Sports Leisure Brand Lululemon Opens Up Men'S Clothing Market

Already expanding

Lululemon has been trying online for a period of time, and now accounts for the proportion of male business.

CEO Laurent Potdevin of the company says that in the future, 40%'s customers are male.

"This is a $1 billion market, and there is ample room for us to expand."

Potdevin said.

At present, the total income of Lululemon in fiscal year 2015 is 21 billion US dollars.

This Canadian movement

The retailer's plan is to expand through overseas markets where consumers will not first associate Lululemon with women. Eventually, nearly half of the business revenue comes from male customers, so that 80% of the customers are women now.

Lululemon has started as a women's Yoga suit. At present, it has less than 17% men's clothing in all its products.

But the latter grew very fast. In the past 10 quarters, the average growth rate was about 20% per quarter.

A popular ABC male trousers launched last year has become a major growth driver for the 2015 fiscal year, which has increased revenue by 17% in the four quarter, increasing 15% for the whole year.

This has much to do with the expansion of men's wear line in recent years.

In 2013, Lululemon announced that it would open a men's wear shop and opened its first store in Manhattan's SoHo District in 2014.

Last year, the company appointed Lee Holman as creative director - the first time in Lululemon history to have this post - responsible for developing men's clothing category.

Before joining Lululemon, Holman served as vice president of global fashion, innovation and equipment design in Nike for 4 years.

Analysts are also optimistic about Lululemon's goal of expanding men's wear line.

"After joining the men's wear line, Lululemon will have a brand new market."

Jim Cramer, co-founder of financial website TheStreet, said.

Some analysts believe that Lululemon needs the growth of men's wear line because the latter can help it compete with larger competitors such as Under Armour and Nike.

In fact, its opponents are doing the same.

For example, Under Armour, which is dominated by men's wear line, has announced plans to expand the women's wear line and make it "at least shoulder to shoulder with men's clothing business".

But in addition to increasing more competitive capital, the more urgent reason for Lululemon to expand the men's wear line is that its main sports and leisure market is facing a downward trend.

The $970 billion market attracted too many large companies like Nike, Under Armour, Adidas, and Kit and Ace, a start-up company. Now it faces sales slowdown, layoffs and inventory pressure.

"In order to drive growth, Lululemon really needs to see further."

"One of the opportunities is to enter immature areas such as men's clothing and teenage clothing," said CEO Neil Saunders Saunders, a consultancy.

Because in North America, the image of "women's clothing brand" is deeply rooted, the hope of expanding the men's wear line is mainly placed in overseas markets. The overseas market itself does need to open up. Besides the US and Canada, Australia is the largest overseas market for Lululemon, but there are only 27 Direct stores, and the market in the UK, New Zealand and Singapore is even less worthy of mentioning. The number of stores is not more than 10.

Later this year, Lululemon will open its first Chinese store in Beijing. Previously, it already had 3 exhibition halls and merged into Tmall. In the 11 month, Toronto will also open a men's wear shop. It also plans to open new stores in Seoul and London.

Lululemon plan, in 2020, sales can reach US $4 billion.

"With the growth of international business, we do not need to rewrite history."

Potdevin said, "when we come to the market, we have a balance between men and women.

"