Lululemon Founder Says Popular Brand Isn’t for ‘Certain Customers’
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Lululemon founder and former CEO Chip Wilson has once again drawn ire for controversial comments he made about customers.
Wilson, who stepped down as CEO of Lululemon in 2013 after blaming a yoga pants recall on the thigh size of customers, slammed the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts in an interview with Forbes. Wilson said that the athleticwear retailer has “become like the Gap, everything to everybody,” and pointed to ads featuring models he said were “not inspirational.”
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“I think the definition of a brand is that you’re not everything to everybody,” Wilson told Forbes. “You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”
Wilson has long been known for his controversial opinions, having received backlash over the years for fatphobic and racist remarks. In 2013, he insisted that Lululemon’s popular leggings—which it recalled that year because the fabric was too sheer—were not for plus-size women. “They don’t work for some women’s bodies,” he told Bloomberg Television’s Street Smart. He stepped down as CEO shortly after and left the company’s board of directors in 2015.
In 2005, Wilson told the Calgary Herald that plus-size clothing is a “money loser,” claiming that because it takes more fabric to make larger sizes, he would have to charge more for those items. Currently, Lululemon offers sizes ranging from 0-20 for many leggings, and up to a size 14 for other styles.
Wilson also famously declared that he created the Lululemon brand name in 1998 specifically to have three L’s because that sound doesn’t exist in Japanese phonetics. “It’s funny to watch them try and say it,” he told National Post Business Magazine.
In 2020, Lululemon launched a new diversity, equity and inclusion department within the company, tasked with increasing diversity among employees and expanding training on DEI issues. But a group of employees told the Business of Fashion that the new department was performative since the company routinely denied Black employees opportunities in favor of “less-qualified white counterparts.”
That same year, Lululemon was called out for hosting a “resist capitalism” yoga workshop, with critics pointing out the hypocrisy of a multi-billion-dollar corporation that sells leggings for more than $100 a pair railing against capitalism.
Though no longer part of the company’s leadership, Wilson still has an approximate 8 percent stake in Lululemon, adding reportedly nearly $4 billion to his total net worth, which has been estimated at around $8.81 billion. The company’s stock rose nearly 55 percent over the last year.
In response to Wilson’s comments, a Lululemon spokesperson told The New York Post, “Chip Wilson does not speak for Lululemon, and his comments do not reflect our company views or beliefs. We have made considerable progress since launching our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action (IDEA) function, and we are proud of the goals we have achieved.”
