The other day, whilst on a date with my good friend, Stacey, I came across a store called LUSH in West Edmonton Mall. I had seen it before but this time we took the opportunity to check it out. Soon after wandering the store and checking random things out an employee came and asked us if we needed any help. After finding out that we didn’t know very much about the products he agreed to show us the store.
I think that the design of LUSH is extremely different than anything I have seen before and that could quite possibly be part of the reason its become so popular. LUSH believes in making effective products from fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, the finest essential oils, and safe synthetics. They invent their own products and fragrances and make them by hand using little or no preservative or packaging. They use only vegetarian ingredients and they tell you when the product was made. They do not support testing on animals and do not do business with companies that do. In an attempt to be environmentally friendly some of the packaging that is used (the black jars) are reusable. The guy at the LUSH at West Ed informed us that if we bring three jars back the the store we get a free bath bar(Kind of an incentive to recycle.)
To save money, space, and shipping costs LUSH designs its products so that packaging is not needed. In the compact hard form they use, shampoo is both lighter and smaller, making it easier to ship. There reusable black jars may not be much to look at but they are designed to help the environment.
Just because they don’t design packaging doesn’t mean that they can’t still design how the product looks on the shelf. With the shampoos, soaps, massage bars, bath bars and body butters (And other products too of course.) a bit of design has gone into them.
LUSH Karma Komba Solid Shampoo
LUSH Ice Blue Soap
LUSH Heavanilli Massage Bar
LUSH Christmas Eve Bubble Bar
When you look at what materials have to be used into the designs of LUSH’s products it makes you think that the designs of their product might be quite limited. They have to work with the ingredients that are in the product and manipulate its shape in some way. One thing they use a lot of it color. Most likely to catch the customer’s eye. But you have to remember the customer is going to take this product home and dunk it in water. The most important thing here is not the gorgeous design, it is whether or not the product works. The gorgeous design just helps to pique interest and then help make the final sale 
If you are interested in learning more about LUSH I’ve posted their website in my blog
http://www.lush.ca/shop/english
