Success Story: LUSH Australia

At LUSH, StoreForce ensures that peak sales times are identified and staffed with the ideal number of staff, ensuring comprehensive service to all customers.

Since its establishment, Lush has been driven by innovation and ethics. Creators of pioneering beauty products such as the fizzing bath bomb, shower jellies, and solid shampoo bars, Lush places emphasis on fresh ingredients like organic fruits and vegetables. Headquartered in the UK, Lush operates in 47 countries with nearly 1,000 shops.

Mark Lincoln, Lush Australia Director, says, “Since opening its first store in Australia in 1997, the Lush business has experienced great success. It has been a challenge ensuring that the business could cope with our growth, especially in the last three years.

Rapid Growth Requires New Technologies

“We knew that we had to change what we were doing and bring in new technologies,” said Mark. “In 2015 I was fortunate to travel to Lush North America to see what technologies they were using. During that trip, the team from StoreForce came in and presented their system and how it could deliver the metrics and analytics that we needed to manage store operations. I was very impressed by their presentation and the endorsements from Lush North America.”

Lush North America had been using StoreForce since 2013 and had recently reported a remarkable sales lift of 5.7% for those locations that installed StoreForce.

Mark continues, “What really sold me on StoreForce was visiting a couple of Lush shops in Vancouver and talking to the staff. They all loved StoreForce and found it very easy to use. I could see how StoreForce would address a lot of the issues that we had in Australia and New Zealand.”

Rostering at Lush Australia was manual and required too much management time. For example, managers spent an average of one to two days per month doing staff scheduling and rostering. StoreForce would be a new capability that would streamline the staffing process and free up the store managers to spend more time reviewing operations, analyzing sales results, and getting the most productivity from their rosters. The system helps ensure that staffing levels are set at optimal levels, to ensure the store has people working at the right time to provide great service to customers and achieve our sales targets. Lush Australia implemented StoreForce in 2016.

StoreForce at Lush Australia

Traffic data and point-of-sale data are collected and fed into StoreForce which then identifies peak selling opportunities.

StoreForce generates a user-friendly dashboard that displays a real-time hour by hour summary of how the day is progressing against last year and target. It enables management to refocus their team to maximize sales opportunities.

StoreForce reduced the time needed to produce staffing rosters from two days per month to less than half a day per month. This has allowed store managers to focus on operational analysis and sales coaching, knowing they’ve scheduled the best roster to handle peak sales times.

Lush Australia is the first company in Australia to use StoreForce. Mark says, “I had no concerns that it wouldn’t be a success. The StoreForce people were really impressive in going through the implementation process; their attention to detail gave me the confidence that it would succeed. They certainly put the right resource in to get the job done properly.”

StoreForce Delivers Tangible and Intangible Benefits

StoreForce has delivered both tangible and intangible benefits to store managers, store personnel and customers.

According to Mark, “StoreForce is one of the factors that helped us to maintain our sales growth over the last twelve months and has helped us manage our wage cost and stay within budget. StoreForce has taken a lot of the stress away from our managers.”

Mark adds, “We’ve also seen an intangible benefit in how our managers perceive the business by providing them with the purpose-built tools they need to do their jobs efficiently and be successful.”

The staff loves StoreForce, too. Since it is a web-based system they can check it at any time and use the employee self-service application to access their shifts. They can see upcoming events like promotions or campaigns, or stock takes.

Why StoreForce is a Success at Lush

Mark explains why StoreForce is a success at Lush. “It’s the adoption by the end-user. The users at the store level find it easy to use and they love the information that they have at their fingertips. The store team gets key data very quickly so they can see how they’re running and then react appropriately. The ease at which they get valuable information quickly is the key to its success.”

Mark concludes, “I would definitely recommend StoreForce to other retail organizations. I would emphasize the point that whenever we put it into one of our businesses it is instantly adopted by the user. It saves us a lot of time, is easy to use and delivers results.”