they pretty
much wanted only ownership of the L'Oreal of the body shop brand you know and obviously
L'Oreal don't own it any longer but then it's gone on the message has sort of been
watered down yeah every time it gets bore so it wasn't a kind of a lack of integrity on
Anita Roddick's part she was just maybe a bit naive and perhaps misled um by thinking that
L'Oreal were going to do something good and actually it was a lot more she was she was
flattered into it she was convinced that she was going to be the great animal savior you
know that she uh she had a huge ego um without shadow of doubt I've been in other other situations
long before I I joined Blush I worked with people who had encountered her and she she
sideline people at events it was she had this I don't know well she was particularly egocentric
I think I think it's an argument that you can't yeah that's kind of unavoidable if you're
going to be a founder or a key or key figure that's an element of narcissism isn't there
within yeah a founder that's going to drive anything that massive I think yeah does have
the narcissism um but she I don't think they found it difficult to convince her that they
would take her on and she could change everything for them but they that's not what they wanted
according to Jordan according to Mark that's really sad and yeah yeah it's a sad ending
given everything that she and Mark had built um with regards to that but going back to
what you were saying about how lush feels so strongly about their environmental principles
I think what another thing that people are shocked about is that they're using the same
plastic tubs for like the bodybutters as the body shop and you think well why are they not
you know using more sustainable packaging if that's the case because they are just recycled
yeah I mean the thing is that it's very easy to go oh plastic the plastic argument is very
very very complicated um I mean there's use on plastic packaging on food for example means that
food will last five ten times longer you can fill the packaging if it's sealed you can fill it with
nitrogen instead of oxygen so that there's far far less food waste and yeah you've got kneejerk
reactions about oh we've got to get rid of all the plastic because it's plastic um and it's
leading to massive worldwide worldwide food waste so saying oh but look it's plastic it's
it's a very very easy um low hanging fruit points to judge people on but lush have used
recycled plastic for their packaging ever since it was available and that was when I was there so
that was before 2010 yeah given that that the packaging that they normally use is very different
you kind of think why wouldn't they just use the same packaging that they've or similar packaging to
what they've always been using because clearly they think that that's a more sustainable choice
um don't know can only speak to the past can't really speak to the present um but I I think they
will definitely have looked for the most sustainable option you know there are some
what looks like plastic I've got here that I'm testing for a perfume for somebody it looks like
plastic it isn't it's biodegradable to all intents and purposes you just think oh it's a plastic bottle
it's not um so and we're doing stability tests on that at the moment it's manufactured in Spain
it's not plastic but it looks and feels like plastic so maybe if we ask it'll turn out to be that
yeah because there are so many better alternatives I mean not to just derail the conversation but
things like aluminium for example and um yeah obviously like the waterless solutions as well
or another is another avenue but yeah I just thought that was interesting really that they would use
the original kind of they would copy the packaging as well as use the the formulations
that's a point the ip point yeah I mean I genuinely don't know what it's made I haven't seen the
products I've only not in real life have any seen pictures of them so I don't know what the actual
source is yeah I would I would doubt very much that lush would just go out and buy plastic I mean
I know they wouldn't yeah they just wouldn't they just they just can't it's not it's not in their
nature so it's going to be but yeah I I can only think and this I don't know but um I think that
this must have sprung to them quickly and they are a bit that they're often they make quick off the
mark it's like this has happened this is important we need to do it now boom um they're always rushing
things yeah always like we have an idea it's got to be it's something wrong just you know other
brands will take 18 months from concept to get something out but she's like okay stability test
boom out the door and um I think that's I think that's likely to have been what occurred um and
probably they they also like to be cheeky they did seriously like to push it as far as they could go
um and you know if somebody then issues them with a cease and desist they'd cease and desist
so I was going to say what do you think are going to be the legal repercussions of this in your
kind of professional opinion with your sort of knowledge of the industry what do you think do
you think that they this is going to backfire on them or do you think they're going to get away
with it given the state that they're just appointed a new CEO so they want a kind of new fresh start
and I imagine they're not going to really stand for sort of stunts like this moving forward
yeah I think they've probably got bigger fish to fly than you see a body shot for the moment but
okay so cost and lush is entirely as they say vertically integrated they make everything
they design in-house everywhere everything's in-house or at least it was when I was there
they might have brought in external companies now but pretty much everything's in-house so
they'll make a batch of something if people didn't buy it they wouldn't make another
