Mrs. Rowena Bird is a passionate beauty entrepreneur, and one of the co-founders at Lush – a leading ethical cosmetic brand globally. Lush stands out in the industry with its innovation and commitment to sustainability. Mrs. Bird remains actively involved with the brand’s operations, contributing significantly to its stronghold on the market. Known for her wide-ranging work from sustainability practices to product innovation at Lush and beyond, Mrs. Bird spoke to Women’s Tabloid Magazine in this interview.
Women’s Tabloid: As Lush marks 30 years in business, is there a particular moment or turning point that, in your view, solidified the brand’s position as a disruptor in the global cosmetics industry?
Rowena Bird: I don’t think it is just one moment, I think the point is that we don’t always follow the usual or expected route which has created the disruptions over the years! Disruption by definition is challenging the status quo and introducing new ways of doing things and this is always what we’ve done.
When we started 30 years ago, we didn’t think of ourselves as being ‘disruptive’ though, we were just doing business the way we felt it should be done. We introduced solid alternatives to bottled products, sold soap by weight, and asked customers to wash their hair with a bar! Fortunately, our customers were willing to get on board, but it was certainly a different offering at the time.
Our Non-Animal Testing policy is another example of disrupting the cosmetics industry. My fellow Co-Founder and Lush CEO Mark Constantine has fought animal testing throughout his career and helped shape early policies, including those at The Body Shop in the 1980s. But as time went on, we began to feel that more needed to be done, even the fixed cut-off date wasn’t sufficient for us, so we created our own policy. Our strict non-animal testing policy requires suppliers to ensure that none of their ingredients—whether we purchase them or not—have been tested on animals, and that they are firmly committed to avoiding such testing in the future. We wanted to incentivize suppliers to stop using animal tested data, so if they agree to stop testing today and declare that they will not test in the future, then we will give them our business. The bigger we grew and the more we bought meant we could make a bigger difference.
Our campaigning is also disruptive, as we like to support grassroots groups struggling to get their voices heard. We are also the only company to come off of many major social media channels, as it did not feel right to engage on platforms that posed ethical concerns, particularly for young women. In response, we invested in our own app where we have 2.05m users and more control over how they run.
WT: As Lush continues to grow globally, how do you stay creatively involved with the brand, especially as commercial pressures increasingly test purpose-driven principles?
RB: We’ve never let commercial pressures test our purpose-driven principles. Our purpose is at our core and it’s inbuilt in our business. We are also part employee owned and that is mainly to maintain the ethical principles of the business. We’ve had a ‘We Believe’ statement since we started 30 years ago and they’ve been our guiding principles over the years. We’ve never changed them, only added one about freedom of movement across the world.
All the founders (except the late Liz Bennett) are still creatively involved in the brand – we invent products, design the shops, invent new concepts, maintain customer service standards, generally guide the global business. Basically, we are all still very much in love with Lush.
WT: From your experience as a co-founder, how crucial is it to balance innovation with ethical responsibility in the cosmetics industry?
RB: For us it’s crucial, because it’s the whole thing we base our business on. Not because it’s marketing, but because it’s the right thing to do. Innovation is at the heart of our business. We use innovation to enhance our ethics – to move beyond sustainability to regeneration; to invent whole new product categories to meet customer needs but also to help save the planet. There is never a need to give up on your ethics as you grow, ethics first, actions accordingly.
WT: What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs in the beauty sector who want to build brands with strong ethical foundations?
RB: If you’ve got a passion, then just do it. However, if you’re only in it for the money, then it’s not going to work as well. Put your customer first, not your dream of a big bank balance. You have to make money, but it’s not about ripping people off – you need to be doing it for genuine ethical reasons. Don’t make things cheap and charge a lot of money for it, unless you have no conscience! It’s about quality and effectiveness. Don’t sell a dream, create an effective reality. Be honest, work with a conscience and be proud of what you do. I’m very proud of everything we do. If we do make a mistake, we own up to it and make changes. We have nothing to hide. We genuinely do our best. It’s even in our mission statement that we believe in making mistakes and starting again as well as making our mums proud.
