As a journalist, you get a fleeting glimpse into the life of a retail CEO when trying to carve out a time to sit down and interview them.

There are familiar things to work around – meetings in the city with bankers, analysts or investors, a lunch with accountants or perhaps a store visit.

But Lush co-founder and chief executive Mark Constantine is not a traditional retail boss. As we start the interview, he warns me he must leave no later than midday as he has to guide a boat tour in the January drizzle on the lookout for birds including waders, ducks and spoonbills. Poole Harbour boasts the largest flock of the latter in Britain, he tells me.

“I’m an expert on Poole Harbour, so along with a colleague, we’ll guide the tour – about 70 people have paid to come along,” says Constantine, who adds that he has led five tours of a similar kind in recent weeks and is booked up for the rest of 2020.

It's not the typical pastime of a retail boss but then Constantine is a rebel – albeit one that enjoys birdwatching – who is unafraid to do things differently. He's built a business with ethics at its roots over the past 25 years and is unafraid to put noses out of joint to stand up for what he believes in.

SpyCops

Lush's support of the #SpyCops campaign attracted criticism

Lush has built its reputation on its unwavering commitment to ethically produced, fresh products – the beauty retailer's range is 100% vegetarian, 80% vegan and 65% of its products are 'Naked', which means they don't come with any wasteful plastic packaging. 

Over the last few years, Lush has run several campaigns that have sparked controversy in the name of the beliefs held by its staff and executive team. In 2012, the business gave over its Regent Street window to a live display of an artist re-enacting the processes performed on animals in order to test cosmetic products. In 2018, it was criticised for its #SpyCops campaign, which aimed to raise awareness of undercover police officers having affairs with women in the activist groups they had infiltrated. 

#SpyCops faced a backlash from consumers who viewed it as a wholesale attack on the police. Although the campaign was dropped by Lush, Constantine says he felt morally compelled to run it after hearing about the experience of women from Greenpeace who had been personally affected.

It is this stance, alongside many others, which shows Constantine is most definitely cut from a different cloth. Quite literally. When we meet, the beauty boss is clad in a blue tartan blazer with a badge saying ‘ask me about my vision’ pinned to his lapel.

Starting an ethical revolution

The Lush co-founder professes to being a “wishy-washy liberal” and “not very masculine”. He chuckles about how he balances his lifelong passion for birds with being “quite a busy bloke”.

Lush_climate_change

Lush took part in last year's climate strike

He’s not joking. Constantine, who started off as a beauty manufacturer – of the ethical variety, naturally – and was The Body Shop's biggest supplier, has built a vast business empire over the past 25 years, from one store in Poole to a network of 928 shops across 48 countries. He is taking a big chunk out of its former client's market share.

But as someone who has been banging the drum on environmentalism “since before Greta Thunberg was born”, how does he feel about high street brands like Superdrug and Holland & Barrett aiming to steal his own share by launching vegan beauty ranges?

“It is essential,” he says firmly. “[Cosmetics] is a billion-dollar industry and we make up 0.5% of it. We aren’t going to create a revolution like that. It is only by encouraging other people to join that it is going to work because it has to change. It isn’t a question of if we have to change, but how quickly we can change.”

“I am fairly competitive, but I’d rather compete with someone doing the same thing,” he says. “Fundamentally, you shouldn’t buy a shampoo bar from us because it is a shampoo bar rather than a bottle, you should buy it because it’s a great product.”

Special products and special stores

Lush is constantly innovating to make sure its products and stores retain their appeal.

Constantine says the business is “effectively run by its formulators" (those that make its ranges) and it is producing so much innovative product, from its ever-growing array of bath bombs to its burgeoning perfume ranges, that it is prompting the retailer to open larger, experiential stores.

This includes its biggest shop to date, a 15,000 sq ft, three-storey flagship in Liverpool. It has also launched alongside a slew of new formats including a perfume library in Florence that houses its fragrance collection, and a shop in Paris that combines freshly made products with an in-store florist.

Lush Liverpool 7

Lush is opening new store formats in Europe and Asia, including its Liverpool flagship

Lush’s Naked store format – which sells only packaging-free products – has been rolled out in Berlin and Manchester after a successful debut in Milan.

All this expansion took its toll on the ethical beauty retailer’s profits for the year to June 30, 2018 – it's last reported year – when pre-tax profit slumped 68% to £23.4m. When it unveiled these numbers, Constantine said the business had “spent it all” on new stores and its decision to pay staff a voluntary “living wage” of £9.30 per hour across the UK and £10.75 in London.