yeah it's there are so many other things that they can do so it's possible that they've made a
statement expecting to get the cease and desist at which point no okay don't don't make another batch
that's possible it would not be unlike their thinking I would say to be like I say they just
when they see an important what they think is like you say an ethical issue and in this case it's
you took our good stuff and you've shut it down and now customers can't get it and that's not fair
that for them would be an ethical issue yeah so like if customers can't get it you know you've
closed come it looked like the company was going to close okay fine it's being rescued I mean at one
point Mark considered buying the body shop and then changing its name to keep it fluffy it's a long
story but they didn't eventually do it because it would have just been too much extra stress but
you know that's how strongly they have felt about it in the past that when it was sort of rumoured
to be for sale or before the Oriole bought it Mark did go to the city and talk about getting
backing and you know funding to buy the whole blinking body shop so in order to get their formulas back
yeah how would that have worked given that they're now a competitor I guess would it just be kind of
to sort of absorb it under the lush umbrella and then like you say just get the formulas back
as opposed to they were going to rebrand all the shops and call them keep it fluffy
that's what I that was going to happen then instead they brought out a perfume called keep
it fluffy when they launched being ever too busy to be beautiful but scrolling back even further to
when I first met them I mean I was a cosmetics to go customer and then that failed and then they
brought out a new brand which then eventually turned into lush and I started working with them in
1996 so but I think it was 94 maybe it all went wrong um maybe no no no lush was that there was
1992 so what happened was when they got all the money from body shop for buying out their formulas
they set up cosmetics to go and it grew and grew and grew far too quickly they couldn't keep track
of the orders they were making big mistakes I was getting the wrong parcel and lots of people were
and then they'd say oh don't worry we'll send you another one so I was thinking this cannot last it
was it was you can see it must have been chaos down there and sure enough then what happened was
there was some a pipe burst and took out the computer system and nobody knew who'd ordered
what and the whole thing they had to call in the administrators because they wanted to do it right
you know they wanted to pay everyone that they owed but the company's just cease trading wallet so
that had happened that really really hurt them and what's more I think there somebody who used to
work for them bought the rights to cosmetics to go and all the formulas so they lost the right
to they lost the trademark for bath bomb they lost the rights to use a whole lot of things
that they'd invented and they were really hurt I interviewed mark for a dissertation I was writing
in 1995 and he was in pain talking about losing all their rights to their own worth so that's
what already happened to them once and the absolute joy they had when they finally bought back that
company and bought back the rights to all their brand names and all their products again they'd
built up flesh in the meantime but then they reabsorbed cosmetics to go and brought back some
of those so there's history to this there's a precedent they've they've already lost the
load of formulas and bought them back and reestablished them they feel about their creative work
like extra members of their family and you know that sense of loss of their creative work is
is tangible and in fact it affects so when you talk to Mark about these things you can see that
he's you know he he he would grieve the loss of the company the formulas and all the creative work
yeah um and I'm I'm not saying that I think any other company should or would have done this but
I can see that the passion they felt about their ownership of this and if it were to be just lost
and gone forever then they'd want it back and I suspect that they were halfway through to this
when somebody said oh it's fine we've got a new CEO it's all going to be fine they're not lost after
war and they'd already manufactured them so they might as well put them in the shops I think that's
where it is and also take the publicity they love a good headline they love causing controversy they
yes love you know even all all kinds of marvelous things are patterned even when I was there that
you know shops trashed by people who go hunting um when they were you know started their anti-fox
hunting campaign they they they'd like to make statements you'd say they were kind of more
of the original mavericks as opposed to I mean obviously the body shop were maverick as well
but from what you've said it sounds like lush all at mark constantine created the blueprint for the
kind of activism driven branding in the beauty industry that we see today absolutely I mean
yeah there was this American Express ad that came out featuring Anita Roddick at one point and about
how she'd gone to Brazil to meet the women who grew the nuts and mark said huh further she ever
went for Brazil nuts was same's brief because you know it was I mean he did think it was sort of
funny but it just thought it was outrageous that she'd go oh yes I feel passionately about going
and visiting the indigenous communities but she never did and at least not until way after it was
established in the AmEx beta whereas lush actually go out there and do visit the growers and buy
directly from the growers and do really good things to make sure that communities are growing
growing sustainably and yeah I like to walk the walk whereas there was like yeah there's a bit of
greenwashing involved when the body shop was concerned yes I mean I saw a body shop truck
