Lululemon has recently been caught up in some controversy over an extremely ill-advised and ludicrous statement made by co-founder and Chairman, Chip Wilson. His comment was “Frankly some women’s bodies just don’t actually work for [the pants]”. Obviously the reaction that followed was consumers being outraged, as they should have been. Instead of Chip taking responsibility that there was a problem with their pants, he blamed it on the bodies of the women. But is a company that has steadily built up its stock value for the past few years going to vanish as some people are predicting? I don’t think so.
From a marketing standpoint, this is clearly a disaster, but for people to suggest that the company is coming to an end because of a misguided statement from an executive is more distorted than the statement itself. One example of a company getting away with really unpopular statements is Ryan Air, when the CEO O’Leary talked about their customers forgetting their boarding passes, “We think [they] should pay 60 euros for being so stupid.” And Ryan Air remains profitable.
Lululemon has been seeing an increased amount of criticism of their actual product. This would be a reason for the company to fail, not one single (but ill-advised) statement of an executive.
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Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/9522319/Michael-OLearys-most-memorable-quotes.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/lululemon-alienating-customers_n_4275842.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-business&ir=Canada%20Business