By Reanna Fogelman
Lululemon is a yoga pants company founded in 1998 in Vancouver, Canada, by Chip Wilson. Wilson was the CEO of the company, with a goal to create reliable and fashionable sports clothes for women. The company’s focus is on high-quality sportswear for women that continues to be a success today.
Wilson suddenly took a yoga class one day and realized that women didn’t have the right clothing and materials to be suitable for these yoga classes. This inspired Wilson to start a business in athletic wear for women. In 2000, Lululemon had its first store opening in Vancouver, Canada, where it was able to understand and gain from the clothing trend.
Lululemon’s name comes from his experiences with Japanese customers who liked company names that started with the letter “L.”According to MarcomCentral, Wilson “played around with many variations of alliterative ‘L’ names until deciding on Lululemon, spelled with a lowercase l for a relaxed vibe.”
However, Wilson had a history of making anti-Asian and fatphobic comments online about women’s bodies, actions that were not suitable for his role as CEO. During an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Street Smarts in 2013, Wilson blamed women’s bodies for the leggings becoming sheer: “They don’t work for some women’s bodies. It’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there.” At that point, the company’s creator told the source that the popular leggings were not made for everyone, namely curvier women, in response to growing complaints that they were cheap and see-through. Wilson resigned from the Lululemon CEO board in 2015 and was replaced by a woman named Christine Day.
A MarcomCentral article stated the ideal goal of the brand “Lululemon” is to have girls feel good about themselves. The branding of Lululemon emphasizes having healthy lifestyles, appreciating activity, and being generally fit. Their mission statement is to “elevate human potential by helping people feel their best.” MarcomCentral explains that Lululemon’s marketing strategy “has adapted to focus more on promoting the lifestyle that customers can achieve through using their products, rather than the products themselves. This tactic has been effective for Lululemon because it enables them to have higher price points for their products, as they are seen as a path toward healthier living and better wellness.”
“Lululemon is committed to creating and fostering an inclusive, diverse, and welcoming environment throughout our organization and across our communities,” the company said in a statement to CNN. “We have made considerable progress since launching our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Action (IDEA) function, and we are proud of the goals we have achieved.” Lululemon wants to make the company diverse for everyone, meaning the company and clothing are for anyone, no matter the color of their skin.
Wilson revealed in a recent interview with Forbes that he isn’t on board with the company’s “whole diversity and inclusion thing,” possibly referring to the company’s new IDEA mission, which focuses on the “culture of inclusion where diversity is celebrated” and “equity is the norm. “[Lululemon is] trying to become like the Gap, everything to everybody,” Wilson told Forbes. “And I think the definition of a brand is you’re not everything to everybody … You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.” Wilson makes these unhealthy jokes toward the people consuming the company’s products.