Clarifying your persona lululemon style

While back, after Ruby left her job in architecture, she got a role at lululemon for a while. 

She started at a store in Sydney. Then when we moved to Melbourne and opened a gym, she shifted to one down there. I was even an ambassador for the store when I owned the gym. Although, I didn’t do the best job of it in hindsight, mostly sticking to myself and our gym community, rather than getting ‘out and about’ like a socialite in the clothes, like I should have.

Anyway, whether you’re into yoga or athletic apparel or not, there are some great insights for small biz.

For example

The level of community ‘happenings’ that they created (very similar to Red Bull’s strategy, and something that can be replicated by service businesses) was massive. More, the focus on processes and feedback helped keep the quality obscenely high. 

But one of the biggest things is the relentless focus on one clear ‘persona.’

I remember being blown away by how strict they were on this at the start.

Sometimes I would hear staff say things like “Ocean wouldn’t like that…” or “That’s how Ocean wants it” (more on ‘Ocean’ later)…

And it may just be my own personal opinions, but I found this was a much bigger focus in the early days, before they ousted the founder Chip Wilson by painting him as the villain.

Either way, in Chip’s book ‘The Story of lululemon’, you can get the full context for how he came up with the persona. 

And how it absolutely drove the early success of the biz.

A lot of take-aways for coaches, who regularly refuse to do this persona work.

Who often like to ‘help everyone’.

Or just ‘put stuff out there’ and hope for the best.

But as they say, if you create something for everyone, you create it for no-one. You can be ‘inclusive’ in some senses, but you need to remain exclusive in some way. Culture is made up of different world views (many of them opposing), so if you’re not sure who you’re for or who you’re not ‘for’, then you get stuck in the mediocre middle.

lululemon was started in Canada, by a guy named Chip Wilson

Prior to that, Chip had built another apparel company, Westbeach, focusing more on snowboarding and skateboarding.

He’d sold that, and started lululemon at 42 years old, but had a ton of insight to kick it off.

One of the first things that he did was get clear on his persona.

…[I would focus on]… a specific market segment that had never before existed. This market segment was the 24 - 35 year old woman who was single or engaged, had no children, was highly educated, media-savvy, athletic, and professional. These women travelled, owned their own condos, earned $80,000 a year and were very stylish…”

Wilson tapped into a pre-existing cultural narrative that was tied into this demographic:

“I believe this entire pool of women would be untapped by other businesses because the prevailing thought was still “why risk investing in a female employee if she could just leave our business at age 24 to start a family?”

Chip talks about how his persona, the Supergirl (later called ‘Ocean’), even spent her childhood:

“As youngsters, I suspect these girls were influenced by Saturday morning cartoons, which traditionally featured men wearing capes and stretch fabric outfits, running around and saving the world. By the ’80’s, most of these cartoons now included a female superhero - also wearing tight, stylish, form-fitting suits and capes. I felt these powerful cartoon women became iconic to these girls, who were doing what most adolescents and teenagers do: dressing in a manner opposite to their mothers. They did not need to look like boys or men to compete with them; cartoon superheroes were depicted as equal. I called this market segment the Super Girls.”

Chip Wilson defined the Super Girls (named ‘Ocean’) as follows:

*32 years old and born on the 28th of September

*Ocean never got a day older or younger, she was always 32 (i.e. They didn’t ‘change’ the persona)

*Every ‘Ocean’ in the world would be the sponsored athlete. If lululemon couldn’t make the ‘Ocean’s’ excited about their product, then the rest of the market wouldn’t be excited either.

*For 22 year old female uni grads, their utopia was to become ‘Ocean’ - a fit 32 year old with an amazing career and great health.

*Ocean travelled for business and pleasure, and owned her own condo, and had a cat

*Because she had a good job, Ocean could afford quality, and would pay up to 3x regular pricing for that quality

*Above everything else, Ocean valued time. She liked Yoga, because it was close to home, gave an endorphin rush, kept them fit and was mentally calming

*Ocean had disposable income, devotion to health, organic food, and athletics.

*She was waiting on average 4-8 years longer to have babies than the previous generation.

*Ocean would tend to buy fewer, better-quality wardrobe staples, because she was investing in her wardrobe

Et cetera.

The gist is, Chip knew who he was creating for, and who he was selling to.

He knew the story going on in her mind, and where she wanted to go.

And all of this created key extensions that influenced the brand. For example, because Ocean valued time, she would want to wear well designed clothes not just in the gym, but also those same clothes to go shopping, go for coffee, or drop kids off (his words). And the clothing had to look good. 

“I also knew if the product didn’t cosmetically enhance a woman’s image of herself, she wouldn’t care about quality or technology.”

Once Chip had ‘met’ his ideal customer, or ‘Persona’, at least theoretically, he got them into a room, to do deeper research.

Now, as I said before, we could go on and on. But the main thing - and this came from seeing Ruby at work, and watching the whole thing - was that every decision, event, or experience was designed for Ocean (and later then male persona, ‘Duke’).

Was it successful?

Well, lululemon eventually became the third most profitable chain of retail stores globally (behind Apple and Tiffany’s). They had a rabid fan base, and were wildly successful.

Eventually, Chip was given the boot.

The people on the board painted him as the villain, and pushed him out, not too different to the late Steve Jobs the first time ‘round at Apple.

And since then, you could argue that the the ‘Ocean’ and ‘Duke’ persona’s have shifted, or, at a minimum, broadened.

Nevertheless, it’s still a great example to see how starting with your persona, and their core values is key, and gives some ideas as to how deep we can go with this stuff.

Who do you serve?

How do they want to feel?

And…

Who do they want to become?

This persona work is the ‘step zero’ in our business story framework, and helps set up everything else in the business.

Something to think about.