Lululemon Athletica: Chip Wilson

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2018

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After noticing more and more people sign up for yoga in the late 1990s, Chip Wilson bet everything on an athletic apparel company aimed toward young professional women. What started as a small pop-up store in Vancouver eventually became the multibillion-dollar brand Lululemon Athletica, spawning a new fashion trend and forever changing what women wear at the gym. PLUS, for our postscript "How You Built That," how Mike Sorentino developed the EyePatch Case, an iPhone case that cleans and protects the phone's built-in cameras. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, really quick before we start the show, I want to let you know that we've got another live show coming up.
0:32.0	It's on Wednesday, August 1st, in Boulder, Colorado.
0:36.0	I'll be interviewing Kim Jordan. She's the person who grew New Belgium Brewing Company out of her basement and Fort Collins,
0:42.0	into one of the biggest craft brewers in the country.
0:46.0	The show is sponsored by American Express, and we're hosting it at the Boulder Theater on August 1st.
0:52.0	For tickets, go to nprpresent.org and hope to see you in Boulder.
0:59.0	People were just naked in front of the store?
1:03.0	Well, they showed up in their trench coats, and you know, we went out when we went to open the store.
1:08.0	I went out with my wife and put my arm around her, and then we said thanks for coming and everyone dropped their trench coats and went running into the store.
1:25.0	From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:36.0	I'm Guy Raaz, and on today's show, our Chip Wilson turned workout clothes into a fashion statement, and along the way, built a breakout brand worth billions.
1:53.0	So it used to be that the clothes you wore to the gym were like the absolute worst clothes you owned.
2:00.0	You know, the radial t-shirt, you got for free at some events, sweatpants with your high school logo, you know, the kind of short shorts Dr. J would have worn on the basketball court.
2:10.0	Anyway, most of this apparel was cotton-based, it was baggy, it didn't look so great, and honestly nobody really cared.
2:17.0	You had one job to do, which was to sweat at the gym.
2:21.0	But at some point in the past 10 or 15 years, all of that changed, because suddenly, the clothes you wore to work out were also the clothes you could wear to the grocery store or a restaurant or even at work.
	...

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