With community a key brand pillar, a flexible event space was positioned on the first floor, adaptable for complimentary classes, talks, events or merchandise display. Key insight: Consumers will support brands who help them in their wellbeing and development with loyalty, advocacy and spend. It’s a brand experience that helps them to escape from the buzz of the city, relax and connect with other fans of the brand. This called for a space that stretched beyond the product it sells - encompassing fitness, nutrition and holistic health. Subscribe to the Digiday Retail Briefing: An email with news, quotes and stats covering the modernization of retail and e-commerce, delivered three times per week.Traditional notions of brand flagship wouldn’t cut it for a new generation of mindful consumers, aligning with brands to help them realise their goals. “We’re going to leverage the tried and true community strategies and adapt them to regional tastes and opportunities, and amplify them via new investments in digital,” Haldsen said. He also said that Lululemon would invest in community events. To drive brand awareness in the Chinese market, chief operating officer Stuart Haselden said at investor day that the company plans to invest more in building up a WeChat channel as well as its own China domain. Currently, the brand has 22 stores in China, and McDonald said during the company’s last earnings call that a “disproportionate” number of the 40 to 50 stores it planned to open next year would be in China. Lululemon said that the majority of the stores that it plans to open abroad this year will be in China. That store strategy extends internationally. Lululemon said that it had 60 of these stores last year. It’s also planning to open more pop-up stores that run for a few months. It’s planning to open a new 25,000-square-foot store in Chicago that will have a yoga studio, meditation room and serve food and drinks. Lululemon said that by 2023, about 10% of its stores will be experiential. To drive foot traffic and revenue, stores are also being reoriented around experiences. “We have no road map to play in baseball, football, hockey, soccer,” McDonald said. But staying on brand will be critical: McDonald also said during that the analyst day that it plans to focus building its men’s business by catering to men who participate in the core activities that Lululemon’s female customers participate in as well.
LULU LEMON STORES FULL
By building out full men’s departments in more stores, the company plans to use them as marketing vehicles to promote brand awareness for its budding men’s business. Lululemon is still known predominantly as a women’s brand - at the end of last year, about 70% of Lululemon’s business came from its women’s category. But analysts worry that the growth won’t last forever. The company reported revenue of $1.2 billion during the last quarter of 2018, up 26% the year prior.
And in a statement this week, McDonald acknowledged that Lululemon “has a unique opportunity to push beyond traditional expectations.” At the same time, it’s working to fend off competition from brands like Nike and Adidas, which are trying to make greater inroads in the women’s and yoga markets - areas that have traditionally been Lululemon’s strong point. “We’ve done a lot of work in the last few months in understanding where our current guests sweat, and what our assortment is in the activities where they sweat,” McDonald said at the analyst day. Lastly, it plans to open more stores internationally, particularly in China, while investing in digital platforms to drive brand awareness internationally.
It’s also focusing its attention on remodeling stores to become “co-located” - meaning that they have both full men’s and women’s department - to cater to more men. The brand plans to invest in a more diverse array of retail footprints, including building larger stores that are more experiential. While Lululemon is focusing on increasing digital revenue, stores are firmly at the center of its new strategy.
0 kommentar(er)
