One afternoon in the summer of 2015, I was walking around Old Town Pasadena on my lunch break, when the most uh-may-zing scent hit me. Well, more like scents. They were sweet, they were citrusy, they were earthy… they were the direct opposite experience of walking past an Abercrombie & Fitch store. I wanted more.
The lovely fragrances were coming from a small shop whose interior looked like a candy store had crashed into a farmer’s market. Colorful assortments of cosmetics were attractively piled in crates, on tables, and behind the counters.
I marched right in and started picking things up and smelling them, unabashedly indulging myself and marveling at the colors. A bright-faced young woman all in black came up to me and laughed. “Smells amazing, right?”
I slowly turned to her. “Oh my god, yes.”
“Would you like to try one of our bestsellers? It’s a scrub called Ocean Salt.”
Already she had picked up a small container, opening the lid to reveal a gritty blue-green mixture smelling of lime, salt, and coconut. Somehow we had also ended up next to a sink, warm water gently running over my hands.
“Do it.”
She took a dab of the Ocean Salt and gently scrubbed my skin, even throwing in a hand massage and a light dab of lotion to finish. My hands were reborn. I ended up spending the rest of my lunch break with my new friend. As she pampered me and as my basket of items grew, I learned about the store’s mission (Animal rights! Human rights! Environmental protection! Sustainability!), its products (everything is listed in quantifiable order from most to least and color coded! Packaging is recyclable or biodegradable!), and its people (you knew who made your products because their illustrated faces were stickered on to the packaging!). I had never known a company that seemed to be doing so much good on so many levels.
I knew I had to work there. I was so dang curious to know more. And that’s how my journey began at LUSH.
That week, I applied in person to work at the store closest to where I lived. It also happened to be on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, one of the highest traffic locations in the country, and a hot tourist destination. I would not be bored. I joined an informational session and spent the evening hearing other candidates gush about why they were interested in working there. When my turn came, I blabbed on about my experience in Pasadena and what an impact it had made on me. Despite having no prior retail experience and only wanting to work on Saturdays, I was somehow hired! I would officially be a LUSH sales ambassador.
But before I could make my debut on the sales floor, I had to go through training. A very intense training. We dived into LUSH’s founding history and mission. We drilled ourselves on many, many products, each ingredient, how they were labeled (and how less honest companies might label their derivatives to appear high quality), what they were used for, what skin and hair concerns customers might come to us with, and what we should recommend. It was activism, sales, and esthetics all in one.
In that time, I also learned a kindasorta huge concerning thing about palm oil, an ingredient which appears in a lot of cosmetics and food. In short, palm oil is cheap at the cost of deforestation in biodiverse areas, child labor, stripping indigenous people of their homelands, land and water pollution… yeah, it’s a ghastly list. (Side note: Even RSPO-certified palm oil is questionable! So far the only company I’ve found that has truly found a way to sustainably, ethically, and transparently harvest palm oil is Dr. Bronner’s.)
Among the many creatures endangered by unsustainable palm oil production are the Sumatran tigers, elephants, rhinos, and orangutans. LUSH is doing their part to raise awareness of this dire situation through their campaigns, donations, and the steady removal of palm oil and its derivatives from their cosmetics as new research offers better alternatives.
HOO. That training put the crash in crash course. I was just stunned. But also fired up and ready to educate and delight customers on the sales floor. For the next three months, I clocked in for up to six hours every Saturday. I assisted and educated all kinds of customers, from patrons to celebrities to the newly-initiated to grumpy plus ones who’d been dragged into the store (a nice hand scrub lifted their mood most of the time).
Sometimes we’d have contests to motivate ambassadors to hit sales goals, with the prize being a few items to take home. One particular event involved selling the most Charity Pots in a day. Charity Pots are a bunch of things (passionate plug incoming). They are luxurious hand and body lotions—a gorgeous concoction of cocoa butter and oils sourced from LUSH’s worldwide regenerative agriculture projects. They give back—100% of the proceeds minus taxes are donated to small but mighty grassroots efforts in human rights, animal protection, and environmental justice. And yes—several of those organizations are dedicated to protecting wildlife like the orangutans and their natural habitat.
I was so ready to sell lotion that Saturday.
And I f*cking did. I channeled the honorary Girl Scout in me and sold the most Charity Pots, curing customers of their dry skin ailments and adding a little more to the pot to protect the planet’s most vulnerable primates. Pow.
Ahem. A month later, it was time to move on. I’d accomplished my mission to learn about such a curiously bold company. Of course, the work to help make the world a better place for all living things doesn’t just end with a job. I think of that experience as my first real step toward a life of conscientious consumption. Being mindful of the world beyond my own noisy and demanding one continues to be a daily and meaningful endeavor. I’m grateful I can share this experience. I’m ecstatic to see more and more companies in this age tied to causes beyond their own bottom line. I’m hopeful all this momentum will broaden individual worlds a little more each day, as it did mine.
I didn’t save all the orangutans, but I took a step. The journey to being a part of something larger than ourselves can begin with something as small as… well, smelling something amazing. We just have to walk in.
—Mai
Notice something pretty cool? I now have a logo! I made it a few months when I was deeply curious about digital art. Also! Neat illustrations for post thumbnails (you can see ‘em on my Substack site) are courtesy of Icons8. Official AF.
And if you’re on the lookout for a super moisturizing, orangutan-saving lotion, try the Charity Pot.
Only two more stories to go for this month! Which one do you want to hear next week? Leave a comment by end of day Monday:
The One with the Imaginary Lifeboat
The One with the Ayahuasca
The One with the Video Game Musical
Thank you, thank you for reading! See you next week.
This was delightful! I was thinking it was going to be another adventurous trip like the previous story but learning about your experience at LUSH and their mission was so insightful!
I remember this foray! I have to say, I don't shop at LUSH often but it is a nice treat every now and then. Conscious consumption is something I've definitely been thinking about more recently too. What's nice is that a lot of companies are trying to be more transparent about this because they know there's a demand for it, but hopefully we'll get to the point where it's a more wide spread thing! Thanks again for the great read, and my vote is for The One with the Ayahuasca!