Entering the new year, Canadian sports brand lululemon announced two new personnel updates.
Chinese designer Jonathan Cheung will serve as the global creative director of the brand, leading the global design team. Cheung's reporting target is Chloe Sun, the company's Chief Product Officer.
JJ Collier, an experienced designer in the fashion industry, also joined Lululemon in sync with Cheung. He will serve as the newly established Vice President of Coat Design at Luluemon, reporting to Cheung.
Cheung had no prior experience in designing sportswear. But he has a fashion related education and has also worked for high-end fashion brands Giorgio Armani and denim brand Levi's Levi's. Collier used to work in Salomon Salomon, Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren and Weifu Group, the sisters brands of Archaeopteryx.
Lululemon's Chief Product Officer, Chloe Sun, stated in a related statement, "Jonathan has a profound insight into global consumer demand, which will help us broaden our creative horizons. JJ's technical design expertise will also benefit our jacket products as they continue to grow."
The above personnel changes more or less reflect Lululemon's ambition to strengthen the brand's fashion appeal.
Lululemon's product design has long focused on practicality and functionality.
Chloe Sun once mentioned in an interview with Interface News, "At lululemon, we know that when the experience is best, sports performance is also best. This guides our design process, allowing our customers to not compromise on comfort, style, quality, or performance."
Correspondingly, when promoting products, lululemon also emphasizes the connection between the product and the consumer experience, and will discuss the effects of materials and workmanship on the wearing experience and performance.
Taking the official website product details of its Dragon Year and Spring Festival series as an example, it will repeatedly mention the important significance of "comfort" in design in the "design concept", and will also use a larger space to introduce the patented fabric characteristics used in related products - similarly, the term "comfort" has appeared multiple times.
Product details of a certain product in the Lululemon 2024 Spring Festival collection
But in the increasingly competitive sports goods market, even brands that prioritize technological functionality such as Archaeopteryx and Salomon need to refresh their image in the minds of consumers through fashionable packaging. Lululemon naturally will not escape consumers' demands for product fashion.
This fashion sense can naturally be achieved through, as Lululemon is currently doing, being driven by community culture, forming its own style, and adapting to changes with immutability. But it is obvious that even the most loyal consumers need reasons beyond the new colors to repeatedly enter the store for shopping.
Analogously, Japanese fast fashion brand Uniqlo has also gained consumer recognition through practical wear and basic styles, but it also needs to continuously introduce designer collaborations and create special collections in the development process to strengthen its fashion attributes, give consumers a sense of freshness, and continuously drive performance growth.
It is worth mentioning that both Cheung and Collier's career resumes include strong brands and companies in the men's clothing business. There is reason to believe that their arrival will also strengthen Lululemon's competitiveness in men's products to a certain extent.
Making products more attractive in various dimensions such as comfort, aesthetics, and gender friendliness is crucial for today's lululemon.
In the past two years, lululemon's revenue growth rate has been slowing down. In 2022, Lululemon's revenue growth rate decreased by approximately 12% compared to the same period the previous year. Looking at its total revenue in the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, its growth rate has also decreased by about 8% compared to the same period last year.
Considering that the proportion of male products is still relatively low and the revenue generated is still limited - in the first three quarters of 2023, the proportion of male products in revenue was about 20% - male products have the potential to become a new growth pole for the brand.
However, data from the first three quarters of 2023 also shows that the revenue growth rate of Lululemon's male products is still slightly lower than that of female products, and its driving effect on overall growth is limited.
In 2022, lululemon released its "Power of Three x2" growth strategy, aiming to achieve a revenue target of $12.5 billion by 2026. One of the most important strategies is to double the income of male products compared to 2021.