lululemon athletica

lululemon athletica inc. is a Vancouver-based athletic apparel company founded in 1998 by Chip Wilson, built first on technical yoga clothing and grown into a global brand for yoga, running, training and everyday movement. The company trades on Nasdaq under the symbol LULU. Its model — premium technical fabrics, functional design, stores run as community hubs with local athlete and yogi feedback, and direct sales at full price — made it the defining company of the athleisure era and one of the most valuable apparel listings of its generation.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record describes a healthy-lifestyle-inspired athletic apparel company creating transformational products and experiences, setting the bar in technical fabrics and functional design and working with yogis and athletes in local communities for research and product feedback. By then the single yoga-pants business of the early summaries had become a full men's and women's performance wardrobe.

The October 2013 and December 2007 summaries fix the earlier scale: a designer and retailer of technical athletic apparel in North America and Australia, its yoga-inspired range — fitness pants, shorts, tops, jackets, bags, mats and accessories — sold principally through 174 stores in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand as of January 2012. The December 2007 note, written just after the listing, already states the founding idea: components for people to live longer, healthier, more fun lives.

The range behind the name is technical athletic apparel and accessories for yoga, running, training and everyday movement. Its customers are women and men pursuing active, healthy lifestyles, in stores and online worldwide. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place lululemon athletica in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing lululemon athletica with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Operating — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking lululemon athletica could see its scale, its headquarters and its own description of its business in a few paragraphs. Those dated descriptions are kept with their dates, because a store count from 2013 or a strategy statement from 2019 is evidence about that year, not about today. The current position is the one given in the snapshot: operating.