Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon (Part 1)
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Chip Wilson, founder of Lululemon (Part 1)
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About this listen
Chip Wilson is the founder of Lululemon. And wow, he is a fascinating character. Larger than life, an unconventional visionary, but also stubborn and volatile.
Chip had an uncanny ability to spot the next big thing. Not only did he practically invent the athleisure category with Lululemon, but he had built apparel brands around 2 huge trends before that, skateboarding and snowboarding.
With Lululemon, he was ahead on the yoga trend, and led the company to its IPO just 9 years later.
But Lululemon wasn’t just first in yoga apparel, it was one of the first fully vertically integrated retailers, owning the entire supply chain from manufacturing to retail stores. Chip had an axe to grind against many things, and the wholesale model in retail was just one of them.
Chip’s nonconformist approach would lead to many innovations for Lululemon and would inspire the future era of DTC brands. But it would also lead to him being ousted from his own company.
This first episode covers Chip's childhood, and his early entrepreneurial ventures where he would prove a knack for predicting big cultural shifts and building iconic apparel brands around them.