This article is from the WeChat public account: 冯 伦 风 马 牛 （fengluntalk） , author: wind horse cattle, Photo by kike vega on Unsplash
The ancient Greeks believed that without a strong body, there would be no strong soul. Modern people believe that without a strong body, there is no strong financial report.
In 2019, a “bull stock” specializing in sportswear looks particularly good: within a year, its stock price rose by as much as 81.2%. Correspondingly, Nike and Adidas, the leaders in sportswear, rose 25% and 55.2%, respectively. If you look back, this sneaker clothing company named Lululemon has been outstanding for a long time. Since its listing on the NASDAQ in 2007, Lululemon’s stock price has soared at a rate that its peers can’t reach, creating a 10-fold increase in ten years. Amazing increase. Little known is that such a strong company, during the writing of this “investment myth”, has also staged a drama of ruptured export monuments, shrinking market capitalization, and nearing bankruptcy.
So, how did Lululemon survive the hit between Nike and Adidas, and how to turn a profit and create this “investment myth”?
01
In 1998, a special form of exercise became popular in the United States: laugh, laugh. People are scrambling to imitate monkeys, tigers, lions and other animals, with their limbs on their backs, their chests barefooted, and howling, how to exaggerate their facial expressions. Someone must watch them, and they must laugh at the crowd, and then follow along laugh.
This approach comes from American psychologist Steve Wilson. That year, he went to India to find a way to calm his mind, and he brought back this exercise called “laughter yoga”.It stands to reason that laughter yoga looks a bit insane, and is quite different from ordinary people ’s impressions of running, sweating and other sweaty sports. The audience should be small, but it is unexpected that this year, yoga was revived in North America. The word “yoga”, laughter yoga seems to have become a panacea, and it soon swept the world. Today, Laughter Yoga has fans in 53 countries, and more than 5,000 clubs make a living from it.
Laughter yoga, laughter is also a sport
Those who have been rejuvenated by yoga, in addition to laughing yoga, also have Lululemon who started by selling yoga pants.
Also in 1998, Steve Wilson learned yoga and wanted to make his mind quiet. Canadian Chipman Wilson (Chip Wilson) Understand yoga, but plan to make the wallet fuller.
Qip is a veteran sportswear entrepreneur. He founded a company back in 1976 that designed and sold apparel specifically for the surfing, skating and snowboarding markets. At that time, Adidas and Nike, the two giants in the sports shoes and clothing industry, were still very green. They were staring at the sports shoes market and fighting for their lives. Chip’s company grew wildly in a blue ocean, and the business grew bigger and bigger. But Chip is an entrepreneur who knows the situation well. In 1997, at the best point of the financial report, Chip sold this company. The following year, he founded Lululemon, a company that started with only yoga pants in Canada.
Undoubtedly, Kip chose another blue ocean this time, and his entrepreneurial model is more sophisticated than the previous one.
At that time, women ’s sportswear was an area that was overlooked by major sports shoe and clothing manufacturers. Here ’s a popular phrase: “How are women ’s sportswear made? Reduce the size and turn pink.” NoWhich sports shoes and clothing manufacturer will design and polish a dress specifically for women. They arrogantly believe that the gym and sweat sports are only for men.
Kip himself sniffed at it. In 1998, in Vancouver, Canada, Lululemon opened its first store next to the yoga studio. By providing yoga pants to the coaches of this studio for free, Lululemon quickly gained the first target users. These trousers cost $ 100 each, compared with a per capita monthly income of $ 1644 in Canada. With only one product, Lululemon has established himself as a “personal design” of middle class and quality representatives.
Early Lululemon Stores
“Good goods are not cheap, cheap goods are not good goods.” This familiar Chinese saying is used by Qipu through the mouth of a yoga instructor in the minds of every customer. In the mouth of a yoga instructor in the avatar KOL (Opinion Leader) , Lululemon’s yoga pants are designed for women to practice yoga. Yes, it is not only easy to practice yoga, but also very self-cultivation. It is also very good to wear it directly. The coaches were talking, and Chip became the pioneer of “sports and leisure style,” even if his original intention was to sell a few more yoga pants.
After confirming the importance of a yoga instructor, Lululemon shifted his strategy and began to more actively capture target customers. Lululemon has recruited some well-known yoga instructors. During the day, the store is open as usual, and at night, the store turns into a yoga club. As long as Lululemon users, they can participate in well-known yoga instructor courses for free. This “white + black” sales model quickly gathered a group of yoga sports enthusiasts. Through these seed users, Lululemon has established a very loyal community centered on stores. The stores are from Canada.In the United States, members took Lululemon’s products as a link to learn Lululemon-approved yoga poses and share Lululemon’s love for yoga and life.
In the ninth year of business, in 2007, Chip led Lululemon to ring the bell on Nasdaq, with an opening price of $ 25 per share. Giants such as Nike, Adidas, Under Armour have paid the price of contempt for the arrogance of the women’s clothing market. With a humble piece of yoga pants, Lululemon has taken root in the growing sports market of yoga apparel.
