My name's Angela and I'm a Lushoholic (Lush.co.uk)

Member Name: LittleEwok

Product:	Lush.co.uk
Date:	03/02/05 (475 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Its Lush!

Disadvantages: Postage prices and delivery times suck

If you havent heard of Lush you are probably new to Dooyoo, as there seem to be more than a few rampant Lush fans on here!

I live in Edinburgh so there’s a Lush shop near me, so when I just want bits and pieces I usually travel to the shop, however sometimes I’m ordering buckets of stuff and it becomes easier to do it online, also the shops don’t always contain all the stock you can get online.

A bit about Lush

Lush is a posh body care company. It used to be called Cosmetics to go, a company which went under for various reasons. Lush was formed in 1994 and now has around a hundred shops, plus a mail order service if you aren’t lucky enough to have one of these fantastic shops in your area. NONE of Lush’s products are tested on animals or contain ingredients tested on them. All of Lush’s products are vegetarian, and the great majority are also vegan.

One of the other great things about Lush is that it tries to make sure most of the ingredients in its products are natural. While there are still chemical ingredients in their goods, they are kept to a minimum, and are usually at the bottom of the ingredients list in terms of amounts found in the products. Chemical ingredients are also clearly listed. A lot of Lush’s products contain organic ingredients, and fair trade ones.

For this reason, I think that Lush is the best you can naturally do for your body short of making your own beauty products. All ingredients are listed clearly and honestly, and the products even have sell-by dates. Some of the products are so fresh they have to be refrigerated and used within about a month! Besides all this, when you use Lush products, you can really tell the difference. Your skin and hair become silky like nothing else in the world. I wont lie to you and say that the beauty products aren’t expensive, but they are still far less than “designer” companies who charge £30 for a bottle of cleanser, and they have the benefit of actually working better!

Oh, and a little tip for converted Lush fans reading this review…The Lush team have branched out and started making makeup too! The makeup is just as ethical and just as wonderful as the body stuff is! If you’re a Lush fan, check out their website www.bnevertoobusytobebeautiful.com

The website

The Lush website is attractive and well-laid out. It even has its own forum for addicted Lush fans like me. Its decorated mostly in green and pink and has little drop-down menus so you can find the product you are looking for with the greatest of ease. Each section has a nice little story and usually a comic strip that goes with it. The products themselves are shown with both the name of the item and the picture for ease of navigation, and the larger bodies of products are nicely divided into little sections.

One of the best parts of the site is the “find out more” page. It tells you the history of Lush, its policies on terms like “organic” and “fresh” and a thorough explanation of its animal testing policy, which most companies who claim not to test on animals don’t bother to provide. There’s also an interesting section for pregnant women on the safety of Lush products, and some nice items to buy, which I just discovered whilst writing this review.

The service

The standard for purchases on the site is £3.95, no matter how little or much you are ordering. This is where the company falls down. The postage is rather expensive yet may take from 5-7 days to be delivered. Most other internet companies are a lot cheaper in terms of postage and the goods get to you faster, so I’m not sure what Lush are on about with this. For next day delivery (only in England, Wales and up to the central belt of Scotland), you pay an absurd £10.95. I think this is really ridiculous, Lush’s product prices are already pretty high and adding this on for postage is just silly. Strangely, Lush’s “Fresh” items are packaged separately and delivered quickly (as they tend to go off otherwise) so there really isn’t much of an excuse for Lush’s delivery cost.

I’ve ordered from the website a few times and have never received the items before 4 days after the initial ordering. This isn’t a problem if you are ordering stuff for yourself, but if its for a gift, the situation becomes rather different.

Aside from this, the products arrived well packaged and protected, so its only the postage costs Lush fail on.

The Items

Second to none. There’s not nearly enough room to go into all of Lush’s stuff here, but let me tell you their stuff is absolutely divine. In my opinion everything is worth the money, except perhaps the bubble bar slices and the bath ballistics, which are around £1.50-£2.95 each, and bear in mind one of these only does you one bath. Aside from this, however, you really get what you pay for with these products. They smell fantastic (sometimes they look a little funny), and they make your skin and hair like silk. The solid shampoo bars last for absolutely ages, and you can ever get solid conditioners now!

Lush also do great fun and innovative products, with wacky names and great stories to them. One of my favourites is the Rock Star hair glitter you get at Christmas, and you can also get little glittery massage bars to make you look all girly on your night out. They even do henna products if you feel like dyeing your hair. I’ll be writing in more detail on Lush’s products in another review, so I hope you don’t mind if I keep it short and sweet on this review, however, I’ll give you a quick overview of some of my favourite products.

Middle Earth Turns Into Rock soap- I like my soaps quite abrasive for rubbing away dead skin and making me feel really clean. This soap looks like a big slab of chocolate or a mud pie. But its made of kaolin and rhassoul mud and its great for buffing away dead skin. Once its used up you are left with pumice to smooth over all your rough bits. It has a lovely scent too, its quite mild and natural smelling.

Angels on Bareskin cleanser- looks like putty, works a charm. This is an exfoliating cleanser, but one gentle enough to be used twice a day. It makes your skin perfectly smooth and only a pea sized amount is needed so it lasts forever and a day.

Chai shower gel- a Shower gel made with Chai tea infusion. Don’t know if you’ve ever tried Chai tea, but it’s a real pick-me-up and that’s what this shower gel works best as. Its great for waking you up in the morning, especially cold dreary mornings. In case you haven’t smelt Chai, it has a warm, spicy scent, which is great for winter mornings when you need a good kick up the butt. Much better than Red Rooster soap!

The Blonde solid shampoo- Shampoo in a bar you say? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! Lush’s soap bars are great, they lather just as well as liquid shampoos, they don’t use lots of plastic for bottles, and they last for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages…one big chunk of Blonde shampoo will last you for months even if you use it daily. The Blonde shampoo uses chamomile to make blonde hair blonder and give mousey or even dark hair lovely highlights. At the moment my hair is henna-ed red, but when I’m blonde I love this shampoo!

Conclusion

All in all, if you have a Lush shop within driving or bussing distance of you, its not worth ordering from the mail order service, even if you are like a kid in a sweet shop in the Lush stores. The one good thing about the website is that its easier to resist the temptation of buying lots of goodies when you don’t have huge slabs of scented soaps in front of you, however the massive price you pay on postage that takes a long time kind of negates any benefits of that kind. Aside from that, the website is lovely, the people in the Lush forum are great, and if you even have any problems with your order, the Lush people are great at sorting it out. Five out of five for the products, but I’m afraid the delivery problems takes it down to a four.

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