Lululemon’s founder, Chip Wilson, is in hot water after his new interview with Forbes. Wilson stresses that Lululemon, unlike the Gap, is not a brand for “everybody” and declares that part of the definition of a brand is that “you’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”
Keeping “unwanted” customers away from the Lululemon brand has been par for the course for the 68-year-old founder for quite some time. Wilson stepped down as CEO in 2013 after telling Bloomberg that Lululemon didn’t “work for some women’s bodies” (“it’s really about the rubbing through the thighs”, he added) and would leave Lululemon’s board entirely in 2015.
Fortune points out that the entire brand name “Lululemon” was founded on anti-Asian racism, with Wilson, an “Ayn Rand enthusiast“, telling Canada’s National Post in 2004 that he specifically wanted to come up with a brand name with three “L”s because “it’s funny to watch [Japanese people] try and say” the name. This branding led to calls for a boycott of the brand earlier this year, and has been called out as anti-Asian for years.
Wilson’s 2013 comments were only part of Wilson’s MO of offensive and racist statements, a history of anti-Asian bigotry, and even blaming feminism for breast cancer.
If Lululemon needed a reason to rebrand, this is it. What could they lose by changing their name at this point? If Chip Wilson is going to perennially plague Lululemon by making statements of this type, why continue the brand? Changing the name to something like “Lemon” or even “L” would allow for much of the brand’s recognition to stay intact while making a clear distinction – the brand is no longer the one founded by Chip Wilson.
I fear Lululemon may never be able to shake this guy’s legacy as long as its name is Lululemon. If the name was chosen out of racist intentions, if the founder thinks “plus size people are sensitive” and that birth control causes divorce, it’s time to distance the brand from that founder. Even a high-profile lawsuit or the most strongly worded statement wouldn’t be as concrete, permanent and stark as a rebrand, removing the remnants of Wilson from the brand’s future.
As long as there is still a connection between Chip Wilson and the brand Lululemon, I fear this won’t be the last of their headaches.
