Until two weeks ago, I didn’t have the courage to go into a Lululemon store. I’m OK with yoga, but really not OK with wearing “women’s clothing,” which is how I viewed any piece of clothing sporting the company’s hair-curl logo. Then a friend who works there told me that if I were in one of the company’s U.S. stores, I wouldn’t be concerned about risking my manhood. There the company is branded as a men’s and women’s clothing store.
That was excuse enough to get me through the doors of the original Lululemon store on 4th Avenue a few weeks ago in search of functional, not-fuchsia, not-skin-tight shorts. The hopelessly attractive and helpful “director of first impressions” who greeted me at the door made me wonder if I had walked into a yoga class after-party. All around me brightly clothed “guest educators” kept up a chirpy chorus of “awesome … absolutely … perfect” as they “honoured the guests.”
Architectural critic Trevor Boddy has alerted us to cultural memes and causes that have been ignited in Vancouver and caught fire around the world: Greenpeace, cyberspace, Generation X, the Occupy movement. He might also have added Lululemon butt-hugging pants (technical name: Groove Pants).
Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, no longer in day-to-day management at the company, once horrified a UVic business marketing class by revealing that final decisions on new products depended on whether they raised his pulse when he saw them on his wife Shannon. Oprah Winfrey put a woman’s spin on it when she explained why Lululemon Relaxed Fit Pants were one of her favourite things: “Anything that cuts your butt in half should be your favourite thing too!”
Through a business lens, Lululemon has become the young, fit female face of Vancouver business. What other city could spawn a company built on yoga, outdoor wear, exercise, personal growth and quirkiness? It’s one of our few corporate heavyweights with solid, eye-catching growth in international markets and a quintessential Vancouver character.
From that store at 4th and Arbutus it has added 46 more stores in Canada, 108 in the U.S., 18 in Australia – including 600 jobs at the Cornwall Street headquarters. The share price has jumped to north of $60 from a 2009 low of $2.25. The company is credited with the fourth-highest sales per square foot among retailers in the U.S. behind only Apple, Tiffany and Coach.
Give credit to Chip Wilson, whose original intent to “elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness” has spun off a Landmark Forum-influenced corporate manifesto embracing the skin deep (“Sweat once a day to regenerate your skin”) and soul-deep (“The pursuit of happiness is the source of all unhappiness”).
His irreverent sense of humour no doubt influenced brassiere names like “Breath of Fire” and “Ta Ta Tamer.” This is a man who created the Chip’s Not Dead Yet Memorial Mile run in 2008, rising onstage out of a coffin in a smoke-machine mist to give out prizes to participants dressed as superheroes, brides and clad in their underwear.
That event morphed into the August 11 SeaWheeze Lululemon Half-Marathon, sales event, concert and mass sunset yoga class at (where else?) Kitsilano Beach.
Back in the store, I developed a sudden but fleeting relationship with Ashleigh, my fitting room attendant.
“How’s it going in there, Peter?” she called out during what I thought was a private moment testing my moves in various stretchy shorts.
My visit was going very well for Lululemon and its investors. I bought three pairs of $78 shorts even though I refused the message-infused bag that would have revealed my embrace of “women’s clothing.”
I love my shorts. I’ll be back.
