The Price of Wank – Up 5%!
It's been awhile since we last had body product wank – whither did you go, BPAL wank? – but it's time to bring sexy (smells) back with an installment of LUSH wankery, courtesy a wee mousey over on wank_report.

LUSH’s North American branch has had to raise prices on their products. There is an ample supply of wank available in their forums – I direct your attention to the handy list the reporting mousie gave us – but one particular thread stands proud and tall as a Church of St. Fap, so your humble wank reporter shall focus her efforts on that.

It starts innocently enough, with heylookamidget expressing surprise at the degree of the price shift. Gaa! Gorgeous is like $80 now :O Oddly enough, the new soaps didn't go up at all. It's really going to be hard for me to spend $5.50 on a bath bomb too. Anyone else surprised or not?

No one is very happy. There's a lot of miscellaneous pissing and moaning, which I will skip over because it all sounds the same. SEE, the problem is, LUSH said the increases would mostly be in the range of 5-6%, and aren't (there's a lot of fun numbers wank).

Due to the way the forums are set up, I cannot, tragically, link you to specific comments. But here is a very typical one, from East Coast Amber:

I'm calling shenanigans on NA Lush.

Now if the price increase truly reflected an across the board 5-6%, I'd be irritated, but not offended. But looking over the numbers it's fairly obvious that items with much higher increase by percentage are items that are best sellers.

Take these for example:
Butterball - a markup of 14%
Big Blue, Avobath - a markup of 13.5%
Cream Candy BBS - a markup of nearly 16%
Blue Skies - a markup of 11%
Dreamtime - a markup of nearly 16%
Shower gels - a markup of nearly 20.5%

And that's just hitting a few of the items off the best sellers page (and the shower gels as those seem to be a favorite among forumites).

Seriously... does Lush think we are incapable of some simple math and connecting the dots?

The real slap in the face (for me anyway) is that tasteless reference that implies the "poor us, we'd LOVE to give you great products, but if we don't jack the prices up we'll be forced into the same category as Nike that forces small children to produce your luxury items for pennies on the dollar in some third world country." Please.

Here's the thing: Lush as a whole is a conglomerate, a corporation. NA Lush (along with all the other Lush branches/subsidiaries) belong to the parent corporation (UK Lush). They get direction from it, and are required to produce the same line of products. BUT there is freedom within each branch (like items being available only here or in Italy or in Australia). We've seen that each branch has a certain amount of latitude and freedom (remember how the NA DC round was conducted??). This, combined with a few comments from employees of Lush asking how to get sales back to NA Lush (and away from UK Lush) tells me that each branch gets a much larger percentage of the profit than what the parent company gets. So does it hurt NA Lush if they loose business to another branch company? Yep. If people start ordering through the UK, AUS, etc NA Lush will feel it.

The real kicker isn't when NA Lush looses it's client base of individuals to UK Lush... it's when group orders become even more common-place. I've only conducted two group orders, and in both cases our total scratched the $1,000 mark. Nearly $1,000 lost to UK Lush and more than seven customers won in a single order (one group order I was in went well past $3,000 with 15+ customers in that single order). That's the kind of stuff that really adds up.

So yeah, write/email customer service. Tell them how you feel... BUT it isn't going to count for much if there's no investment behind it. Invest in a company that continues to provide quality items, at a cheaper price (with better shipment), consistently shows it's appreciation for it's client base (ever see how UK Lush does a round? It's a beautiful thing to behold), AND doesn't lie with crappy excuses for insane price hikes like protecting children from the indignities of sweat shops.

There are conspiracy theories, starving college student vs. yuppie battles, and even a rape comparison. It's seventeen pages of love and delight.