Lush Cosmetics bucks high street Christmas gloom with sales rise
LUSH Cosmetics, the retailer famed for its bath bombs and other strong smelling soaps, bucked the gloom on the high street this Christmas to post a 13.4 per cent rise in sales.
The Dorset-based firm said its 106 UK stores raked in £20m of sales during the five weeks up to 29 December, with sales at stores open more than a year leaping 12.2 per cent.
Despite strong results over Christmas the retailer revealed that profits for the year to 30 June had fallen 16.2 per cent to £21.9m after it increased charitable donations to £3.1m.
Lush, which has 910 stores in 50 countries, also racked up costs after buying the half of its Japanese business it did not already own.
Overall global group turnover rose by 11.3 per cent to £362.9m, helped by the opening of a net 78 new stores, while like-for-like sales increased by 3.7 per cent.
Lush finance director Kim Coles said: “It is great to be able to report such encouraging Christmas sales in the same week as filing our strong year end results and we remain optimistic about the future as we continue to grow the business globally with expansion plans.”
The firm was founded in 1994 by husband-and-wife team Mark and Mo Constantine, who were both awarded OBEs for services to the beauty industry in the 2011 New Year Honours.