Why “opportunity hangs in the air” for Lush’s retail GM

In less than a decade, Brittany Gian has worked her way from sales assistant to general manager of retail at Lush.

Gian still uses her floor training and customer service experience to navigate her day-to-day in the boardroom.

Here, we speak to Gian about the imbalance of women in leadership roles versus the shop floor, rethinking roles in retail that are gender inclusive and the career advice that she continues to call back on. 

Inside Retail: You’ve had a remarkable career in retail, rising from the role of sales assistant to general manager of retail in less than a decade. What has kept you inspired and motivated to grow alongside Lush?

Brittany Gian: I’ve been at Lush now for nearly 13 years. I’m hoping that that’s not an omen. I never could have envisioned that I would end up in the position I’m in now. 

I was studying to be a high school teacher, and I was finding that I just enjoyed my shifts at Lush more and more. 

I kind of refer to it as the authenticity of the company – we’re very much people-driven over the process. We’re as strong as the sum of all of our people. Because the values and the ethics that we stand for as a brand truly are at the heart of the business, it’s really easy to buy into that. 

I think it was also a case where there was just opportunity. Something we say at Lush is ‘opportunity hangs in the air’. Because I was enjoying my time in the store so much, when the trainee manager role became vacant, which is what we call assistant managers, I decided to apply with the plan to defer the [teaching] degree, and obviously, 13 years later, I’ve just not gone back. 

It’s about that connection to the greater brand, and I think the accessibility of the people within it. Our founders are still very much involved in the day-to-day running of the business. I think you feel. Because Lush was founded by a group of people who didn’t want to leave their ethics at home, none of us have been forced to either. 

As the business has grown, we’ve attracted more and more like-minded people who think the same way and want to make a positive impact, and we all truly want to leave the world lusher than we found it. I think that’s what keeps us here for so long, and why you’ve got a lot of Lush ‘lifers’ across the business. 

IR: Are there any skills that you learnt on the shop floor that you know apply in the boardroom?

BG: Look, people are people right? Whether we’re serving our customers or negotiating a rent deal for a new store or whatever high-level decisions are happening in those boardrooms. The skill that I’ve been able to learn on our shop floors is being able to communicate really effectively and read people better, understand people and their wants and needs, and the way that we truly centre the customer in our customer experience. Those skills are sort of skills for life. 

I think that’s why retail as a career is so exciting – it’s a place where you can continue to refine that and apply that in lots of different disciplines across the business, whether that be Lush or elsewhere. It’s those kinds of people skills that are going to serve you well no matter where we end up in our career. I still very much call on that day-one customer experience training that we do here. I still use a lot of those active listening and effective communication skills now in my current role. 

IR: Why do you think there is an overrepresentation of women in entry-level roles and an underrepresentation of women in leadership roles within the retail industry?

BG: I see that as well, attending industry events, and you look around and it’s no secret that it’s built on the backs of many hard-working, passionate women on shop floors. But as you do step into those leadership roles, the prevalence of women is less and less, and I think that’s such a concern for our industry, and something we should be actively thinking about and involved in. 

It goes beyond diversity. Diversity and inclusion are incredibly important for us, but I think it is the inclusion factor in the progression planning that we are really passionate about, and that I have benefited from over these years at Lush.

Those people who are on our shop floors, who are looking for the opportunity, and willing to take on these new challenges, whether it be an opportunity to present or participate in a new training day, for instance, they’re all the opportunities we want to be able to provide our people in order for them to flex skills that ultimately can land them in leadership roles, whether that be within our business, or elsewhere. 

I think it is something that the industry as a whole needs to reckon with – in terms of the representation of women in leadership roles, and how that is representative of our demographic as a whole. 

Thinking about the reasons women are so overrepresented within entry-level roles in retail, it is a lot about flexibility and the ability to be a working mum. For me, I had my little boy two years ago, and that’s been a huge learning curve coming back to work. So it’s [about] how [to create] greater allowances within our industry to make sure that those roles work for everyone, regardless of what stage of life they’re in.

IR: How do you think retailers could improve their hiring and mentoring practices to increase the amount of women in leadership positions?

BG: I think we have been actively trying to question a traditional retail structure. Obviously, being a business operating in Australia, we’re always going to be governed by the award. But does a store manager role need to be a full-time permanent role to be truly effective? Or Is there flexibility within that? Is there structure and shape that the team can have to ultimately deliver the service they’re famous for to our customers while being able to better serve the team providing that service? That’s something that we’ve been doing a lot recently – really rethinking some of these structures in order to be able to put people first and especially wanting to have more working mums come back into the business and to take on those leadership roles if that’s something that they want to do.

IR: Is there a standout piece of career advice that you share with other women working in retail?

BG: A pivotal piece of advice I’ve been given, and I remember it wasn’t even really specifically for me, but we do managers’ meetings, which are the cornerstone of our calendar every year. I remember the very first one I attended as a training manager, Karl Bygrave, one of the directors and co-founders of our business, had visited from the UK, and he did a talk, essentially just saying ‘yes’ to every job opportunity that presents itself. 

Just say yes. I think that was something I took to heart in terms of every potential job opportunity or development piece that was offered to me, regardless of how outside my comfort zone that might have been.

I was fortunate at the time that I was able to just say yes and that took me on adventures I could have only ever dreamed of in terms of travel to the UK and visiting stores across Australia and New Zealand. Being able to do this as the store manager was particularly incredible. That led me to be able to join the Lush support team and ultimately progress from there. I think that it comes back to that old ‘opportunity hangs in the air’ adage of  ‘it’s there if you just look for it and are open to it’. 

I think that’s been the single biggest thing that’s influenced my career in terms of ending up in the GM role here at Lush.

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