Lush’s Letterbox Hand Care Kits

Covid-catalysed hand washing and sanitising is prompting brands to innovate with new care and cleansing products. UK eco-ethical beauty brand Lush is inspiring hand-focused self-care with its new Hand Care Kits, available exclusively online and designed to slip conveniently through consumers’ letterboxes. 

The three kits include a range of soaps, hand creams and serums in each pack. The Clean & Sweet kit offers gentle hand care with sweet scent profiles, Clean & Fresh As is cooling and refreshing, and Clean & Calm provides calming, soothing benefits. Exclusive to these kits is the Tiny Hands solid serum bar, which melts on contact with the skin for a smooth, non-greasy finish. 

While launching new products during the pandemic is a risky strategy, the beauty subscription-box model is thriving, allowing consumers to experiment with new brands and products from home while maintaining social distancing measures. US-based leader Birchbox has seen an increase in both subscriptions and website traffic since the start of the outbreak. Compared to the beginning of 2020, new subscribers since mid-March are 50% more engaged with the brand through newsletters, online shopping and website visits (Birchbox, 2020). 

While retailers begin to reopen, subscription boxes and increased e-tail initiatives are key, as a portion of beauty consumers are apprehensive about visiting bricks-and-mortar stores. Results from a UK-based Covid-19 Consumer Sentiment Pulse Survey revealed 29% of consumers would not queue to buy beauty products, and 35% are not prepared to wait when testing them (NPD, 2020). 

For more on coronavirus-related beauty trends and tactics, see Cosmetics in the Wake of Covid-19, Covid-19: The Beauty Sleep Opportunity and Instagangs: Beauty’s Creative Corona-Chameleons.