More than one in seven dollars spent at Lululemon is for men’s items. And the company’s rise as a brand for guys is just getting started.
Since Lululemon's early days, the pricey yogawear brand has taken its cues from a fictional muse named Ocean.
Ocean is a fashionable, professional 32-year-old woman who's unmarried but engaged; she makes $100,000 a year, owns her own condo, and has an hour and a half to work out every day, as noted by the New York Times. Ocean has her act together, and she's willing to shell out $100 for stylish pants she can wear to both yoga and brunch to help her keep it that way.
After years spent with a singular obsession on Ocean — a kind of aspirational Barbie for educated, affluent women — Lululemon has ramped up its focus on her Ken. He's a man named Duke.
Duke is a few years older than Ocean, a "mindful athlete" who's competitive, well-rounded, and likes a variety of physical activities, executives say. Felix del Toro, who heads up Lululemon's men's efforts, has described Duke as "discerning" and "someone you'd want to be friends with and someone you'd want your sister to marry." Like Ocean, he's willing to pay a premium for clothes he can wear to the gym and hang out in, while looking good at the same time.
When Lululemon starting doubling down on the men's market in early 2013, it was met with a healthy amount of skepticism: Did men like Duke really exist? And if they did, could a brand so centered around women tempt them away from the likes of Nike and Under Armour?
As it turns out, yes they do, and yes they can. Today more than one in every seven dollars spent at Lululemon is for men's items, and sales of men's gear grew by 15% in the most recent quarter, almost twice as fast as overall sales at the company.
That's a bigger deal than it may seem, because getting men to buy clothes once exclusively worn by women is a very tough sell. While pretty much any macho sports or surf brand can slap a logo on a women's T-shirt and stand a good chance of gaining traction, there are few precedents for a women's brand being proudly worn by guys — think college guys in Lilly Pulitzer shorts, or ballplayers wearing Victoria's Secret boxers.
Nick Wilde, a 26-year old from San Francisco, said he openly refers to the Lululemon bag his girlfriend gave him in March as his "Lulu," comparing it to how girls might refer to designer purses as "my Gucci" or "my Prada." Chris Phillips, a 39-year-old who lives in Brooklyn and started shopping the brand six months ago, sees its subtle logo as a way to signal taste and style, like "the urban version of a car."
And Cody Reichard, a 28-year-old professional ice hockey player in Indianapolis, said he and "a lot of pro guys wear it," partly for the 10% discount they get, and mostly because it's so comfortable.
Ice hockey players! Blood and blades and all.
Paramount Pictures/Will Varner for BuzzFeed
Until recently, Lululemon's cultural cachet with women had men taking a largely confessional or defensive tone when declaring their love for the brand. John Jannuzzi, writing for GQ in February 2014, said that for dudes, walking into a Lululemon is "like venturing into a nail salon: you feel as though all your testosterone was checked at the door."
His piece elaborated on "weighing [his] masculinity against clothes that have a logo that looks like a lady's wig" to seeing "the light of the Pace Breaker shorts," a daunting but rewarding journey he urged other men to undertake.
Comedian Pete Holmes was on Conan that same month. The host joked that every time he saw Holmes, the comedian was clad in "sweats and flip-flops." Holmes, grinning big, was quick to correct O'Brien: "Those aren't sweats, Conan." He was wearing "Lululemon," he specified, eliciting laughter from the audience. He continued: "High-end yogawear. I like to look like McConaughey between movies."
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