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L's Bells

Seeing LULU, LULU, LULU on the after-hours tape yesterday, I couldn't help but wonder what the hell is that?

Ahhh, healthy lifestyle inspired athletic apparel.

Digging deeper, the evolution of the Lululemon brand name is a pretty good read; posted on the company's website. Company founder and Chief LULU, Chip Wilson, explains how his Homless skateboard brand eventually led to Lululemon, giving a strong nod to the apparent Japanese interest in the Latin letter "L". It's a good illustration that rocket science isn't required in creating a strong brand name.


A big issue for Westbeach with the “homless” name was that it was impossible to trademark. The prefix “hom” means male in French and there were just too many “hom” like names to be different. Consequently the name was never registered and Westbeach stopped producing the homless brand. The Japanese however did not forget. Not producing homless for the Japanese customer created a cult like following.

After a couple of years of pleading with Westbeach to continue making the homless brand, the Japanese Westbeach distributor asked to buy the name. The name “homless” had no real value to Westbeach and the Japanese yen was at its very highest. Japanese companies at the time were buying golf courses, name brands and buildings worldwide. After the purchase, Chip Wilson spent hours pondering the value of the “homless” name to the Japanese.

It was thought that a Japanese marketing firm would not try to create a North American sounding brand with the letter “L” because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics. By including an “L” in the name it was thought the Japanese consumer would find the name innately North American and authentic. Chip felt that the distributor had paid a premium for the “L” so he challenged himself to come up with a name that had 3 “L’s” for his new company.

In essence, the name “lululemon” has no roots and means nothing other than it has 3 “L’s” in it. Nothing more and nothing less.

As it turns out, the stock was taking a hit yesterday following the release of their quarterly earnings. But hey, when the WLAB symbol paints the tape red on the Nasdaq ticker - I'm not losing any sleep over it.

LULU still sports a(pparel) market-cap north of $2B.
Posted by quark on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 @ 2:07 AM [ + ]

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