Lululemon

“When I started to do my first design meetings with these 10 groups of 10 women, and we had like five or six samples, and they touched the fabric, and they put it on, it was the first time that really a synthetic fabric felt like cotton.”

“And if it wasn't for that 50,000 dollars, we never would have been able to finish our store.”

“The board took me off as chairman because they felt like I wasn't the right front man for the company anymore, and I was a liability to Lou Lemon.”

“And it started to occur to me that the five big trading companies in Japan were making North American brand name clothing. In other words, they would come up with their own brand name in order to deliver that to the Japanese customer. But Japanese, those big t…”

“The only way I can, I figure out how to do it is to combine my business with Fiona Stang, my yoga teachers, and I had all my clothing on rolling racks, and we'd move it all out to the side and have yoga classes there early in the morning and then at night.”

“I went to Japan. I'd heard about these machines that were 40,000 dollars a piece, which was Huge at the time, and I bought four of them.”

“So we would go into every city in the future, set up a store in a back alley or in a side street and develop our market, invite yoga instructors in before we spent, you know, 600 to a million dollars on a store.”

“Well, it was a poor choice of words. It was absolutely devastating to me. It was devastating to my family. I mean, people would come up to my wife and go, how can you be with a man like that that would say that type of thing? But more so it was the antithesis …”

“I mean, you have to understand that, again, that nobody in the world had, was owning manufacturing right to the retail store. I mean, I was taking triple the profit of most people.”

“I put it there because I was very clear that I didn't want big logoing, and I thought that somebody should look in the mirror and not see any logos. And I definitely didn't like logos on the left breast because I looked at it as being Kind of corporate logoing…”

“Suddenly, women were coming into the store and not wanting Lululemon for athletics. They were coming in looking For it to shape their bodies. But the sewing technique and the fabric wasn't meant for it. So, what they were doing is buying two to four sizes smal…”

“I have always believed in this three times thing, so when I see something three times, and I move really quickly.”

“But the logo actually came from Athletically Hip. So it was a stylized A from the athletic.”

“I had to read an article in the paper one day that told me that 60% of the graduates at a university were women in 1998. And I went, wow, you know, Something really, really big is going to come out of this, and that is we're going to end up with a market tha…”

“Stefan, he and his team were constantly making new materials to present to the likes of the Nikes and Underembers and Lulus, so they had created a material kind of at a similar time that they ended up showing me and maybe they had shown it to the other compani…”

“I went to Japan. I'd heard about these machines that were 40,000 dollars a piece, which was Huge at the time, and I, ah, bought four of them.”

“The brand he built out of his house in Vancouver is now worth more than fourteen billion dollars.”

“Nobody in the world had, was owning manufacturing right to the retail store. I mean, I was taking triple the profit of most people.”

“The logo actually came from Athletically Hip. So it was a stylized A from the athletic.”

“Women were coming into the store and not wanting Lululemon for athletics. They were coming in looking for it to shape their bodies. But the sewing technique and the fabric wasn't meant for it. So what they were doing is buying two to four sizes smaller than wh…”

“You know, I really only want to sell 30% of the stock to the private equity guys, but I ended up selling 48.”

“Well, Nike was a shoe company, so I know they didn't really understand clothing either, because even in their running shorts, they had these open seams in between their legs, and I'd run five K and I'd totally rash.”

“I hired this woman who Shannon Gray was her name. The first person I'd ever seen that had a design portfolio with using stretch clothing, and within about two weeks, I, after hiring her, I left her in charge of Lou Lemon as the CEO for a year, and I went back …”

“So we would go into every city in the future, set up a store in a back alley or in a side street and develop our market, invite yoga instructors in before we spent, you know, 600 to a million dollars on a store.”

“But the reality of it is, is all these were techniques to have kind of an owner-founder dissipate and kind of move into the background and not have the power, so to speak, to control a board.”

“And one day I get to the office, and there's like a letter on my desk, and I open it, and it's a cease and desist from Lululemon.”

“And so one of the things we did, and we figured this out early on, is we gave away Lululemon gift cards for anyone who joined and stayed for six months. So we said, hey, this is a 99 dollar product, you get a hundred dollar gift card if you stay for six months…”

“The dirty secret in our space is that the big brands, you know, they were really premium footwear offerings, but they never really had a premium apparel offering. Whereas like Lulu inherently was working with fabrics that were much more expensive. So before yo…”

“I remember when they had the whole, you know, sheer pant debacle. I don't know if you remember that, but that was a moment, because at the time, I think we were the number two brand carried on. Equinox. But Lulu was, you know, the lion's share of the space. We…”

“I always looked at Lululemon as an inspiration and as the, you know, the company that made it ok for women to buy a hundred dollar pair of leggings. And I felt like they paved the way, and I'm grateful to them for that.”

“And if you go look at what premium contemporary brands do, they grow through retail.”