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It took Lululemon only 5 years to become a $10 billion yoga empire. In the articles The Week written in 2012 and Eight Secrets to Lululemon's success it spills Lululemon’s, what they call it, ‘secret sauce’. Lululemon didn’t just automatically become a multi-billion dollar firm, they had to strategize and come up with ways to be successful through their customers, employees, and their products.
Giving what the customers want is one of the best ways to become successful in a business. Ways Lululemon demonstrated this was by collecting foresight and knowledge of what their customers want and making their customers feeling important and apart of something. “People don’t to be sold to, they want to be educated.” In this case Lululemon educates their customers by explaining the products and benefits. They also have yoga classes welcome to all customers. If a customer has a suggestion or complaint Lululemon makes sure to really listen and take what they say into consideration. “If you pass on any feedback, staff are encouraged to walk you over to the board and in front of them, write up your suggestion for all to see.”
In order to have a big business, you need hardworking employees that are passionate about what they are doing. Lululemon makes sure that their employees fit and attain these qualities. “each new staff member sits down with their superior to talk about and then write down all the things that are important to them along with all of their dreams” Doing this also, makes the employee feel apart of a team and hopeful for the future. It makes them more loyal to their job which benefits the business.
The most important part, the product. The product(s) being sold is what matters most and Lululemon does a great job at this. They have many tricks for their products to sell successfully. First off, giving the product a certain “identity” persuades the customers that want to be looked at with the certain “identity”, purchase it. For example, if you want to be looked at as a yogi, you would buy Lululemon to present that look. There is normally a lot of competition when it comes to clothing businesses, way to eliminate the competition is to create and sell something original that no other company has. “unique and of exceptional quality combined with a tiny logo on the sleeve or collar is reflective of that underground cult status.” Lastly, the price. Often times businesses in competition lower their prices so that their products will be bought more. In reality though, quality of the product and price go hand in hand. People tend to link price with quality, so when the price on a product is higher they assume the quality is better. Lululemon’s strategy on this was to have a high profit margin.
Question- How often do these strategies really work with other clothing companies?
