https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc Creating components for people to live longer, healthier, fun lives. en-us 2022-02-27 22:17:29 UTC 2022-02-28 15:19:25 UTC hello@padlet.com tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068522221 Factor - Entrepreneurship
Throughout the late 80s' and early 90s' Chip Wilson had a lots of entrepreneurship experience, especially in the clothing industry. He created many brands that focused on making apparel for popular athletic activities of the time like Snowboarding and Skateboarding. However these businesses weren't as successful as he hoped, and he ended up selling his brand. ]]> 2022-02-27 22:47:04 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068522221 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068523401 Factor - Entrepreneurship
However in the 1998, Chip Wilson noticed an increase in popularity in the Yoga Industry after he consecutively went to a yoga class for thirty days and saw the class size go from six to thirty people. As he looked around at the people in his class, he noticed that people would often wear their worst clothes when they worked out, and immediately wanted to change afterwards. He sought out an opportunity to make athletic clothes that were comfy enough to workout in and lay around in. He coined the term athleisure for his clothing.  ]]> 2022-02-27 22:49:35 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068523401 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068535324 Factor - Entrepreneurship 
According to an interview conducted by Vox, Chip said he noticed that all the big clothing companies at the time like Nike and Adidas were following the same philosophy, “shrink it and pink it”, which essentially meant that they were using the same design as the men's athletic clothes, making smaller sizes, adding more vibrant colors, and called placed it in the woman's section. These brands didn't take into account that woman have different needs for workout clothes and different figures than men. Wilson's main objective was to design clothing that were tailored to fit a women's body correctly and were comfortable to move around in. ]]> 2022-02-27 23:12:41 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068535324 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068546071 Factor - Capital
Wilson sought to find the best way to create his goal of finding the best design and fabric to create his product. While researching, he found machines sold in Japan that were able to combine two separate fabrics together and cut off any excess fabric. He found that this machine would be great to create his product because he wanted the ability to combine fabrics to help eliminate rashes. Each machine cost around $40,000, so he used the money he made from selling his snowboarding business to buy four of these machines. ]]> 2022-02-27 23:33:17 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068546071 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068553553 Factor - Land
Initially Wilson was only able to find a small store location on the top floor of a building located in Vancouver. It was also surrounded by many other athletic stores, so this location was not particularly ideal. These factors led Chip to make a business deal with his yoga teacher. They agreed to have Chip have his racks of clothes out during her classes, so the woman could see and purchase his clothes before or after their class. A year later, he was let go from his other business called Westbeach, and gave him a $50,000 severance fee. He used this money to finish building his second store right before Christmas. They designed a fleece bra, that was put into an ad in the newspaper, which brought many customers in the store. Once the customers were in the store, they educated them on their product and convinced them to try them on, and once they were in the pants, they became customers for life. This influx of customers boosted Lululemon's sales and allowed the company to open a second location in Toronto. They were able to open up many other stores, by bringing in yoga instructors to try on their product to create word of mouth marketing which gave the business a loyal customer base in each location they opened. ]]> 2022-02-27 23:46:50 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068553553 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068571473 Factor - Labor
In the beginning of Lululemon, Wilson decided that he only wanted to hire people that he liked to work with. He was determined to hire people, train them, mentor them, and get out of the way. Financially, Chip was in a pinch; so he hired people who he felt were going to be loyal to the company. He hired a designer named Shannon Gray, and within two weeks he promoted her to CEO so he could go back and work for Westbeach to gain more income to put into the Lululemon brand. ]]> 2022-02-28 00:13:46 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068571473 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068591637 Factor - Entrepreneurship
In 2005, Chip reached out to multiple investors and made the executive decision to sell half of his company. He also decided to step down as CEO, however he decided to stay on as a chairman. Wilson decided upon this decision because he wanted to have advisors for more input on design ideas, marketing techniques, and expansion. With the help of the advisors, Lululemon gained a mass amount of growth in both the Canadian market and the U.S. market. Although these advisors helped Wilson with expanding the company, they also ended up screwing him over by urging him to put more and more of his shares into the stock market. Beforehand, Chip was the majority shareholder, however with the advisors urging him to put more of his shares into the stock market, the power to make executive decisions turned to the hands of the board, who now had more shares than Wilson did. ]]> 2022-02-28 00:38:17 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068591637 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068616156 With the board having the majority of shares, a quality issue seem to arise. There was complaints from customers that the clothes were becoming too see-through. Wilson came out with a statement that received a lot of backlash stating that, "some of these pants don't look good on some women's bodies". With the backlash he received from his comment, he wanted to figure out what the real problem was with the clothing and why people were complaining about the leggings being too see-through. He found out that women didn't want to buy leggings for working out, they bought them to shape their bodies and purposefully buying sizes two sizes too small. Although he found out the reason why the leggings had a see-through effect on some women, the board still decided to remove him as chairman because his previous statements made him a liability. The position as new head chairman was turned to Laurent Potdevin. Although he currently has no ownership of the company, his entrepreneurial idea ended up being very successful and made him one of few of Canada's first billionaires. ]]> 2022-02-28 01:05:11 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068616156 tommygolay https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068617410 The new head chairman, Laurent Potdevin, saw the trend that women were starting to wear leggings to give them a better shape. He decided to shift the companies focus to sell both workout clothes and everyday clothes, and coined the term athleisure. However, Potdevin stepped down from head chairman in 2014 because of sexual allegations against him. In 2018, a new CEO stepped in named Calvin Mcdonald. He still currently holds the role of chief executive offer to this day. ]]> 2022-02-28 01:06:42 UTC https://padlet.com/tommygolay/spqzbyf38m9fpalc/wish/2068617410