lululemon's Ecommerce

Today I’m going to focus on my favourite brand and company: lululemon. As I wrote about before, omni-channel sales strategies are becoming ever so important for retailers. For lululemon and its other athletic wear competitors like Nike and Under Armour, it’s definitely no different. In the difficult year of 2014, lululemon’s ecommerce was able to drive the company’s sales in the Q4, contributing 18% to the company’s top line and approximately 26% to its income (Forbes 2015) 

lululemon began selling on its ecommerce website in 2009 and has seen increasing growth over recent years. What really drove ecommerce in 2014 was the launch of a mobile app that enabled customers to shop on their smartphones. Once again this underscores the importance that mobile is going to continue playing in aiding ecommerce and overall omni-channel experiences. At the end of Q1 of 2015, over one fifth of luluemon’s growth that quarter was attributed to the ecommerce platform, where revenues increased by 27% to $83.6 million.  

What’s interesting to note is the many factors that affect online sales. For lululemon, diligently managing its web inventory is key for responding to variations in online orders. As Marcos Garcia mentioned in his guest lecture, ecommerce demands show daily and yearly variations and in this case, the yearly variations definitely play an important role in determining lululemon’s ecommerce sales. They noticed that as temperatures were extra low in the February 2015, this kept many of the usual yogi customers indoor and thus created a hike in ecommerce sales during this winter period. What lululemon did well in response to this was ensure a shorter distance between distribution centers and the customer, to have products delivered in a timely manner despite adverse weather conditions. This brings up the significance of aligning ecommerce with an efficient supply chain management strategy. Aside from having an ecommerce website that is user-friendly and induces customers to add to their carts, what then becomes the determinant of whether or not ecommerce will drive sales is the strategy behind how you deliver the products. 

As CEO Laurent Potdevin forecasts even more accelerated growth in ecommerce for lululemon in upcoming quarters, it is exciting to see what other ecommerce innovations this company has in the works to drive this growth. Hopefully, I can soon one day be a part of the process of creating these innovations!