...Will Lululemon Athletica Become the Next Top Brand? Christopher Boyken MGT 4013 April 24, 2012 Executive Summary Lululemon was founded by Chip Wilson in 1998. The company started out in Canada with several stores where the company eventually grew to 165 stores in Canada, United States, Australia and China. The industry in which Lululemon competes in is fitness apparel, with competitors such as Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and Champion. The fitness apparel industry is very attractive with an ever growing increase in the amount of individuals choosing to lead a healthier life. Lululemon holds a good position in this industry and have room to grow in the future to gain an advantage over its competitors. The way Lululemon has been executing its strategy is a key factor to how well the company has been performing the past years. Although the company’s performance has been outstanding recently, there is a strategic issue in which Lululemon should try to deal with, and this is advertising. There is a couple of action plans that can be implemented and help fix the strategic issue Lululemon faces. Lululemon is a growing company that has a promising future and will continue to attract numerous investors. Table of Contents Introduction (Needs and Purposes) 4 Strategic Posture 5 Brief History 5 Core Values 5 Mission Statement 9 Vision Statement 9 Business Definition 10 Broad Goals 12 Smart Objectives 14 Key Functional...
Words: 15691 - Pages: 63
...Case Study- lululemon Ethics and Social Responsibility Executive Summary Founded in 1998, lululemon has become an extremely successful company. Over the last 12 years of operation, its mission is to improve health, make a difference in all the communities it is located in, and provide guests with quality products to help them live healthy lives. Currently, lululemon still strives to make a difference in each community through the Community Legacies Program. Plans for expansion are also in effect, and its economic responsibilities are continually being met by the income generated each year. Social Responsibility is the backbone of lululemon. It presents many positive aspects for the company such as maintaining a positive image within society, however it may result in potential negative outcomes like possible profit loss. Strategically, lululemon uses non-traditional and unique marketing and business schemes. For example, lululemon relies on social activities for product promotion rather than typical ad campaigns such as print and/or television media. The next step for lululemon is to encourage people to bring families to the in-store yoga classes to better find a balance between work, family, and healthy living, together. Issue/Problem Statement lululemon athletica's main goal is to provide their guests with products that will help them live long and healthy lives. They ensure quality in their products, as well as recognize customer needs and adapt to meet those needs...
Words: 1603 - Pages: 7
...Lululemon Athletica Inc. Business Plan Lululemon Athletica Inc. Vancouver, BC Executive Summary Mission statement “Creating components for people to live longer, healthier, fun lives.” This Business Plan is to explain Lululemon’s strategies, strategic issues and certain problems (if any) within this company. Focus differentiation is their number one strategy to stay afloat with all this tough competition. High end market is what Lululemon needs to stay focused on. In this report, we list out a few different strategies they need to take, but this is the most important to sustain a competitive advantage. Lululemon will use its marketing tactics to help focus and differentiate themselves from their competitors. With net new companies joining into the market and also current competitors, Lululemon needs to address pertent issues pertaining to its current performace, strategic moves and certain tactics to integrate a strategic campaign. To gain a better insight, the following needs to be addressed: 1. Analysis of current performance and financial situation 2. Understanding of internal and external factors 3. Examine the strategic objectives There are many challenges and opporutnities within this industry. With the right strategies and marketing techniques, Lululemon will be profitable and sustain a competitive advantage. Introduction Overview of the industry Dennis "Chip" Wilson founded Lululemon Athletica (also known...
Words: 4249 - Pages: 17
...This paper work is about Lululemon a sport wear cloth chain based in Vancouver, Canada. The main focus of this assessment is to provide reliable information regarding the analysis of the competitive forces and the external analysis. This group assessment is divided by 5 parts: Introduction that is an overview of the company and also an analysis of Lululemon performances since its beginning in 1998, PESTLE analysis that explains how the macro environment affects directly Lululemon’s operation and also the way that the company has react to its external environment, Porter five forces framework that determines the attractiveness of the garment industry and the competitive intensity based on the micro environment, Competitors analysis that identifies the strengths of current competitors for Lululemon in order to determine opportunities and threats of the company in the current market and the last part that is the Conclusion that answers the question How big is the competitive threat? Is Lululemon prepared for changes in the competitive environment? , that highlighted the main points discussed in the external environmental and competitors analysis in order to provide and accurate answer with regards of Lululemon’s current strategies and position in the market. Lululemon Athletica is a Canadian company that opens its first store in Vancouver 1998, since day one the company has focused in healthy life style and focused in yoga costumers. The market target for the company is women in...
