Lush products, not lush prices (Lush)

Member Name: bruffyboy

Product:	Lush
Date:	22/06/09 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: products

Disadvantages: prices

At last count, Dooyoo have paid over sixty million pounds for the amount of reviews about Lush products, and so I am treading on dangerous, if not hallowed ground, to be writing about the shop of all shops. Still, I will have a go.

Our mate Lara is well into Lush, and the smells in her bathroom every time we went for a wee soon got us interested. Now we have one in Plymouth (in the mall!) and so I went to see what all the fuss was about.

Ostensibly, Lush is a shop that sells beauty products -soaps, shampoos, face packs, bath bombs, cleansers and the like. What gives it its USP (unique selling point) is that it's an ethically conscious company where the products are hand-made and adventurous, and the whole company is based upon a community of people willing to die for the cause. This community is aided by a website, and cool retro, studenty type newsletter.

So, the shop in Plymouth is small, but nicely arranged, with five foot wide bars of soap to get your attention. Products fill the shop, and nice they are too. Items include things like bars of soap with real honey in, and generally everything looks visually appealing as well as smelling so good you want to eat it.

The shop is always full, but staff are friendly and helpful, especially when they saw we had £70 of Claire's birthday money to spend.

The down-side to the place is the prices, which (to me) are too high. £70 was soon gone on around a dozen products, and with bars of soap costing a fiver, it just seemed too pricey for me. From my own perspective, although I like the place and have spent a few hundred quid in there for my wife in the last two years, it's too expensive. I feel like they're using the ethical community thing to over-charge customers, who buy into the whole thing and end up paying a lot.

Still, we all spend our money on different things, and I am happy to spend some here, but if those prices were say 30% cheaper I would feel valued as a customer, and that's something I just don't feel here.

Summary: up to you