Constantine thinks the UK retail sector does not invest enough, something he says is "misled, in every sense".

He lays particular blame at the “poor leadership” of retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Boots – or as he defines them, the businesses that smaller operators “rely on to be the backbone”.

“I’m amazed at the size of their debts, amazed at how much greed has crept in and amazed at how little investment there is,” he says.

“We keep on hearing how it’s the internet causing all these problems, but obviously if you invest in your retail business, your staff and product you are more likely to succeed.”

Opening Lush department stores

It was this outlook that drove Constantine to expand and upgrade Lush’s Liverpool store to a flagship five-times the previous store’s size last year. The shop has wowed customers.

“I’ve never stood in one of our shops and been thanked for opening a store there [before],” he says, which has inspired him to look for more store openings in locations “where people believe in their city and have a great sense of community”.

Lush Liverpool 2

Constantine wants to open stores in cities with 'a great sense of community'

The Liverpool flagship is one of the three larger format stores that Lush unveiled last year – alongside an 8,000 sq ft store in Munich and a 10,000 sq ft store in Tokyo – and it has whetted Constantine’s appetite for further bricks-and-mortar expansion.

“Would I like to only run large stores like Liverpool? Yes, I really would,” says Constantine, who points out that retailers have been expanding existing stores rather than opening new ones in recent years.

Constantine argues that the Liverpool store, which spans three floors and includes experiential elements such as a hair lab, perfume library and spa, is “basically a department store”.

He sees scope to take on space vacated by Debenhams and House of Fraser to build  “a whole series of department store Lushs”, though he does have some caveats.

“Any landlords that have a large department store space they’d like to fill, we’d be very keen to work with – but they’re going to have to pay for quite a bit of it because we haven’t got lots of money," says Constantine. He is adamant Lush will not borrow huge amounts or sell a stake in the business to fund expansion.

Brexit will be bad for business, says Constantine

Constantine has his reservations about how innovative the UK retail sector will be able to be in the coming years with the looming reality of Brexit.

Unsurprisingly, liberal Constantine is unapologetically anti-Brexit. After the EU referendum, he pledged to relocate European staff at its Poole warehouse who were concerned about their future in the UK to its Dusseldorf outpost.

“There is no party of business at the moment. The party of business we had has become the party of immigration,” says Constantine, adding that the EU is a fundamentally “capitalist institution” because of the principles of freedom of goods, movement and money it is built on.

Because of these tenets, Constantine described Brexit as “anti-business”.

He is also dubious about the benefits that Brexit will bring, particularly around taking a more international approach to business.

“As a businessperson, I don’t think Brexit works. What are the benefits? I can do more business in Japan? I’m doing lots already, thanks very much, I was before and I will after. More business in China? There are a few other problems there that I may not choose [to do that]. Hong Kong has been a nightmare, that is the biggest problem I’ve got at the moment.

“I really like Europe and I’d like to be able to trade in those countries without any crap.”

In part because of the UK’s vote to leave the EU, Lush has developed a German manufacturing unit, which Constantine says will help keep the retailer’s European operations running smoothly – a move he says is representative of contingency planning across the sector.

“Let’s say we’ve taken 25-30% of the business we would have done out of Britain and put it in Germany. Every other person is doing that too.

“So, are we going to see a British resurgence? No we are not, because everyone has taken their money and is going elsewhere because of this stupid political decision,” he says.

A trusted brand

For an ethical brand like Lush, maintaining customer trust is pivotal to success and something Constantine is determined not to lose.

Mark Constantine

'I think we do have a high element of trust with customers. This is very easily lost'

“I think we do have a high element of trust with customers. This is very easily lost and it worries me a lot,” he says.

The key to maintaining trust lies in having passionate staff that truly believe in your business’ values, rather than in sweeping transformation plans, says the Lush boss.

For example, many Lush staff are vegan, which means they naturally sing about the fact that an impressive 80% of its products are vegan. Constantine says: “Shoppers know when you talk about veganism it is much more likely to be real because if it wasn’t those very same people would lasso us and drag us through the streets naked.

“That is how trust is built. It isn’t built on advertising or promises. I am so sick of everyone talking about what they’ll do in five or 10 years and targets – do it now."

Taking action, particularly on issues relating to climate change, is how Constantine has built a truly ethical business. Not one that aims to have a certain percentage of sustainable, vegan or plastic-free products within a defined timeframe, but one that has them now. 

Sometimes rebels have a cause.