(This article is 3500 words, estimated reading time is 30 minutes)
Preface***
As a yoga enthusiast, some time ago, I went to the offline physical store to try the legendary most bullish lululemon yoga pants and sportswear, yoga pants 860 yuan, short-sleeved sportswear 450 yuan, the price is a bit outrageous. But after trying it on, I have to say that it is still quite fragrant, first, the silhouette of the fit is excellent, and it is not easy to deform after wearing it; Second, in the case of such an outstanding fit, it can actually make people as free and unrestrained as if they were not wearing it; Third, if the consumption is limited, choose a black versatile daily wear is also very suitable, taking into account the dual use of sports and leisure, it is indeed a grass planting product. In the concept of ordinary people, the sports brand market has been divided by several big brothers, Lululemon's market value surpassed the sports brand veteran powerhouse Adidas last year, and became the world's second largest brand by market value (second only to Big Brother Nike) and the growth momentum is strong, how did lululemon get to today? Based on curiosity about the success of Lululemon's products and markets, I read the autobiography of founder Chip Wilson.
- Give someone a shallot
01-Early childhood (1955-1979)
Never be constrained by your past experience,gain the ability to embrace a future of multiple new ideas. Your past should stop confining your future. Fine as wine.
01-1 Parental influence
Born in April 1955, his father was a hockey and soccer player and his mother was a marine rescue professional. Since the potato chip brother can remember, the impression family has been very tight, the father no longer plays football, while studying for a teaching degree, he is still driving delivery and driving to make a living; Her mother became a stay-at-home mom, often tinkering in front of the sewing machine, and the potato chip brother at the time had no interest in sewing. At the same time, both parents are heavy "tobacco and alcohol students", which also makes the potato chip brother design the concept of "health" in the back has a far-reaching impact.
01-2 Swimming
According to our conventional understanding, if the family is a little difficult to open the pot, it should be turned on the "child labor" mode from an early age, but small potato chips let swimming occupy time in childhood because parents are busy with their livelihood. In the memory of swimming, several things happened, one is that the father taught Little Potato Chips not to distract his physical strength throughout the process, but went all out at the beginning, and accidentally broke the Canadian record, which also made Little Potato Chips have the belief and habit of going all out in everything since he was a child; The second is to find that there are a variety of swimsuits from the United States, which are more pleasing to the eye than Canada's own swimsuits, so they started purchasing to earn pocket money in their childhood and learned the skills of doing business in the early days; The three dated a little girl of the same age when they were 13 or 14 years old, when the little potato chips wore a purple T-shirt, but they were ridiculed by each other, since then the potato chips brother buy clothes resolutely do not buy purple, but choose the safest white, this matter also gradually awakened to realize that we should not be bound by past experiences and experiences, just as we are young and even adult or even old we are wrapped in some shadows of childhood, according to the thoughts of potato chips brother after awakening, Think of yourself as an amnesiac person and embrace new possibilities every day!
03 - Part-time working years
After entering college, the potato chip brother is still strapped and cannot even pay tuition. For this reason, after the end of the sophomore year, through a chance into the United States oil pipeline work, it is a boring and barren place, but in the era of the outbreak of the oil economy, the world's largest private oil company part-time work is very attractive, although the working environment is extremely cold, but the food of the mountains and seafood, the income is several times higher than the job opportunities outside, the work is not so busy, the surrounding workers are also drunk and smoking every day. In this environment, Brother Potato Chips did not degenerate or choose to work here for a long time, but made enough money with a clear goal, and completed the reading of the 100 best-selling books of the New York Times in his spare time. After 18 months away from working on the oil pipeline, he has amassed the equivalent of $600,000 today and is the 19-year-old who reads the most books.
This experience made the author very moved, the self-discipline and goal of the potato chip brother is very admirable, in the era of the outbreak of the oil economy, if not very firm belief, may choose to continue to make "quick money" there.
04 - Rub some small benefits
Because the relatives in the family are Air Canada employees, the potato chip brother also rubbed the free benefit, that is, there are 2 free air tickets a year. At this time, the potato chip brother had a certain amount of savings, and he took this opportunity to see the world as much as possible in his early 20s.
Reading this, the author also left tears of envy, in the country is still in the environment of chicken dolls, reading, training courses, potato chips brother has traveled around the world to open his eyes. In 1979, he graduated from college, and aside from the property he bought and the Mercedes sedan, he had the equivalent of nearly $400,000 in cash today.
02-Adult History (1979-1998)
In life, there is no performance without action.
02-1 Entrepreneurial inspiration
After graduating from college, he was also confused and didn't know what to do in the future, but he was inspired by an opportunity to visit his grandmother, who lives in San Diego, California, a city on the Pacific coast, and he noticed that there is a local company called OP that specializes in surfing clothes, and this clothes can also be worn daily. At the time, the potato chip brother felt that this would become a new trend, so he returned to Canada and started his first business.
During this period, Potato Chip started a sportswear business in surfing, skateboarding and skiing, and faced problems at the beginning of the period of tight funds and difficulty in achieving breakeven economies of scale; In addition to the above, the problems faced in the later period are also the dilution of the brand and sales effect brought by the distribution model, and the homogeneous competition brought by the entry of the sunrise industry is found.
02-2 Full-time entrepreneurship
At that time, Brother Potato Chips was still a part-time entrepreneur, and successfully interviewed into a local petrochemical company to engage in related mining rights and mining rights-related work, with a very generous annual salary (30,000 US dollars for 1 year), but Brother Potato Chips also realized that this job was the same as his previous work in the oil pipeline, a job that exchanged life for value, so he left after working for 2 and a half years and started a full-time business.