Words: 1842 - Pages: 8
...lululemon athletica “Do you lulu?” Marketing Campaign 2011-2012 Table of Contents pg. 3 pg. 6 pg. 7 pg. 9 pg. 10 pg. 11 pg. 15 pg. 17 pg. 22 pg. 43 pg. 46 pg. 47 Introduction Executive Summary Research Objectives Situation Analysis Consumer Analysis Industry Analysis Broad Overall Analysis Strategies and Plans Timeline and Budgets Summary References and Appendices Introduction Bulldog Marketing is a marketing communications firm based out of Houston, Texas, that has extensive education and experience with building brand awareness and online sales. Our team members have an eclectic background in business, marketing, digital marketing, media relations, new and social media, and public relations. Our proven results as a team speak for themselves, as we have created successful campaigns and strategies for a number of high-caliber clients. We chose to focus on lululemon athletica because we feel the brand has very strong potential in the U.S. market. lululemon has strong sales and is growing at a fast rate every year. Since lululemon is a Canadian-based brand, the brand awareness in the United States as yet to reach its full potential. We at Bulldog Marketing feel that our combined experience coupled with lululemon’s strong branding that already exists in other markets will prove to be successful. We look forward to working with you in the months ahead and building the lululemon brand. 3 Meet the Team Nicole Grandy has...
Words: 11056 - Pages: 45
...Analysis #1 Problem Essay Lululemon Athletica Inc Samuel Ellison Presented for: Professor Kannangara Sunday, March 6th, 2016 BUSI4003 Introduction Lululemon Athletica Inc., founded in 1998 in Vancouver by Chip Wilson, is a company which designs and produces high-end yoga and technical athletic clothing. They have operated primarily in North America and Australia; their initial target customer was an educated woman who lives an active and healthy lifestyle. They opened their first store in Kitsilano in BC in November, 2000. The first store was intended to act as a community hub where people could learn and discuss about the physical aspects and mental aspects of a healthy life, in addition to selling yoga clothing. However, the company started to realize the difficulties in using their store as a community hub and retail store as their store became very busy. This caused them to focus more on training their staff. One of their goals was to train their people so well that they could positively influence their families, communities and customers. Lululemon’s vision was to elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness. To achieve this, they partnered with the right people and developed three different kinds of strategic sales programs in hope of spreading yoga love and increasing the level of health within their communities. 2013 has been a challenging year for Lululemon due to production glitches and management uncertainty. In March 2013, Lululemon recalled 17 percent...
Words: 1621 - Pages: 7
... The key issues facing LuLulemon are how to manage the continued growth of their stores through expanding operations to achieve their goal of having three hundred stores worldwide, to build on their community based business model and grow their business towards their future ROI goals while still maintaining their reputation for quality & design and brand image. As well they are looking to build their management team and increase the operating margins of their stores. b. Who is the key decision maker? The key decision makers are CEO and President Christine Day, John Currie - Chief Financial Officer and Chip Wilson - Founder and Chairman of Lululemon. c. What was the time frame involved? This case is taking place in the present time with results from 2008 to 2010 forming part of the analysis. The 2008 annual report and 2009 quarterly reports were amongst the many sources of information utilized in this analysis. d. What is the level of urgency? The level of urgency is high with Lululemon as they are in a period of rapid growth and have just gone public with their offering in 2007 and with the current economic conditions the share holders are evaluating their performance. Summary of Strategies and Performance a. Corporate Strategy Lululemon Athletica is a producer and retailer of technical clothing for yoga, dancing, running, and other athletic pursuits. Their corporate strategy falls under a concentration strategy and is one of growth through...
