Innovating for unmet needs
Following the unveiling of our Power of Three ×2 growth plan this spring, I wanted to spotlight each of our strategic pillars – Product Innovation, Guest Experience, and International Expansion – and share my perspective on the role an intentional growth strategy can have in accelerating innovation and driving value creation within an organization.
Product innovation is not just a momentum driver for us at lululemon – it is at the centre of our guest relationships. Everything we create is grounded in our Science of Feel innovation philosophy, the lens through which we engineer sensations and raw materials to help our collective feel and perform their best. Our guests know they can rely on us for technical, versatile apparel that is truly differentiated in the market.
Every organization has their own core business – for us, Yoga, Run, Train, and On the Move are the foundations of our product offering. Finding opportunities to grow and innovate within our core, and expand our offering to connect with even more people, is a thoughtful balance.
Our product creation process always starts with three questions: what activity is our guest doing, how do they want to feel, and what is the unmet need? We also look at where we are being pulled versus pushed. This approach helps us clarify our priorities when assessing opportunities both within our core and new categories.
We consider many avenues when approaching innovation in our core. We examine how we can elevate performance on a technical level, which can lead to the development of new innovations. Our proprietary SenseKnit fabric technology, for example, was created to deliver an unparalleled performance and feel for runners, solving our guests’ unmet needs around compression. We also observe trends with our guests, like within our On the Move category. As more guests seek out comfortable performance apparel with amazing aesthetics and versatility, our men’s ABC and Commission franchises have become a favourite among our guests, revealing the opportunity ahead of us to expand into other closet slots and build out our women's assortments.
When it comes to new categories, we launched our inaugural footwear collection for women this year, designed to address specific unmet needs across different activities, and also expanded into “Play” with collections for Golf, Tennis, and Hike. With Golf and Tennis, we saw our guests leveraging core lululemon product for these activities. With Hike, we noticed a trend of people spending more time doing outdoor activities catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw an unmet need to intentionally design solutions with a premium feel, fit, and aesthetic for our guests participating in these activities – and strategically drive our growth by offering newness within our core.
These new categories also create the opportunity to connect and partner with a broader slate of elite athletes, who are essential to our product development and testing, and champion our product on a global stage – like our ambassadors Leylah Fernandez and Jack Sock, who we’ll be cheering on at the US Open Tennis Championships later this month.
When we understand and meet the needs of our guest, taking a test and learn approach, it has a halo effect. Our incredible teams unlock product experiences that enable us to build trust and credibility, strengthen our relationship, broaden our community, and learn even more to fuel future innovation.
Our guests and ambassadors are on this journey with us, and we learn something new from them every day. Listening and learning, and staying grounded in our vision to create transformative products and experiences, is the key to unlocking innovation – and a powerful opportunity for growth.
Entrepreneur | Marketer Over 10 Years | Retail & Fashion | Building In Public.
1 年Calvin, thanks for sharing! Following up!
Enabling commercial real estate to achieve their sustainability goals ?????? || b2b business and sales development || savvy social seller ?? || event marketing || ENFP || chats about cpg, retail & tech || plant-based ??
2 年Lululemon has been so innovative in defining what "Athleisure" is and really making athletic apparel into a definitive category not just for athletes but for all of us just looking to be more active throughout our everyday lives! I love the guest experience at Lululemon, every time I go into a retail location it's so welcoming!
Retired
2 年First of all I wanted to understand what is meant by The Science of Feel in terms of the philosophical basis which has yielded the innovation approaches articulated in the article. Listening to Dr Tom Waller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAEoixJusBA gave a framework for what this thinking is about. Felt experience is a leadership approach that I have been well versed in over a number of years, so it is interesting to see how The Science of Feel bridges or ports over from an innovation thinking to inform leadership practices. Sensory intelligence is one of the many forms of intelligence that I personally want to be mindful of. I view intelligence as a practice rather than as a suffix, and the two aspects of intelligence I am reading about here would fit into physical intelligence (we as a society should focus on this way more) as well as sensory intelligence, which was well articulated in the You-Tube video featuring Dr. Tom Waller. This also flows in with Founder Values - where technical apparel has always been a central DNA regarding what Lululemon's approach has always been, so it is good to see this innovation sensibility find new levels without the endangerment of sensory overload. This article is about intelligence.
Activewear Manufacturer| Sportswear Supplier| Athleisure Wear Factory
2 年With 11 years as marketing sales in apparel industry, I find only when we figure out the reason why customers come to you, then it would be easy to build business relationship and make the satisfied products! Then, how to figure out the reason? First, always keep curious about customers needs. To be curious is to forget about being a salesperson but be really childlike. That way, customers will drop their grudge against you and start telling the truth about their unmet needs. Second, let customers talk more, you listen and ask more. In this process, to understand why the customer want to buy it, instead of rushing to sell the product to him. You need to understand what is the purpose of customers needing this product? Instead of focusing on what the item looks like. Third, you need to know what value such products can bring to customers? Instead of caring about how much benefit you can get if he buy it. Forth, provide customers with practical, achievable and valuable advice. When we dig out the real needs of the customer, we need to provide some solutions according to his situation, and it is a solution that you can help him to practice and achieve success together, which makes him feel that he can immediately work with you.