Lush’s Radical Retail Experiment: Why Lush Expanded Distribution To Ulta
British cosmetics and body care brand Lush has finally succumbed to the lure of a mega beauty retailer. Last week, the natural beauty brand announced a wholesale partnership with Ulta to sell an assortment of discovery and holiday sets on the retailer’s website in an effort to widen its North American distribution.
“Ulta is a beauty empire, and we are thrilled to have them as our first B2B retail partner in North America,” Carrie Harambasic, Head of Business Development for Lush North America, tells BeautyMatter. “We believe in making fresh, handmade products with only the finest ingredients and are looking forward to sharing these values with Ulta’s wide consumer base of beauty enthusiasts. We are expanding our brick-and-mortar doors, but this was an opportunity to scale beyond what we could on our own, leveraging Ulta’s immense digital reach.”
Lush now sits in the body care category alongside brands like Truly, Hempz, Osea, and Hanahana Beauty. The discovery sets will include Lush’s most popular products and are available exclusively online. The sets range between $17 and $46.
“As pioneers in the body category, we are delighted to provide greater access to [Lush’s] beloved products, and together help amplify their mission for efficacious, fresh, and cruelty-free ingredients,” says Penny Coy, Vice President of Merchandising at Ulta Beauty.
Lush first became famous for its fizzy bath bombs, which launched back in 1989, but has since expanded its offering of skin and haircare products. The Ulta-exclusive discovery kits feature some of Lush’s bestsellers across bath, shower, skin, and hair. Customers can expect the same fresh, handmade, and sustainably minded products that Lush is known for.
“Accessibility in time for the holiday season and meeting people where we are not is a top priority,” says Harambasic. “The choice of offering discovery sets is to offer a sampling of our bestsellers across categories, not just in bath, providing a wider view of all Lush has to offer.”
The move to mass retail is a departure from the brand’s focus on brick-and-mortar and other owned distribution channels. The first sign of this shift came in 2021 when Lush launched a select number of product kits, shampoo bars, and an exclusive bath bomb duo on the UK online retailer ASOS. At the time, Lush customers expressed some level of dissatisfaction over the decision to enter the fast fashion retailer, which some believe put the brand at odds with the sustainability principles that Lush was founded on. The brand maintained its commitment to being a regenerative business but argued that to acquire new customers and make a larger impact, it had to expand its distribution strategy.
“If we only turn 1% of ASOS’s unique users into Lush customers, that’s hundreds of thousands of new people using our wonderful, effective Lush products with embedded values,” the brand said of the relationship. “This would enable us to further our cosmetics revolution and invest in more regenerative projects around the world, leaving more of the world lusher than we found it.”
In a statement made after the announcement of Lush entering ASOS, Lush’s founder Mark Constantine argues that “for the sake of the environment, we need to be number one” in the cosmetics industry.
As one of the US’s largest beauty retailers, Ulta believes it has the responsibility and the opportunity to be a leader in the way the industry views sustainability and social impact. Almost half of the total number of brands carried at the retailer are part of its Conscious Beauty program, which requires that participants meet the criteria of at least one of the Conscious Beauty pillars: clean ingredients, cruelty-free, vegan, sustainable packaging, and positive impact.
“We are thrilled to bring our range of fresh, handmade cosmetics to Ulta’s wide consumer base across the US,” says Harambasic. “Customers can expect the same fresh, handmade, packaging-free products that Lush is known and loved for.”
