In 2003 we set up the Lush online forum and we were almost knocked flat by the enthusiastic response. Our little online community soon turned itself into a whole Lush city, and one of its first demands was to bring back products that we had stopped making to give shop shelf space to all the new ones. Lush thrives on its creativity and we love inventing new things; we can’t make the shops bigger, so what were we to do? First we ran a competition; the winners were the people who wrote the most passionate pleas to get a fresh batch of their favourite products made. They won the chance to visit Poole to make these treasures themselves. We had “forumites” from as far away as Toronto, Georgia and even Newcastle turning in Poole to meet the founders and mix up their recipes, with the help and guidance of Hilary and Wesley. Once we’d tried it, of course we had to do it again, and again, and again... They became known as the “discons”, discontinued products.


Then Mark realised that each time he went to a Lush shop he’d see someone buying their favourite things, and he would be planning to stop making some of them. What to do? Inspired by the book, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, about how the future of business is selling small quantities of many things (maybe), and by Lush’s unusual ability to handmake small batches of products, despite being quite a big company now, we launched RetroLush. We still can’t fit them all in the shops, but now we regularly make small batches of lovely products from our past for you to try again, or for the first time. We like it that they live on, perfuming bathrooms around the globe. Join our little band of extreme Lushies who go for the edgier stuff, and treat yourself to some freshly made RetroLush.