British cosmetics brand Lush scrubbing up nicely in the UAE

Lush's director Karl Bygrave reveals the story behind the brand's relationship with the UAE.

Karl Bygrave, director of the British cosmetics brand Lush, says some product names and copy had to be modified to make them more relevant in the region. Christopher Pike / The National

Karl Bygrave is a director of the British cosmetics brand Lush, which has 10 stores in the UAE with three more due to open in the coming months. Known for its vividly coloured soaps, the brand has 35 stores in the region with 25 more due in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon, Bahrain and Oman by 2018. With more than 900 stores in 50 countries, Lush champions banning animal testing of cosmetics, even offering an annual cash prize to scientists in that field. Here Mr Bygrave, who spoke about experiential retailing and international expansion at the World Retail Congress in Dubai last week, reveals the story behind the brand’s relationship with the UAE.

What convinced Lush that the UAE was a viable market?

This is a very cosmopolitan part of the world, so there are similarities (to London). We’ve been here 12 years and we quickly realised customers here are open-minded, prepared to try things. If you’ve got a product that works, and they like it, they are your fan – a loyal customer.

How did a UK brand known for handmade soaps arrive in the Middle East?

We had got a couple of stores in London in the late ‘90s, in King’s Road and Covent Garden; prime tourist destinations that exposed the brand. That period was really the start of a phase of international expansion for brands. There were a lot of people from different parts of the world looking to find a business to bring across into their market. That timing fell in line with the start of the real development of retail out here.

Have you tailored products to suit UAE and Middle East customers?

Because we’re a UK brand there were popular culture references that were maybe not appropriate. Some product names and copy had to be modified to make them more relevant. We had big debates about English labels versus Arabic labels because we were selling ourselves as an English brand. Our product names are still in English, our font, but a lot of label information (such as ingredients) is in Arabic. We didn’t change the brand, we localised it.

Lush now has a broad price range, but how did you initially convince customers to pay more for luxury soaps?

Soap was interesting because it became a commodity item produced in a fully automated way. It wasn’t always as kind to your skin as you would want it to be. It became a cheap item. We came up with a completely different manufacturing method and incorporated ingredients that had never been incorporated in soaps before.

Does the nature of products – strong on smell and vibrant colours – make the brand reliant on costly physical locations?

We’ve always liked the theatre of retail. When your products don’t look the same as everybody else’s you’ve got to have staff to help the customer, explain about products, find out their needs and then help with a product that suits. That’s a completely different experience to the way retail was going which was “we don’t want staff because they’re too expensive, customers serve themselves”, so you need physical location. In fact, we’re going towards larger stores to increase our interactivity.

That’s not to say you don’t embrace e-commerce?

Our online business is a service. Your customer wants to buy when convenient for them. When you’re constantly developing new products you can’t fit them all in store. Our sales are relatively small in the Mena region compared to Europe, but the research time people spend on our website before they go to a store is huge. Arabs are also hugely influential in social media, [such as] Instagram, and we’re working with influencers and bloggers. We’ve been holding summits in the UK, taking influencers from this region to experience the brand, new inventions, the values and ethics of products and trying to convey the history and stories. That’s been key, especially when trying to crack markets like Saudi Arabia, where traditional press doesn’t really exist for beauty.

What does Lush have planned for the region?

By July we’ll have 12 UAE stores (another is due to open in RAK in August). Across Mena, without opening in new markets, we’re probably going to be at 45 or 50 stores, that’s not considering Egypt, Iran, Libya, Algeria. And we could probably consider manufacturing in this part of the world. Because the product is fresh, it’s nice if you can make it as close to the market as possible. Our aim would be to get to a point where that works, economically.

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