Lush Winks at Consumers with New Emoji-Inspired Collection
*By Tracey Cheek*
In anticipation of Valentine's Day, Lush Cosmetics is getting sardonic. And to inject some humor into the holiday, the company is releasing a new line of bath bombs inspired by two of the internet's most suggestive emojis ー the eggplant and the peach.
“We decided to take a cheekier approach this year, \[and\] moved away from the more serious side of Valentine’s Day ー and instead, embrace sort of today's modern love language, so to speak,” said Brandi Halls, the company's director of brand communication. “We’re seeing some inspiration from our product line from dating in 2019, and often we’re seeing emojis are speaking volumes in dating in today's world.”
According to Match.com’s annual Singles in America study, daters who use emojis frequently are more likely to have a successful romantic life.
Halls said that immediately after Lush teased the products through its social channels, the company saw "a tremendous response, positive response from our fans."
“They’re laughing alongside with us. It’s kind of unavoidable this day and age to not address the way that people are communicating with one another," she said. "And because we invent all of our products in-house, we thought, why not have fun with it?”
Increasingly, beauty companies are making the push to produce cruelty-free and vegan items. According to Halls, Lush is following industry trends and developing more eco-friendly products.
“You’re going to see that we continue to push the envelope by way of product invention, so we’re continuing to innovate around naked, un-packaged products, trying to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in a landfill,” Hall said.
She added that in Berlin and Milan, the company launched naked shops, which only sell unpackaged products to reduce waste.
Hall said that Lush is looking to bring more naked shops to North America sometime this year.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/lush-cosmetics-bringing-big-bath-bomb-energy).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
