Month: October 2017

In a fiercely competitive market of women’s athletic apparel, top brands are at a constant fight for maximum market share. A popular leading brand in this industry is Lululemon, which has managed to turn sportswear and fitness apparel into everyday chic yet comfortable attire. Known mostly for their high quality sports bras and yoga pants for women, Lululemon has overtaken big retail brands like Nike in the women’s active wear market even with their premium pricing strategy in an extremely overcrowded market.

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But other companies haven’t overlooked the scope for immense growth in this market and brands like Nike and Amazon are ready to tackle the fierce competition involved with entering this market. Nike has taken a step towards creating a new line of stylish women’s athletic attire with new innovative modified designs of sports bras, fitness apparel and sneakers specially focused towards women. Nike has taken a decision to allocate more of their investment in women’s athletic fashion wear. This shows Nike’s evolving strategy towards a more aggressive approach against their competitors. Just the news of Nike’s newly generated interested in this market, immediately had a negative impact on Lululemon’s shares by 2.5% since Bloomberg reported this.

Similarly, Amazon.com is also tapping into this women’s sportswear market by teaming with Makalot Industrial Co, who produced clothing for GAP and Kohl’s Corp, to make apparel. Just the scope of expansion in this industry manages to attract new entrants in such a highly competitive market space. Lululemon was adversely hit by this news as well, as shares fell by 4.9% after reports of Amazon’s sportswear.

With an increasing number of competitors, these brands will need to strengthen their strategy against their competition and adopt different marketing techniques to acquire brand loyalty and a greater market share. Their main goal should be to focus on their points of difference and remodel their value proposition canvas to further satisfy their customer’s need and wants.

With these new entrants in the market will customers really be willing to choose Lululemon in spite of their upscale pricing compared to competitors or will they have to adopt a new strategy quickly enough before they get overthrown in this fiercely aggressive market space?

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Citations

1. http://www.bnn.ca/amazon-said-to-make-sportswear-push-in-industry-jolting-move-1-1.884248
2. http://vancouversun.com/news/retail-marketing/nike-coming-for-lululemon-sharpens-focus-on-womens-wear-1/wcm/d57fe707-2126-4dce-ab33-0f374f12aca4
3. http://www.businessinsider.com/nike-launches-new-pants-studio-2017-10
4. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/26/nike-reportedly-set-to-open-yoga-pant-studios-in-5000-stores.html

Lush cosmetics, a U.K founded retailer that specializes in homemade, vegetarian skincare, hair and bath products that are organically made and is extremely eye-catchy due to it’s sparkly and colorful products, is adopting a new strategy for maximizing sales. Lush is focussing on creating a unique shopping experience for their customers. With its North American headquarters located in Vancouver, this brand has been constantly expanding in the global market. Having 53 stores in Canada itself, and over 180 stores in various U.S locations, Lush cosmetics has clearly set its footprint in retailing market.

However the company, has recently announced that they will be adopting a new expansion strategy which will focus on sizing up their existing stores. Lush has already managed to increase their Canadian retail footprint from 49,726 square feet to 68,505 square feet, over the last two years. Yet, this new strategy focusses on expansion by increasing the size of their existing stores rather than opening up new stores in different locations. The company has already tested this strategy with the first expansion being at the Lush store on 1020 Robson Street which reopened last month after expanding into the neighboring space that was vacated.

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This new strategy might seem completely bizarre, specially considering the strong e-commerce establishment that other retailers are progressing towards. In my opinion, this new strategy could do wonders for Lush due to the nature of the products they sell. Lush primarily focuses on creating unique and innovative products from gorgeously scented hair and body care products to colorful, glittery bath bombs and soap bars. Therefore this strategy offers customers a whole new experience of not only buying the products but also touching it, smelling it and an opportunity to actually test these products. The bold and vibrantly colored soaps which are designed for displaying the retail stores help to attract customers and offer them a more personalized shopping experience. The staff can also demo new products and this could be the key factor for customers to end up buying more products than they initially planned on. The whole look of the stores are designed in a way to tempt the customers with the sparkly and shiny displays and inducing scents.

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Moreover due to most of the retailers trying to shift towards online selling, many physical stores are vacant which could be an advantage for Lush since they could expand their existing stores into these spaces. Furthermore, a section of the demography could prefer retail shopping rather than through an online platform and Lush could tap into these segments as well. So could this really strategy work in an era where millennials are moving towards e-commerce? Only time will tell.

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Citations

1. Welcome to Lush Oxford Street. (n.d.). Retrieved October 13, 2017, from http://www.lush.ca/en/Stories-Article?cid=article_welcome-lush-oxford-street
2. Shaw, H. (2017, January 18). Lush Cosmetics brushes off downsizing trend with major bricks-and-mortar expansion plan. Retrieved October 13, 2017, from http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/lush-cosmetics-brushes-off-downsizing-trend-with-major-bricks-and-mortar-expansion-plan