a long long long time ago that said on it I mean this is like the 80s probably said
that before you throw something away remember there's no such place as a way and I remember that
and the things that they said the things that they did had a huge effect on the way the cosmetics
industry changed now I do think that a lot of that was driven by the people who are now lush
and I think if it's looked at it just oh it's just another cosmetics company having a go at
another cosmetics company that's not that's to misunderstand and I mean not very many people
are aware of all of this and most of the ones who are won't talk about it either because they've signed
an MBA when they left because I was never actually employed by Lutty I was technically freelance
so I never really joined and I never really left but I do lush will probably talk about it if you
get hold of Mark Constantine you probably tell you all there but it's just not simple it's not as
simple as saying oh look it's an IP issue to them I think the IP part of it's probably about 5% of
the decision-making but the passion about their formulas just disappearing forever
I want to reclaim that ownership and the narrative around those formulas I guess
yeah and this practically gives me PTSD you know I just like I've not really thought about
being in those meetings for about 14 years and say well providing it's not too triggering what
was it like working can you provide some insight into what Mark was like to work with and what
it was like working there in those kind of early days yeah yeah it's awesome it's um
um Mark loves to be surrounded by a lot of people he likes very high energy meetings and I like quiet
also he's always very he's always very warm so he come in we just get room just about right and he
fling out in the windows I'd sit there absolutely freezing also he'd like the meetings to start at
10 and I'd have been healing there in full and so I was always cold and tired at meetings and
he thought I wasn't interested and I was just cold and tired so um with lush you kind of have to be
you have to be right in front of Mark and tell him exactly what you're doing in order to get the brownie
points um so even I was writing you know 60 000 words every three months he somehow thought that
got done in a fortnight I think that um that I didn't realize that I was working all the hours
that God gives him or to try and get it finished and liaising with the Canadians at midnight and
the Japanese at eight in the morning and so it the places the people who succeed there stick
very close to him and remember to tell him of all the great things they've done and I was really
quite bad at that although in the early days he would call me a lot you know Sundays I'd get a
call like right I want to ask you a pin on this this this and so it was it was like very excited
there were no boundaries I can imagine I can imagine it's one of those like startup mentality
where this is my baby and I've put everything into it therefore it should be your baby as well
and you should be putting everything into it and it's actually yeah yeah I would say that for me it
changed when I mean Mark stopped calling the rest of us there was a generation of like about
about my age that came in slightly younger than the founders but older than their children
and once Mark and Mo brought their children into the business they always they consulted them about
everything and some of us older ones were then mildly superfluous to requirement so seeing the
writing on the wall that I trained up some young people to do my role and then I kind of I did
I just kind of slid out it got it marked like this kind of gladiatorial let's let's put people in
competition with each other with each other and see who does the best work but what he'd done was he
had employed people that he liked and we all tended to like each other and so it didn't work
that kind of no it's so I get a play for say like oh Mark's asked me to write the copy for the soap
boards can we get together yeah of course we can and we get together we write new copy of the soap
boards and then we get to the meeting and Mark said you're supposed to do it together you're supposed
to compete because he'd read a business book and he'd give him some new ideas and he'd say right I'll
try that one and so but we kind of collagulated like oil on top of um but yeah but collaboration
is way more productive than competition I think well that's what we all thought we didn't really
understand what was going on why he got so angry when we'd we'd actually all decided to work together
but then he put me in competition with one of his sons and I could obviously see that that wasn't
going to go well so that was the point at which I decided sort of quite kind of as quietly as I could
to train up other writers I already had an international team by then um and just I mean I needed a rest
you know I I'd done 14 years ago I really needed a break we moved house once and the last thing to
be moved out there was nothing left in the house except me the modem the computer on the floor
in one corner and I was moved out put into a car driven to the new place the modem the computer and
I were plugged in as everybody else brought the stuff around because I could not stop work
for a day yeah because the lush times deadline was on and yeah I've had jobs like that I can
completely sympathise yeah yeah and and if you're not there because I was in London and they were
in full mostly and they couldn't see me working they didn't know it was happening even though the
words appeared by magic so unfortunately I kind of they just wore me out you know it's I'm a
I'm I don't like big noisy meetings full of lots of people I think that start-up environment it can
be sorry carry on no it's just that you're absolutely right I agree with you it is that but
they just got bigger and bigger it was fine when it started off like seven ninety people or in a room
