Lululemon Drops to Eight-Year Low With New CEO Inheriting a Mess

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0:41Let's create smarter business. IBM. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. I will give the Gen Z's credit for freeing us from skinny jeans. Like, I love that pants are white. We appreciate you for that. We do. But, you know, who might not appreciate it so much is some of these athleisure brands who've made their mark on leggings, especially Lululemon. It was like the original fancy high-cost legging. They've really been struggling lately. They have. And you look at their shares, they're down 17%.

1:20So basically, they lower their full year outlook. Second straight quarter. It has a new CEO starting next week. I think we did this last time I was on this show, actually. Yeah. The new CEO is starting in. What we want to do is bring in Poonam Goyal. She's going to tell us more about it. She's Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Analyst for E-Commerce and Retail. Joining us from New Jersey. Poonam, thank you. What went wrong? Do people just not want the leggings anymore? Take us into it. Well, there's a lot that's gone wrong here. First, it's execution. Second, it's product. And third, the styles are changing, as you just alluded to.

1:54So on execution, they don't have the right management team in place to lead a Lululemon to growth as it once was years ago. The new management team that's coming in with Heidi O 'Neill starting next week, we're not sure how it's going to go. You know, the issue here is product-led, and product doesn't turn overnight. So it has, at least in my view, a 9 - to 12-month window before we see signs of any progress. But that's not all that's happening here. As you said, you know, we're wearing pants that are looser now to the gym. We're not wearing leggings as much. Leggings were down 20 % in 2Q. So that's an issue.

2:33Lululemon is known for its leggings on the woman's side. The other issue for me is like, you know, they have these new competitors in the space. You have someone like Aloe who is doing still leggings and really like wearable gym clothes, but in a slightly different way. And then you have someone like Viore who does gym clothes, but does a lot more things that kind of skirt that line between what you can wear at like the more formal end of athleisure, if that's even a place, like I could cheat it and wear a lot of it to work. Those two brands seem to know who they are. For me, Lulu kind of lost their identity somewhere in the middle, right?

3:05They're not, their staples are not durable enough to be bought just for the fact that they're staples and they're not fashion forward enough to be bought for the trend. Do they know who their consumer is? And is that something they're going to try to narrow down and find out with this new leadership? You're absolutely right. They're lost. They're lost in the crowd right now. And I think that's what they have to figure out. So Heidi's first task will be one of two. One, to set her new management team. There's been a few departures as of late. And second, to figure out who is Lululemon? How are you going to differentiate yourself like you had in the past?

3:39And in the past, the differentiation came from product, fit, and performance and fashion. So what is the difference today? Because everything to me looks kind of the same now. That is true. I do have to agree. There are a couple of differentiations, but I noticed while you were saying, my daughter is switching from the Lulu to the Aloe. It's a big competition space. You had mentioned product innovation, Poonim, but doesn't something like that take time? So this is going to be a while for Lulu. It absolutely is. So Lululemon's pipeline today from inception to store is about six to nine months. That's a long time today to turn product around.

4:20And with Heidi coming in in September, assume it'll take her at least some time to write, get the plans in place. you're talking maybe 12 months from now or earliest late spring is when we start to see some of her work showing stories. And I don't know if investors have the patience for that or how much patience they have because the ideas she brings forward need to be very different to really make Lululemon stand apart from the competitors. As you mentioned, Biore and Aloe to be some, but we also have Nike and Adidas, the traditional athleisure giants that are also trying to compete in that space.

4:56One of the other things I know they changed just anecdotally, you know, I have a lot of friends who are dancers. I have a lot of friends who are in different fields. And when they started, when they were really popular, Lulu did these great partnerships with small local people. You know, you could become a brand ambassador and they would get discounts. And so you would see all these folks wearing their clothes. They cut back a lot of the sectors that they would allow to qualify for that and really antagonize some of their customers. Some of the more visible customers who went out and sought other brand partnerships or other sponsorships from other companies and other brands, in addition to retooling the product, are they also going to need to, and have to rethink how they market it and how they show it to once they do decide who their new customer is, how they get that to them.

5:37And to your point, they don't have a ton of time to get all that done. They absolutely need to do that. You know, this reminds me of kind of what Nike did, right? Let's pull out of wholesale and it'll be okay. Cause we can drive our own growth ourselves and we don't need anyone else. Um, kind of the same thing. We don't need the ambassadors. We don't need as many of them. You do. You know, when you let someone go who's driving your brand, someone else will step in. And that's where the share loss begins. So they've done that. The fix is you can rebuild it, but it takes time and it takes the right vision and execution.

6:11Does Heidi have that vision and execution? I guess we're all waiting to see, but it's not an overnight fix. Is Heidi going to be stepping on eggshells, would you say? because founder Chip Wilson, I mean, he's criticized management in the past. How is she going to approach working, I guess, with him, would you say? I would say that she's definitely walking on eggshells. She needs to be transparent. I think transparency is key here. And she needs to have a vision that shows the path forward and milestones to get there, right? We can't just have a very rough estimate. We need to have proof points along the way.

6:52So what is happening first? How do you get traffic back into stores? There's no traffic there. When I go years ago, it was Lululemon, Apple, and Sephora that were crowded, irrespective if the mall had anyone in there or not. Today, that's not the case. So I think brand heat building and milestones to set as she makes the leap to make this turnaround are going to be important. What is the overseas market like? We've talked about, I think, when Lisa and I were talking about the domestic market, but how are sales overseas? How are sales in China? Is this something that they're also looking to expand?

7:26So overseas is better than it is in the U.S., but it is also falling short of expectations. China is their largest growth region. It's done extremely well. However, it didn't do well in 2Q. In fact, sales in constant currency in China were down for the first time that I could remember and up only 4 % on a reported basis. The guidance for China also seems to allude that there is still some weakness, even though they're not going to be now lapping the Tmall events that they had been lapping in 2Q. So some concern there, and I think it might just be, once again, product-led and the softness that they're experiencing in North America is going to maybe be carrying over internationally as these other brands are stepping in, right?

8:10They're also trying to gain momentum, including Nike and Adidas of the world. All right. Poonam Goyal, thank you so much. Bloomberg Intelligence, senior analyst and official legging guru of Bloomberg, which covers e-commerce and retail. We appreciate it.

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