Words: 1470 - Pages: 6
...[pic] Lululemon manifesto has themes such as "do one thing a day that scares you, friends are more important than money and other inspirational sayings that create a large following for the company. The company gets its publicity from many marketing strategies including word of mouth. The company, According to Brittany Snow, Guest Educator at Lululemon focuses their marketing efforts on grassroots initiatives in the local communities and currently does very little print work. The popular manifesto has been a big seller for the company's brands, but even though the company has been able to use this manifesto as successful marketing tool are still major problems the company is confronting. lululemon is facing many changes as an aftereffect of the administration of past CEO, Bob Meers (Tushman, Page, & Ryder, 2010). These pivotal changes and other issues are plaqueing the compnay and may create havoc with the future of the company. Lululemon is now a publicly traded and owned entity and must prove to shareholders that the company can show strong major growth(Tushman, Page, & Ryder, 2010). Subsequently, the former and more effective growth strategy has turned out to be totally absent from lululemon's growth system in the United States(Tushman, Page, & Ryder, 2010). This has prompted low revenue in U.S. areas that are locked into leases at a high cost. Further more, on account of this speedy growth, the lululemon framework can’t keep up with the demand. Lululemon has...
Words: 701 - Pages: 3
...Strategic financial management for LULULEMON Introduction Strategic Financial management is the managing and controlling financial resources of the organization to achieve organization common goal. It is a full range of financial information of an organization. It involves with some steps, establish financial objectives, and identify financial resources, collecting analyzing use financial data to make financial decision. Strategic financial management refers to short time objectives as well as long term objectives. It is concerned with handling the element of financial statement such assets, liability, resources, capital , profit etc. it is always find out how we can ensure best use of financial resources of a firm to make maximum profitability. Lululemon athletica is a famous yoga-inspired athletic instrument producer and distributor company, which produces essential clothes and sells international clothing stores from its company base in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Dennis "Chip" Wilson established Lululemon Athletica (usually referred to simply as "lululemon" or "lulu") in 1998 in order to enhancing female participation in athletic and his belief in yoga as the important way to maintain athletic excellence into an advanced age. They make technical athletic instrument for yoga, jumping, dancing, and most other sweaty pursuits. All lululemon locations are very much reachable to our local communities. Lululemon athletica inc., registered on November 21, 2005...
Words: 7830 - Pages: 32
...Lululemon Athletica Inc. Course: | BUSI 4003 - Business Case Analysis | Instructor: | Jana Comeau | Date: | March 6, 2016 | By: | \| Lululemon Athletica Inc. was founded by Chip Wilson in Vancouver BC in 1998. The brand quickly became popular and by 2012 the company had global revenues of $1 billion (Lululemon Athletica, 2016). In November of 2013, Lululemon found itself at the centre of a firestorm after a series of negative events seriously ruptured the company’s reputation (Huang, 2014). The problems began in March, 2013 when the company issued a recall of its popular black Luon yoga pants from store shelves because the material used to make them was too sheer (The Canadian Press, 2013). Problems with the recall surfaced shortly after the announcement when customers complained about the return process. In November, 2013 Chip Wilson tried to explain the recall by saying “some women’s bodies just don’t work for it.” Public relations took another hit when stores in Maryland and Dallas posted inappropriate promotional signs which resulted in more negative media coverage (Huang, 2014). Lululemon Athletica Inc. faced multiple public relations issues in 2013 that were negatively impacting their sales. The company was conducting damage control on multiple fronts in an effort to regain credibility as a trusted brand who offers quality products. Lululemon needed to create a strategy to repair the company’s self-inflicted credibility damage (Huang, 2014). Lululemon Athletica...
Words: 1710 - Pages: 7
...Summary of Article, “Lululemon rides out recession in quality fashion” Many clothing firms cut price to allure customers in the recession. However, Christine Day, the vice president of Lululemon adopted a contrary approach, now lululemon is profitable. The success of lululemon in the recession attributed to the innovative strategies. First of all, Christine Day did not lower price, but devote into improving quality of clothes. Besides, she attracted customers by offering new products such as running outfits, jackets and accessories and building an e-commerce site. With these successful reforms, lululemon did not only pay off, but also increase the sales demand. Due to insufficient inventory, lululemon has to invest more money into supply chain to meet customer demand. In a short, lululemon is doing its business in an optimistic outlook. PEST Analysis (See Appendix A) Political Department of Finance Canada (2009) reported Canada introduced Economic Action Plan in January 2009. One major part of this plan is reducing tax permanently. Personal income tax falls over $1 billion for the 2009 taxation year, corporate income tax revenues fell $11.2 billion and Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenues declined $4.2 billion. Canada is one member of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), other members in NAFTA are America and Mexico. Though Canada trade with a lot of countries around the world, the major trading partner of Canada is the U.S., accounting for 77.7 percent...
