Member Article

Lush sweetens customer experience with instore Wi-Fi

Lush, the hand-made cosmetics retailer, is rolling out a Wi-Fi solution to all of its 105 stores in the UK in a bid to drive customer engagement and educate shoppers around its ethical products and campaigns. Managed by Vodat International, a leading communications and network provider, the move consolidates Lush’s IT infrastructure through one company.

Founded in Poole, Dorset in 1995, this year Lush is celebrating 20 years in business, which has seen the retailer’s ongoing commitment to providing vegetarian products made from fresh ingredients to its customers. Also passionate on a range of welfare topics, from human rights to animal testing, the in-store Wi-Fi system will enable the brand to engage with shoppers through digital signage and social media as well as educating staff on these subjects.

Using a segregated Service Set Identifier (SSID) connection with Vodat’s inherent built-in security, Lush is able to balance connection bandwidth between store and customer usage depending on demand. This could mean up weighting stores for staff training or allowing customer devices to stream live feeds from events at other Lush locations.

Subhash Sreedharan, Global Head of Technology at Lush, said, “We have been working with Vodat for a number of years in the UK. Selecting Vodat for the Wi-Fi solution was an obvious choice and we have been impressed with the team’s attitude and dedication.”

He continued: “In Lush stores we are focusing on simplifying and enhancing the customer experience as well as encouraging shoppers to further understand our ethos and campaign work using digital technology. Vodat has provided the IT backbone to enable this.”

Paul Leybourne, Head of Sales at Vodat International, said, “Lush has been a valued customer of Vodat for some years and we are delighted to be working them on this new project. The brand has always been at the vanguard of customer experience, but until now the till was the only digital touchpoint. We look forward to helping them on their ongoing consumer engagement journey.”

Lush was recently named ‘the top high street shop’ for the second year running in Which? magazine’s annual retail survey.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Paul Leybourne .