Lululemon founder still criticizes brand’s diversity efforts (which he has already abandoned)

Sometimes the most embarrassing thing for a brand are the words of its founder. Luckily, in Lululemon’s case, they already got rid of them about ten years ago.

Who is Chip Wilson, the embarrassing founder of Lululemon, who made him a billionaire

It was Chip Wilson (now 67 years old) who founded this Canadian company in 1998. She’s become known for her activewear, especially yoga gear (especially the leggings which have a reputation for making nice butts, let’s be honest). In 2005 the turnover was already close to 100 million US dollars and this was just the beginning. However, in 2013, an initial controversy led to his resignation as CEO (he then left the board of directors in 2015). To some of his plus size clients who criticized him for a transparency problem on a product, he replied that it was more ” the bodies of certain women that didn’t fit “.

Even though these types of comments cost him his position as head of Lululemon, Chip Wilson persisted and signed off ten years later in an interview for Forbes published January 2, 2024:

“They’re trying to become like Gap, everything to everyone. And I think the definition of a brand is that you’re not all things to all people… You have to be very clear that you don’t want certain customers to come. »

However, according to business media, Lululemon continues to make large profits thanks to its remaining 8% stake. His assets, estimated at 4 billion in 2020, have doubled to reach 8 billion today, in particular thanks to the boom in physical activity among the general public at home due to the pandemic. A period in which Lululemon leggings were selling like hotcakes (if Chip Wilson had held all his shares, he would now be worth 20 billion dollars, poor guy…).

How Lululemon Breaks Free From Chip Wilson Now Investing Against FSHD

For its part, the company is now publicly traded at $60 billion, making it the seventh largest clothing brand in the world. But it must continue to increase its efforts to avoid being further associated with the ideas of its founder, who is also known for his racism as well as his fatphobia. In 2020, it notably created a department called IDEA for “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Action” that would allow it to make notable progress on these issues. This is what he told the media in November 2023 Fashion business as part of an investigation into new allegations of racism in internal career management.

Ironically, Chip Wilson suffers from facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), diagnosed before founding Lululemon, and which is slowly but surely eating away at his muscles. This rare disease affects approximately 870,000 people worldwide. In 2022, the year in which he made his diagnosis public, he created the Solve FSHD association to try to eradicate this disorder by 2027 and invested 75 million dollars, half of which has already been redistributed to researchers. It is therefore a noble cause, carried out by an embarrassing billionaire, to whom only validationism has been added to his perfect bigoted bingo.

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