“Never just do the same as everyone else. Doing a little bit extra can change the course of your life”
As one of the co-founders of fresh cosmetics company Lush, Rowena Bird has always been willing to go one step beyond. Here, she talks to Alice Snape about embracing original thinking
Brands stand out for many reasons, but for Lush, it’s that smell that wafts down the high street, and soaps that look like slices of cheese. But there is more to Lush than meets the eye – or the nose. Lush has been a rare ethical presence on the high street since it launched in 1995 with a store in Poole (there are now 105 in the UK alone). And the smell is because lots of their products have no packaging. “The dream is that, in years to come, none of our products will have packaging,” says Rowena Bird, one of the six co-founders.
It’s probably the bath bombs that have reached iconic status, despite the fact – or possibly because – they leave a layer of gunk in your bathtub. “Yes, I know they make a mess,” says Rowena, “but that’s because they are full of real ingredients.” She likens Lush’s products to a restaurant that uses the freshest ingredients. “As with food, you should try to use things on your skin that don’t have preservatives in them that will upset your ‘flora and fauna’. If you look down an ingredients list and don’t know what something is, would you eat it? If not, then why would you put it on your skin?”
Ro – as everyone calls her – invariably has a huge smile on her face, and it’s infectious. She wears pink lipstick, which matches her pink hair. She doesn’t look or act like a businesswoman at the top of her game; or her 59 years, for that matter. “I occasionally worry about dressing my age, but as long as you’re happy, who cares what anyone else thinks?” Ro’s warm manner and cackle of a laugh are far removed from the stone-cold stereotype that’s sometimes associated with women at the top.
INGREDIENTS FOR HAPPINESS
Yes of course there’s some frivolity to all make-up: “We can wear pink lipstick to make us happy, but we don’t need it,” says Ro. But sometimes it goes beyond skin deep – it can heal our skin, makes us happy. “I was talking to someone who uses our Celestial Moisturiser (one of Lush’s bestsellers). At one stage, she was hospitalised with her eczema, and you wouldn’t know it to look at her now, because as long as she uses it, she is OK. We have loads of those stories. We have a purpose and we do make a difference to lives.”
Ro isn’t just talking about the lives of the people who use their products, it’s about those who make them too. “Every Lush product has one of these ingredients: argan oil, moringa oil, aloe vera or shea butter – and each one of them funds women’s co-operatives and education. Which is what I’m interested in.” Ro is clear, it’s about helping to create sustainable futures, not marching in to do the “sexy thing”. “People want to come in and build a school, but if you don’t then pay for the running of it, that school disappears.”
A REWARDING BUSINESS
At Lush it’s about creating a ‘closed loop’, so if the company uses these ingredients, they have to re-buy them from the women’s co-operatives that they have set up and continue to support. “Argan oil comes from mountains in Morocco, the Ojoba Collective in Ghana makes shea butter; farms in The Gambia grow moringa »
trees. The moringa is sold to Lush and the money they get goes into running The Fresh Start foundation schools nearby,” Ro explains. “Of course, I don’t mind if they sell the crops elsewhere, too – that’s important.”
In 2009, Lush was one of the first five UK beauty brands to launch a Fairtrade certified product (a foot lotion, which is now discontinued). Although, “we don’t actually agree with Fairtrade guidelines, they just aren’t strong enough and strict enough for us,” she says. “A label has to be hard-fought-for; if everyone gets a gold star, it doesn’t mean anything.”
BORN CURIOUS
Ro’s main role is as an inventor, a trait apparent since childhood. “I used to breed mice. I wanted to see what colour I would get if I mixed a brown mouse with a white mouse and I remember getting these beautiful champagne coloured mice,” she says. “I’ve always been curious and full of ideas. They can pop up at different times; I invented our body conditioner while I was in the shower washing my hair – it got me thinking, why can’t we do this for our bodies too?” She’s also working on a new cosmetics collection that will launch in February next year, including a Slap Stick solid foundation that comes in an impressive 40 shades. “We had to get rid of packaging, so solid was the only way,” Ro explains. The foundation is actually partially dipped in peelable wax (sort of like a Babybel but with a nicer smell) and comes in a recyclable cardboard box, which you can keep it in. The range will also include lipsticks and shimmers, and be vegan, but even Ro doesn’t know exactly how those will turn out yet, it’s still a work in progress.
As a teenager she had no idea that beauty therapy could be a real job. It was only when, age 17, she turned up to a meeting with a careers advisor wearing a wig, her nails each painted a different colour and wearing a full face of make-up that it was suggested she might want to consider it. She was working as a window dresser at the time. “We went through the qualifications and I had enough O levels, so I applied to college and got a place. I haven’t looked back since.”
On completion of her course in Nuneaton, near her Midlands hometown, she answered an ad in a hair and beauty magazine for a beauty therapist job in the seaside town of Poole in Dorset. She worked alongside famed trichologist – or hair expert to you and me – Mark Constantine and his beauty therapist wife Liz
“I invented our body conditioner while I washing my hair – it got me thinking, why can’t we do this for our bodies too?”
Weir, later fellow co-founders of Lush. She turned up to the interview not just with her CV, but a folder full of (unrelated) certificates, including her cycling proficiency. “I think it’s the real reason I got the job,” Ro laughs, “as Mark is a keen cyclist. But if someone came to me now, that prepared for an interview because they wanted it so much, I’d give them the job, too. Never just do the same as anyone else, or what you think you’re supposed to do. Doing a bit extra can change the course of your life.”
“It was an amazing time,” says Ro fondly. “I learned to mix essential oils and helped Mark out.” Back then the company was selling its recipes to The Body Shop, which was growing rapidly, but Ro bristles a little when asked what she learned from its influential founder Anita Roddick. “We taught them a lot, I think,” Ro says, matter of factly.
RIGHTS ( AND WRONGS)
Campaigning has always been an important part of the Lush brand. In 2012, to fight the corner for natural ingredients and non-animal testing, a performance artist endured ten hours of ‘animal testing’ and was hauled around on a leash in the Regent Street store. The campaign received a mixed response from media and customers, and although cosmetics testing on animals was already banned in the EU, the following year, cosmetics from overseas that had been tested on animals were also banned.
And they’re still at it now. Lush’s recent #spycops campaign saw shops wrapped with fake police tape and slogans such as ‘ Paid to Lie’ emblazoned under images of police officers. It was to raise awareness of what the company described as the ‘ongoing undercover policing scandal, where officers have infiltrated the lives, homes and beds of activists’. But the public outcry meant the campaign has now been dropped and the company released a statement that it was ‘not an anti-state/anti-police campaign. We are aware that the police forces of the UK are doing an increasingly difficult and dangerous job whilst having their funding slashed.’ But Ro is clear about their intentions: “If there’s injustice, a light needs to be shone on it.” That is what’s at the heart of the company.
Ro clearly isn’t going to dwell on something that might be perceived to have gone wrong. “Well, you learn from it, of course. But also, you must be happy where you are right now.” And her positive mental attitude is contagious. “It’s all about saying yes,” she says. “I am a yes person. Who wants to be around a person who says no all the time?” She’s philosophical, too: “Yes, things might happen for a reason, but you also must be a driving force, don’t regret.”