"Yoga Hermes" sports shoes can "fire"?

30/03/2022
When lululemon, a sports and leisure brand from Canada, opened a shop in Guangzhou five years ago, many people knew it as "a shop selling expensive Yoga Pants" and the title of "Hermes in the yoga industry" spread like wildfire. Now, some people call it "the apple of sportswear" because it has extended its tentacles to more fields. Recently, lululemon has done one thing to boost social media - set foot in the field of shoes for the first time and launched a women's running shoe called blissfeel. Since March 23, blissfeel has been on sale in online channels and designated stores in mainland China at a price of 1180 yuan.
In recent years, lululemon has frequently entered new categories, such as cosmetics and personal care in 2019; Last year, it acquired mirror, a home-based intelligent fitness platform; At the opening ceremony of this year's Winter Olympics, lululemon gained a lot of attention by designing the down jacket of the Canadian team and successfully "got out of the circle". Under the multi line initiative, lululemon's involvement in shoes is similar to a natural step. The industry believes that it is expected to extend to this product line, which is an attempt to coexist opportunities and risks.
The market holds loyal fans and competes with established giants
This time lululemon launched its first shoe series, demonstrating its determination to accelerate the expansion of the whole category. On March 29, lululemon disclosed the fourth quarter results and full year financial report of fiscal year 2021. In the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021, the company's net revenue increased by 23% to $2.1 billion. For the fiscal year 2021 ended January 30, 2022, the company's net revenue reached US $6.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 42%. The company has opened 574 stores around the world, of which the total number of stores in mainland China has reached 71, with 16 new stores. The company expects that the revenue in fiscal year 2022 will be between us $7.490 billion and US $7.615 billion, which means an increase of 20% ~ 22%.
As the latest expansion of its business line in 2022, lululemon has both opportunities and risks to enter the footwear market. On the one hand, footwear is a highly saturated and crowded track. Lululemon will directly compete with established giants and backbone forces including Nike, SKECHERS, Adidas, Brooks and new balance. On the other hand, many brands that started with clothing have not been very successful in developing footwear products. For lululemon, a large part of its confidence comes from the fact that it has accumulated a large number of loyal customers, especially a large number of middle-class women pay for it, which will undoubtedly help the product get a wave of attention on the social platform.
In addition, there are different opinions on the saying that "for the first time, there are big brands to make sports shoes specifically for women". Previously, Puma has developed many sports equipment designed for women, including products with "women's shoes" as the publicity point. Adidas launched a new type of sports shoes specially designed for women in 2021. In its brand promotion, Adidas also said that it was "created by an all female team, fully considering women's body shape, and better meeting women's specific needs for sports shoes through the study of more than 1 million foot scans of different women".
Next, it remains to be seen whether lululemon can produce truly differentiated products in terms of design and positioning, and how successful its shoes can be outside its core customers.
 
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