Lululemon: Yoga Costume Expert

In China, many people are willing to save money to buy a LV or GUCCI bag, but in Canada, girls are more willing to use the saved money to buy a Lululemon pants.

The Lululemon Yoga suit designed by Canadian businessman Dennis Wilson is close fitting, comfortable and exhausting. It is known as "Canada's first professional sports brand".

Lululemon is known as "Canada's first professional sports brand". In North America, it is the first choice for people to carry out yoga, fitness and other sports apparel.

In China, many people are willing to save money to buy a LV or GUCCI bag, but in Canada, girls are more willing to use the saved money to buy a Lululemon pants.

Data from ThinkEquity Partners, a market research firm, shows that Lululemon's "hard core fans" will spend $92 to buy a brand of sports pants.

The price of Nike's sports pants is about $60, and the products of Under Armour are only $70.

Lululemon, which has numerous loyal fans, has held all kinds of free yoga, Prat Ti and SALSA dance classes throughout the year to popularize the concept and methods of health campaigns.

"It is the fastest growing company at present."

Paul Rojas, senior analyst at Credit Suisse Group.

Lululemon currently has 86 warehouses in the world.

This year, the company plans to open 31 stores in the United States, bringing the total storefront to 69 and increasing the number of shops worldwide to more than 300 in the next few years.

In 1998, Canadian businessman Dennis Wilson (Dennis Wilson) took part in a yoga class.

But he found that most of the students wore sportswear made of cotton polyester blended fabric, which was neither fit nor sweating.

So Wilson made a black yoga yoga pants that used to breathe and fit.

Soon, Wilson founded Lululemon company in Vancouver. The company opened a small design room, retail shop and yoga training hall.

At the very beginning, Wilson himself was responsible for designing and making clothes, and improved the feedback according to the people who practiced yoga here.

So far, he is still the chief designer of the company.

Because of its close proximity to customers, the company was widely praised in Vancouver shortly after its establishment.

Soon, Lululemon began to expand to other cities.

"Joining hands with local yoga masters is the key to Lululemon's success."

Kristen, chief executive of Lululemon, said ChristineDay.

According to Christine Day, Lululemon will first contact the local yoga instructor or other fitness course coaches before entering a new city to open a store.

Lululemon provides free clothing for these coaches for a year, while the latter is the "image ambassador" of Lululemon, who not only wears Lululemon clothing in front of their students, but also provides feedback on design to the company.

In addition, they can also sell Lululemon and give certain prizes to their purchasers: for example, offering free yoga courses. These activities are sponsored by Lululemon, and the location is in the ordinary attic or apartment.

"To serve the market of yoga clothing precisely and accurately, like laser," has brought huge rewards for Lululemon.

In 2007, sales jumped 85% to $275 million, and profits soared 300% to $31 million.

Listen to the voice from the bottom. Last June 4th, Kristen officially took over as CEO.

She likes to visit various shops in person, and gets a lot of useful information from front-line employees.

At the usual breakfast gathering, she liked to ask her staff: "what is the stupidest thing I've done in the past 60 days?"

"Listening to the sound from the bottom is the most important part of Lululemon's culture."

Kristen said.

In Vancouver, on a very ordinary Sunday, Kristen was trying to help the customers to fold their trousers in the fitting room.

This is a common business process in Lululemon company.

From top management, financial accounting to design team, every employee of the company must work at least 8 hours a month at the store.

This regulation is unusual for a retail enterprise.

This is a measure to keep employees close to customers, who are growing Yoga families.

Before joining Lululemon, Kristen was the director of Asia Pacific region of Starbuck Corp.

Starbucks is an example for Lululemon and provides a lesson for us.

Kristen said: "in Starbucks, we should not give up the authentic Italy espresso coffee so quickly."

In 1986, Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz (Howard Schultz) recruited Kristen into his company as his assistant.

From bookkeeping to human resources management, she handled everything well and was able to advance all the way.

In his autobiography, Howard Schulz affirmed an early idea of Kristen that the coffee shop in the coffee chain should be designed as "sisters, each with its own unique appearance, but obviously with the brand of the same family."

Facing challenges, Kristen is very kind and friendly to people, but she frankly confess how to improve the trust of consumers while the company grows and develops. This is a big challenge for her: "this is not a question of whether we can become a big company. This is a question that we can not get consumers' trust."

Before Lululemon, he had survived.

In November 2007, a New York Times report pointed out that Lululemon did not tell consumers exactly the ingredients of a clothing fabric, which contains seaweed, which aims to keep skin moisture during exercise.

Lululemon explained that third of the tests confirmed that there was a seaweed derivative in its clothing, but the company removed the ingredient from the product label.

A more pressing challenge is the inventory problem. The inventory problem has affected the profitability of Lululemon, because the company has to pay extra expenses to pport the out of stock products to the shops.

Analysts pointed out that the small costumes in Lululemon coastal shops often broke, while the shops in the central and western parts of the country often had large yards of clothing out of stock.

Kristen said the company has adopted a new inventory management system and will spend $1 million to build a direct sale website.

Kristen knows very well that at the moment when the recession has caused other retailers to complain incessantly, she still has a breathing space to correct her mistakes.

More clothing investment information, click here to enter the responsibility editor: Wang Xiaonan