I could cope but it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and it's yeah it's a common kind of um
thing that happens so I feel like that start-up environment it can be so exciting and dynamic
and like you say it's all these people in a room all these ideas and you're all like geared up and
and then as a company gets bigger and bigger it just gets like you say too noisy and you're like I
have to take a step back I can't cope with cope with this and obviously the more people the more
politics there are yeah yeah I mean I did some good stuff I mean I did the launch of Lush in
Paris because I spoke French so I did the press launch which was you know you could be picked out
for things that you can do and like you do that and Mark was very good at just if somebody expressed
an interest in something say okay you can do that um which I admire um I love the way so much and I
feel like you kind of helped create that or you did create that in a way because like with the
the Lush times it was very used to get it as a student I loved it I loved the kind of that way
of talking about beauty that beauty could be fun it wasn't this very sophisticated very um
you know or steer kind of world that it had been in the past it was you know it was fun and quirky
in a reverent and I feel like do you feel like you kind of helped build that tone of voice for him
or for the brand yeah I do I just I I wanted it to be like and we eventually I gave it a
a description and I ran it past them and said what do you think we think we call it this when I'm
explaining it to other people when I'm teaching people overseas how to do it because they'd all
try to write like blinking lawyer on it oh this gives you the glossiest shiniest hair with no stop
that it's um a friendly conversation with a customer who's asked you a question that's the way I
wanted everybody to write this is how you write somebody's come in said oh my hair's looking a
bit shit what shall I do you want that one because your hair's a bit like this so if your hair's like
that then you need this and it's got that in it this and it this and it and it that that'll fix
it it'll be great so it was take that and put it on paper and the staff used it as like training
manual almost they would write oh all right I can say that let's see what the lush time says and so
it was I'm actually smiling now that you talk about this I have a complete collection of the
lush times from 1996 Christmas edition was the first one I did right through to the first one in
2010 so I think I've got the only complete collection I was going to give it to the lush archive but
they they they were going to send a band to collect it and they never did so I've got four boxes
sitting in my front room but maybe I'll keep them um but yes it was it was it was it was great to do
it was it was great to do but it's kind of the importance of tone of voice when it comes to a
brand success because I think a lot of the lush you know it's all right the products are great and
they pioneered so many different things but I think the tone of voice is like a key component of
why lush is is the iconic brand it is today yeah putting it into Italian that's quite interesting
as well because they we use lots and lots of adjectives and it's always like oh no you shouldn't
be using adverbs and you shouldn't be using adjectives like put them all in I was told by a teacher once
they used to use the lush times to show their students how to use adverbs like get in um
yeah for Stephen King says cut them all out like nah put them all in um so yeah that
yes I'm not I'm not comparing myself with Stephen King you understand this it was we
were we had different reasons well he was trying to he was he was writing fiction and I was selling
bath bombs so um you know uh but I think I think adverbs have their place especially if they're
surprising ones I don't want to get too technical now but no it was um I mean it was very it was
very gossipy that's the only thing about it Mark loved hearing bad things about people you know
naughty things about people and people would make shit up and I used to spend quite a lot of my
time knowing that that's not what happened I was there and it didn't happen that's not fair
with um the head of press kind of trying to give me a stare to say shut up don't argue with him he
doesn't want to be argued with so I got a bit of a reputation for being um contrary but that was
well deserved I am yeah given the spirit of lush and the fact that they are a contrary brand I'm
sure that you would that would have been very welcome to an extent I think I I had a place I
had a place um but yeah I did I really liked getting I'm still friends you know a lot of the
customers that I met on the the lush forum was one of the first like internet places you can go
and chat about stuff and because I was anti-pamela who wrote the problem page um I was on the forum
as anti-pamela so yeah I still see people around the world sometimes I met somebody last week and
I said oh yeah I was anti-pamela she went oh my god no you're anti-pamela but yeah you know it's
like oh I used to read it when I was at school I'm going yeah right thanks for that yeah it's
a big fond memories even though it was yeah you know it's a very complicated place and Mark's a very
complicated um you know creative creative genius but that comes with its problems like if you're
dealing with that day and day but it sounds like you have really nice kind of memories yeah I mean
it's it it's taken it takes a while to explain as we as we know now it takes a while to explain the
like 40 year history of what brought it to the point where they felt that they needed to do this
because it's the right thing to do and by without a shadow of a doubt this is this is done because
Mark thinks it is the right thing um and also probably a bit naughty so it's kind of saving
