Lush says Brexit sent European sales lower

Ethical cosmetics company Lush is blaming Brexit for lower European sales in the year to June 2022. Overall, the company posted a 28% fall in sales that year with its UK market seeing a 10% drop.

That’s according to its latest accounts, which were reported by the Telegraph newspaper, although they don’t appear to have been filed with Companies House yet, so full details of exactly how much it achieved sales-wise aren’t yet available. 

On the Companies House Lush page, there’s an alert saying that the accounts were due at the end of June.

The newspaper did say the £22 million profit recorded in the previous financial year was wiped out in the latest period with the company posting a loss of £260,000. As well as issues such as Brexit, the company said that sales were particularly hurt in the second half of the year as most major markets saw a spending squeeze at the same time as costs rose due to inflation.

The company’s own decision to stop posting on its social media sites also had a negative impact, it said, although management was unable to quantify exactly how much it had lost in sales through this decision. The company had taken that action in late 2021 in response to the amount of harmful content that was appearing on social sites.

As for the Brexit issues, the pro-Brexit newspaper quoted co-founder and chief executive Mark Constantine saying that the company’s popularity in Europe “has certainly waned since Brexit and we need to rebuild the love for our UK-owned brand across Europe”. 

The 28-year-old business has a major presence in Britain, but also has stores across Europe, including the continent’s largest markets, such as Germany, Italy and France. 

Constantine also said that the German factory in which the company invested after the Brexit referendum had lost money because lower sales meant it was producing fewer products there.