At the age of 30, he achieved his first goal of working for himself, and now he is moving forward to the next goal and retiring early.
03-Lululemon Arrives (1998-)
Suit and tie uniform subconsciously says you’re not in control of your own life. Respect your freedom of dress.
03-1 By chance
After selling his shares in the previous ski startup, he returned to Vancouver for a short period of recuperation, and due to long-term athletic training, he continued to suffer from waist discomfort, saw the roadside yoga advertisement and made his first attempt, liked the sport and began to think about the next business opportunity. (I have to admire Brother Potato Chips' awareness of discovering and thinking about business opportunities at any time)
03-2 Analyze the market
So how did Brother Potato Chips investigate and analyze and come to the conclusion that he wanted to sell "thousand yuan" yoga equipment? Let's move on to the field of professional analysis.
First, from the perspective of the development trend of the yoga industry: Brother Potato Chips has always believed that if you see something 3 times in a short period of time, then in 5 to 7 years, it will become the mainstream thing of the public. Brother Potato Chips witnessed the increase in the number of yoga classes he signed up for from 6 to 30 in just 1 month, and different people and advertisements saw yoga-related information, so Brother Potato Chips based on his previous entrepreneurial experience in surfing, skateboarding and skiing, was sensitive to the perception that this would be the next big market for social sports.
Second, from the perspective of the supply of products in its own industry: given that yoga is mainly based on women's participation, there was a lack of professional sports brands that really provided for women's sports on the market at that time; In terms of yoga clothing, there is no real meaning clothing, mainly wear some dance clothes instead. The market lacks an effective supply of high-quality yoga clothing.
The third is from the perspective of product demand: Potato Chip Brother observed that in the 90s, 60% of college graduates from North America were women, and in the 70s Potato Chip Brother 70s, the proportion of female college students was only 20%, and the proportion and degree of female education were gradually increasing. At the same time, in the 90s, women also quietly changed in the path of marriage career, not marrying after graduation and teaching children, there were many high-end professional women (super girls & power women) in the market, they have a higher annual income, keen on sports, health and willing to pay more money for it, which is the target customer group of potato chips.
The fourth is to solve the supply pain points and improve the market positioning: First, the potato chip brother has spent a lot of effort to solve the problem of yoga sportswear, including transparency, stretching and deformation, etc., laying the highest quality position in the yoga pants industry. (The author went to the offline physical store several times to try on lululemon's yoga pants, and indeed failed to find a suitable replacement for the time being) The second is to directly fleece middle-class women's wool, lululemon's yoga pants are about 800-1000 yuan, much higher than the well-known sports brand Nike priced at 200-300 yuan (now there are also high-end series, but casually check the same price sales gap is large), is because of the confidence and reputation of quality core technology, Brother Potato Chips directly sets the price at 3 times the face price. The third is to play the community model, the previous wholesale experience made the potato chip brother deeply hate, unable to pass on word of mouth to understand the demand, but also the promotion is unfavorable, since then potato chip brother has become a believer in direct management (DTC), and build a yoga activity recommendation model to reduce marketing costs. Speaking of which, this is probably the prototype of lululemon we see now.
Lululemon Tmall official website price inquiry
Writing here, the author is reluctant to elaborate on how Brother Potato Chips discussed his chatter complaints about introducing capital to promote IPOs in the second half, probably leading wolves into the house to lose control of the company and being kicked out of the board. Capital cares about how to quickly achieve the expected return on investment, and craftsmen care about constantly innovating better products, and the two are both complementary and conflicting.
Brother Potato Chips has some golden sentences in his autobiography, which are literally translated as Chinese lost their original feelings, and they are copied and read from time to time.
* Discovering “Act”, an act is learned early in life when a child faces a perceived moment of survival and develops a strategy to help them survive the situation.
* He was always looking for the meaning of life but was also not to find it. He discovered the meaning of life, it’s living in the moment.
* We viewed failure as a chance.
* Do one thing a day that scares you.
* Do yoga. It lets you live in the moment and stretching releases toxins from your muscles.
* Life is full of setbacks. Success is determined by how you handle setbacks.
* Write down your short and long-term goals 4 times a year.
Postscript***
Lululemon's success is a natural time: in line with the development trend of the industry, the rapid increase in the demand for the yoga industry brought about by the improvement of women's education level; It is geographical: Canada and the United States, as countries with rapid economic development in the 20th century, have successively broken out popular sports such as skateboarding and skiing (which have gradually become popular in China in recent years); It is people: without the early growth of potato chips, the accumulation of young entrepreneurs and the keen sense of smell of the sports industry, it is difficult to have breakthrough yoga products born.
After visiting lululemon a few times, the author classified yoga pants and sportswear into black technology planting products. But unfortunately, as far as my experience in domestic physical stores is concerned, there is no free and happy community model as described in the book of Brother Potato Chips, the vast majority of shopping guides in domestic physical stores are fitness trainers, presenting an atmosphere of a gym club, lacking the free exercise and healthy atmosphere that Brother Potato Chips wants to create, and gradually becoming a middle-class, light luxury circle endorsement. Therefore, in the face of the blooming yoga market and the decreasing marginal utility trend of penetration rate of core fist products, Lululemon still has a longer way to go in the process of taking over the baton of founders.
Taken hiking at Huajian Mountain in western Sichuan during the Dragon Boat Festival
Give someone a shallot
Original