those formulas rather than just letting them die out with the other company yeah yeah yeah I think
had had body shop not looked like it was about to disappear off the plate the face of the planet
I don't think they would have done it um and I think it probably just didn't disappear in the
middle of what they were planning and so in which case they thought well in that case let's make a
big fuss about it because you know it'll probably be a cease and desist I mean I've I've lived through
many cease and desists at lusher was on in the room he allowed us to be in the room he put the
phone on speaker when sir allen sugar bollocked him about putting a cartoon in the shop window
that looked an awful lot like him I would love to have been a fly on the wall in that oh god that
was funny he's like we were we were trying or trying hard not to laugh because um is it like an
episode of the apprentice where he's where he's bollocking them in the boardroom was it kind of
like um it was well what had happened there's been an episode of the apprentice and they'd all
made some really terrible products so mark um invited his own team into the labs and they'd gone
down to lusher and film um and mark thought they were so uninspired he got his own people
anyone who wanted to go and join a team and work in the labs could invent their own product
and one of them made one called the sugar scrub um and my headline was sugar's never been this good
for your figures because their people I was proud of that yes thank you the people on the show had
all lost money because they mixed mixed up sandalwood and cedarwood and uh so in the window um
Hannah Diamond had she was a very talented illustrator she drew a picture of somebody sugar
scrubbing their arse and tattooed on the arse was somebody who looks possibly a bit like
Helen sugar and so they're in an overshot window it's because sugar's never been this good for
your figures and it's people having a nice scrub with a sugar scrub uh I think actually he called
it sir allen which might have possibly been the problem um and so you got mark going oh well it
was just a bit of fun and you were getting a screaming down the other right bad so yeah um good
times it they've never been afraid of a bit of controversy no no that's very clear and when it
comes to the body shop what do you think um just quickly what do you think the future is for them
and uh Anita Roddick's kind of legacy because her legacy seems very ambiguous some people were saying
still saying she sold out whereas I think what she built was incredible with the body shop and I
really think she should um get her credit for that but where do you see the kind of the future of
the body shop now especially in light of what lush have done you know I haven't been in one for about
25 years um and I just I don't really care I I think if she sold out she didn't mean to sell out
she thought she was climbing up the ladder of saving more animals she thought she was getting
into a place where that she was really going to make a huge difference um end animal cruelty and
end the testing once and for all. You also made a huge ton of money in in the process obviously.
This is true although they're the man the man she sold one third of the business to made the most I
think um way back when Gordon went on his finding himself mission um he went away for a year and
she sold the third of the business to fund some expansion and the guy who I think he owned a garage
in Brighton or something he he I think he did best out of it um but yeah it if somebody gets
hold of it again and chooses to use it as a tool for good again that'd be great yeah I think that
that's what that's what distressed Mark most is it was being used as a tool for profit generation
as you know most businesses most businesses that size are and it could have been better.
I think that's what it's all about I do I mind if body shop stays or goes I mean
I don't know it I want it I want it to I want it to stand for something I want it to change the
world again and that's what I hope and for me it's like that nostalgia because it was the sort of
one of the first um you know places I would shop for beauty so I have that child those childhood
memories of like as many people do like white musk and jubbery and all of that so for me there's a
sentimental um aspect that I would I would like to see it carry on or maybe carry on Christmas
through lunch. Remember the little baskets you could fill up with yes oh oh my gosh memory unlocked
those were like my favorite my favorite thing. I got everybody one of those one Christmas
everybody I knew got a basket full of body shop stuff yeah we've all got we've all got memories
I think of them. I think we year old 10 12 and people stopped getting me toys I just got body
shop baskets because I think relatives were like what do we get 12 year old so I got about like 10
different body shop baskets that year because 12 for Barbies so let's just get one of these and
everyone had the same idea but yeah. Those weird pearls that look great and you put them in the
bathroom left them for a while and they turned into a pile of sludge. Yeah those were then they're all
left with these weird like skins. Yeah yeah that was before yeah before the EU brought in stability
testing. Yeah for sure um well Sarah thank you so much for chatting with me I know you're very
busy so I won't take up any more of your time but thank you so much for your insights it's been
really interesting and I think gives more um of a nuanced perspective um on the situation that I think
a lot of people will appreciate so yes thank you thank you so much and uh oh yeah looking forward
to having you possibly on the podcast again at some stage because I was saying the surprise yeah
I think I need to lie down like a patina but otherwise it's been a delight. Great stuff and
I'll let you go and do that thanks again Sarah take care. Bye.
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