Interview to Adam Goswell, leader of Investigation and Development of Lush

Lush is a brand that not only stands out for its cosmetic ingredients, but is particularly notable for its triumph in digital innovation. One of the people in charge of making this work and succeed the way it does is Adam Goswell. Adam Goswell heads up research and technology development at Lush. He is at the forefront of the company's technology innovation and is currently leading the development of new tools using AI, machine learning and augmented reality. Most recently, he has developed AI technology to help remove cosmetics packaging.Adam has a background in design and UX, which means he is passionate about all things digital, including digital ethics. Adam led Lush's first digital ethics campaign alongside campaign group Access Now on Black Friday 2016, where Lush shut down its website globally to raise awareness of online shutdowns. When did cosmetics and digitalisation come together for you?12 years ago I was working for a small digital agency, I had a chance to go and meet Jack Constatine who wanted to meet me and talk about a role with him at Lush, I was initially skeptical about working for Lush, I had heard of the brand but I didn't see them as a big innovator in technology and digital, but when I heard Jack's digital vision for the Lush I was completely hooked and immediately quit my job at the time and left to go and work for Jack and start on delivering that vision.12 years later, we've all now made (most!) of the vision a reality and of course working on what's next - this is something that keeps me motivated and challenged in a good way working for someone so visionary, we haven't always agreed on everything but I admire his boldness and creative chaos What does Lush mean to you?Lush is a business that invents incredibly creative and effective cosmetics, it's an business that also really does affect change on the world, and thats what's kept me a part of it for for so long, it's way more then just making money. What are the most important trends in the digitalisation of the cosmetics industry today?AI. It's something we're all reading about all of the time, i've not witnessed a technology that I think will have so many positive and possible negative effects on everyone, for cosmetics we've already used AI successfully to invent an alternative to packaging using our Lush Lens app feature, we are looking at ways we can use AI techniques to better help educate and help our customers to get them to right product for them, not replacing the human touch we value but enhancing it. How do you find the balance between Lush's values of clean, artisanal cosmetics and innovation and digitalisation?We love technology and digitalisation and its been a part of Lush since 1995 and before, we do see technology as a core way we help our business to deliver innovative fresh cosmetics, not to replace it or change our handmade approach in both making cosmetics in our factories and everything we do. Which project do you remember with the most excitement and satisfaction since you started your adventure at Lush?I was fortunate to get to work on two shops in Tokyo, Japan the first being a radical signage free experience where we used AI in our app (Lush Lens) to enable customers to shop what was a 2 floor beautiful display floor to ceiling of bath bombs, the second was our Tokyo anchor shop in Shinjuku where we created some great digial experiences with a floor dedicated to the Lush Spa and so many other tech innovations where used, which ended up then being used in Lush shops all around the world, we love working in Japan and see it as a great place to test new technology first. In an interview you explained that Lush wanted to incorporate Augmented Reality in upcoming projects, is there anything you can tell us about how this idea is developing?Augmented Reality (AR) is a really interesting a fun experience, and we've done a loads of experiments with it from games, to in-store experiences usings cameras and screens - we can now see with the launch the Apple Vision Pro in early 2024 the idea of mixed reality (mixing digital and the real world together seamlessly) that experiences using this will become more common, and I predict the mobile phone will begin to be replaced by devices like Vision Pro in the future. What can you tell us about artificial intelligence and how do you see it fitting into the future (and present) for a brand like Lush? Do you think it is necessary to set limits and especially to what should these limits be set?Absolutely its part of the present for us, we've used AI for many years - I can see it being a part of the customer experience everywhere for Lush maybe in subtle ways, may sometimes more obvious - equally internally for all our operations will be aided by AI in someway. At Lush we'll always value humans with our handmade approach first above everything so thats our natural limit, but certainly AI will be a useful tool and aid everywhere. In March 2023, Lush debuted the metaverse and you commented in a press release issued by the company that Lush was not closing the door to other ways of experimenting with the metaverse... Can you expand on where Lush's experience with the metaverse currently stands, having already launched several actions?We can see the term 'Metaverse' has many problems, most people don't quite understand what it means - however we like to use terms like 3D experiences, collectibles and gaming to describe what the Metaverse means, so with those 3 areas we certainly are looking to engage our fandom more with 3D experiences, collective items after the success of our digital collectibles with our Super Mario collaboration. We're working on something right now launching in late november that will be on one of the biggest gaming platforms so watch this space. Can you anticipate what you think are the next trends that will be with us in 2024?I've already mentioned AI, but think using it will be come very common in 2024 and I can see mixed reality being something that cosmetics brands really start to take notice of and will invest in it once the Apple Vision Pro launches.