02
Unexpectedly for Nike and Adidas, Lululemon himself frequently tried to die on the verge of death before taking this “little brother” into the market seriously.
The New York Times fired at Lululemon just four months after the listing ceremony, accusing the star company of falsely advertising a fabric called Vitasea. In the advertisement, Lululemon claims that the fabric is made from seaweed and has the magic effect of “antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, moisturizing and detoxifying.” However, the New York Times sent this fabric to the laboratory for testing with a normal cotton T-shirt, and found no minerality in the Vitasea fabric at all.
The person who originally wanted to set up a “tech company” was ruthlessly pierced. For a moment, Lululemon’s previously claimed special fabric was also questioned. Although Lululemon agreed to the user’s claim, the stock price continued to fall.
The house leak happens to be rainy night. During the period when Lululemon’s reputation was damaged, some controversial remarks of the founder Chip were brought out again, and the old things are brought up again.
In 2004, Chip explained in an interview why he gave the company the unusual name Lululemon. He said, “The reason why Japanese people like my homeless skateboarding brand is because it contains Less, and no Japanese marketing company would suggest that the company take a brand name with L because L is not in Japanese. In the vocabulary range, this is a difficult pronunciation for them. So I think, next time I start the company, I will use 3 L to name it and see if I can get 3 times the money. This pair They might be a bit exotic. I was playing Ls at the timeLater, I thought of Lululemon, and it was fun to watch the Japanese say it. “
Japan is a ski resort, and Chip ’s first company had a large portion of the market in Japan, and his ridiculous, ridiculous, made Japanese Americans feel very uncomfortable.
Not only that, Chip ’s “frankness” offends Lululemon’s largest target user, women. At that time, a customer complained that some parts of yoga pants were very easy to ping, and I hope Lululemon can improve. In an interview with Bloomberg, Chip was also asked this question, but his answer hurt a lot of Lululemon users: “Frankly, some women are actually not suitable for wearing Lululemon pants. Pilling is actually By rubbing the thighs, the fabric is under too much pressure. They are too fat and put too much pressure on the pants. “
This explanation of pilling in pants is considered by most people to be the strongest evidence of Chip’s “obese shame” on women.
Kip Wilson: Lululemon’s products have become props for “checking women’s body”
Making money for users, but blatantly mocking users. After several interviews with Chip were turned out, Lululemon’s crisis is getting bigger and bigger. On March 2, 2009, Lululemon’s stock price fell to the lowest point in history. At $ 2.25, less than 10% of the issue price, Lululemon’s bankruptcy seems imminent.
Lululemon did not go bankrupt. In July 2009, Lululemon gave it a go and merged a company specializing in the production and development of fabrics. The “tech company” that was previously used to “build people” really began to practice from the architecture.
Lolulemon has spent more than a decade building yoga coaches and other KOLs close to community usersContacts are still useful. During that time, Lululemon was stormy, and Kip was forced to reduce his appearance and public speaking. Lululemon spent more energy on admitting mistakes, maintaining old users, and developing new categories.
This trick works quickly. The cloth company has provided many new fabrics for Lululemon, helping Lululemon solve the problem of insufficient soft and comfortable yoga clothes and poor perspiration. It can also incorporate various colors and patterns into it, which greatly enhances Lululemon’s fashion sense.
In addition, Lululemon has also focused on expanding the field of KOL. Not only have yoga coaches endorsed it, but also developed KOLs such as “elite ambassadors” and “store ambassadors”. These people usually have good looks With a fit body, Lululemon’s official website will update the photos and information of the “ambassadors” in time to attract new users to buy Lululemon to cheer for their favorite “ambassadors”.
With the increasing number of “ambassadors”, Lululemon has taken a completely different path from Nike and Adidas: led by Nike and Adidas, sportswear and apparel manufacturers usually choose top sports stars as spokespersons, using exquisite advertising and impressions Popular slogans strengthen brand identity, but Lululemon chooses to rely on “more dazzling ordinary people”. These ordinary people and users are more closely connected, and are the best choice for relying on the community’s Lululemon for marketing.
In 2013, Chip resigned and officially withdrew from Lululemon management. Since then Lululemon has encountered several product quality problems, but has not entered the dead end of bankruptcy again. With the popularity of yoga, the stock price has also entered the rising channel, and everything looks beautiful.
03
In India, yoga was originally a method of practice, with a specific purpose. People hope to achieve self-discovery and explore the truth through physical restraint and practice. This practice of the soul attaches more importance to the spirit of harmony and unity, and does not involve the aesthetics of the body.
There is a picture in the Yoga Sutra, which vividly illustrates the purpose of Indians practicing yoga: the owner sits in a carriage with the driver in front and drives the carriage through the reins and the whip. The owner is the human soul or the true self, the driver is the human reason, the horse is the human senses, and the reins and horsewhip are the human mind and brain. This picture is that the senses must be purposeful and should ultimately serve the human soul.