Words: 1920 - Pages: 8
...Case #6 Back ground of Lululemon: They are a company that designs and retails athletic clothing. They produce fitness pants, shorts, tops and jackets for yoga , dance , running, and general fitness. Lululemon serves customers globally through on line and retail stores. They sell high quality product with high prices compare to other retail stores. They have market in North America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Chip Wilson open and design/ yoga studio in 1998 in Vancouver, British Columbia 1. What is the company vision/ mission and objective? * Vision: The store to be community hub where people could learn and discuss the physical aspects of healthy living form yoga and diet to running and cycling, plus the yoga related mental aspects of living powerful life of possibilities. (Not just selling the products to the customers. Their goals is to let the customers discuss about their physical activities to have a healthier life and wearing their product to exercise. ) * Mission : one of the providing people with the components for living a longer, healthier, and more life. (The purpose of its present business is distinctive community based strategy that enhances the brand and reinforces guest loyalty. The components giving to people help them exercise and become fit with stylish sport wear from Lululemon) * Objective: Assembled a management team with a mix of retail , design , operations, product sourcing, and marketing experience form such leading apparel...
Words: 1935 - Pages: 8
...Introduction lululemon is a very successful company that specializes in yoga clothing and a healthy lifestyle. They have creative strategies and innovative ways to run their business. They are well known by the market that they target to. lululemon needs to broaden the market that they are targeting by repositioning their clothing to more than just yoga activities. By doing this they will make more people aware of the great quality of their clothing and gain even more success in the future. Executive Summary lululemon is a company of growing success with a strong competitive advantage and a good understanding of the market. Their mission statement shows that they are concerned for the well being of their company, but more importantly their customers. They also have core values that help direct all their decisions to follow the needs and wants of the company. Considering they only provide a specific product to a small segment of the entire market, they offer a niche competitive advantage. However, they also provide the advantage of product differentiation. They demonstrate this through the environmental considerations of making their products from recyclable materials. This provides their company with an advantage against their competitors through these two strategies. lululemon’s primary target market would be women, ages 18 to 45 who value the sense of style and comfort. One of their secondary target markets would be stay at home mothers who need the flexibility within...
Words: 1717 - Pages: 7
...Lululemon has faced many challenges due to multiple factors, both internal and external. The key challenges lululemon faced were financial (sales per square foot drop, comp store sales decrease), human resource related (non-alignment of HR, cross-functional barriers in teamwork, no compromise, the intrusion of outsiders in upper management team), inventory (underperforming stores, bad locations with little or no demand, inventory cost escalation), and manufacturing (quality concerns). Though lululemon has set of faced cultural, strategic, financial, and infrastructure problems that arose from the prior leadership that are to be analyzed and solution to be recommended. Context In 2008 Christine Day took the position of the CEO. The objective for her at this position was to continue the growth trajectory by opening new stores and increasing sales to 1 billion. Even though the company was on the trajectory of growth and expansion with such results as: 1. Sales growth by 85% to $275 milion in 2007 2. Profits by 300% to 31 milion 3. Initial public offering $344 milion raised Though in 2008 lululemon became a publically traded $350mln company with close to 100 stores, 56 of which were in the US and nearly 3000 employees. Although Christine Day should have coped with the clusters of problems such as: 1. Financial decrease: 1) the average sales per square foot decrease in 2007 - 2008 (from $1,710 to $1,451) 2) a decrease in comp store sales from 24% to 3% ...
Words: 705 - Pages: 3
...separate themselves from their competition and how to best retain and attract customers. We will examine what actions are required by companies to become successful in the market. We will compare what qualities and traits successful companies possessed which provided them with a competitive advantage in the marketplace and kept their customers satisfied. We will compare three companies; Lululemon, American Apparel, and Roots Canada and report on what separates them from their competition and mistakes they have made in the past. Research Method Our research consisted primarily of exploratory research which will focus on the industry’s background to help us determine key industry trends, customer preferences and keys for success. We will collect background information from articles, industry data, companies internal data, competitors data and consumers opinions which will be gathered from online social media. Secondary data will be our main source of data along with social media sites that allow consumers to directly voice their opinions and feelings. Study Findings Lululemon Lululemon was created in 1998 by Chip Wilson after taking a yoga class and seeing that there wasn’t a lot of clothing available that would be ideal for yoga (Dreier). Since its start, the company has experienced tremendous growth as the...
Words: 1948 - Pages: 8
