Research Essay On Lululemon Athletica Inc. In Apparel & Apparel Stores Industry.

Write the following parts of research for Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU): Apparel & Apparel Stores (SIC: 56 / 5699 or NAICS: 448190): -

Business description - Industry Overview and Competitive Positioning  -

Management, Governance and Social Responsibility

1. Report should be divided into columns – one larger column for the text of the report and one smaller column on the left for figures supporting the text. Figures should fill the margins. Large exhibits that don’t fit in the margins can be shown in the text section but these should be used sparingly.
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2. All figures should have a title and include its source.

3. Format the report in a stylish and colourful manner using the reports provided as examples.

4. Carefully proofread the report for spelling and grammar errors and awkwardly worded sentences.

5. Write concisely and assume your audience is investors interested in buying the company’s shares.

6. Don’t talk in generalities, but give specific facts, points, ideas, or opinions.

7. Be sure to express all thoughts in your own words. Using the words of others is not acceptable.

Lululemon Athletics Inc. is domiciled and has its headquarters in Vancouver, Canada. It is a company that deals mainly with top quality athletic apparel at a premium price. The company has showed financial gains over the years while the other companies continue to suffer great loses. Of Kate the company has begun to face challenges as a result of economic, competitive and stakeholder pressures The company has now been tasked with nurturing and maintaining effectiveness of community centered and symbiotic relations as it tries to expand the business worldwide.   

A business model refers to a conceptual structure that supports the viability of a product or a company and outlines how the company operates, makes money and how its aims to realize set goals. The business’ processes and policies which are followed and adopted formed part of its business models. Lululemon demonstrates high capability to manage logical and various systematic competencies then change this into significant merchandises and all services which improve the value, reinforces the Lululemon’s competitive situation and enable it to achieve greater outcomes. The company aims to set up a vision and concentrates on differentiation strategy to build restructure the company’s equity together with its cultural way of doing things. Its employees take part in the running the unique feedback and collection of techniques to makes sure that the brand and the culture are perpetuated. Lululemon has the strategy to analyze its competitors’ strength and weaknesses then come up with strong objectives and strategies to defeat them. This enables the Lululemon to predict and interpret the behavior of its competitors. The experience and value created by Lululemon makes it difficult to be bought by big brand competitors, the comply has developed a strategy of environmental scanning that will enable it to boost strategic elasticity and also receptiveness to varying situations. To keep its success, the company has concentrated on differentiation strategy to increase the value of the company’s sources of strategic competitiveness.  

This is a very popular company which it comes into existence in the early 1999.It is a company which is dealing with apparel stuffs. The chief founder and developer of this great firm was Whip who originally puts his efforts towards the outfit industry. The stages of the development of Lulu lemon are: it started as Yoga company which give rise to the well Known Lululemon company in Canada. It put its emphasis on making of clothing for ladies and gentlemen. The most strategy which made the company to be known by many people was the development of clothing which was specifically for celebration of yoga period. The company launch the very first standalone which was purposely for the storage (Horan and Mary 13). This important activity accelerated the arte for the rise of Lululemon.The head office is situated within the Vancouver in Canada. The other branches are found within the United Kingdom, China and also Israel. Delivery sites are identified in Ohio within Columbus, Melbourne in Australia and main one in Vancouver of course in Canada. The creation of many associates within all the key parts of the world made it to be one of the, most known and perfect industry for clothing. This innovative idea made it to design smart brand of cloths which were highly demanded. Sales of all kinds of products of this company were channeled through various means such as online, direct sales and sometimes wholesales. The branches of Lululemon expanded its outlets to many countries including Australia.  Nowadays, Lululemon has created different type of yoga, athletics, educative activities and sweaty cloths which pursuits for ladies and gentlemen (Stokes, Carlie and Mary 18) Lululemon sell its products through as system of stores it operates and seeking directly to the customers via online sales. By December 2005, the company had made 48% sales meaning earning an amount equivalent to 108 Million American Dollars (Lavrence, Christine and Kristin 94). The sales increased such that by December 2018, the company operated four hundred and 26 stores in the United states of America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United Kingdom and Singapore. Lululemon experienced high rate of competition from several companies. Amour is one of the many companies which compete strongly with Lululemon.

Industry Overview and Competitive Positioning

Product differentiation. 

 The company tries to differentiate its products from those of their competitors through the application and implementation of distinct differentiation policies. The company's sales techniques coupled with local entrepreneurs and athletes with passion for their society and bettering the surrounding communities This aims at focusing on quality through all the business aspects (Iamartino, Antonia and Natalie 361). It also differentiates itself by vendors thus demanding that its vendors should be open, transparent and cooperative (Parker and Lindsay 13).

From the figure above, it is evident that lulu lemon is competitive over the rest at the market with a gross profit of around 52%

it is also another completive strategy applied by the company, which has a specific bench that continuously carries out research, advancing and establishing recent and innovative materials to be used Lulu lemon’s products, for instance Lulu lemon's original signature. Product quality, customer loyalty, patent material, efficiency and responsiveness to customers This makes it possible for Lululemon to establish time period excluding their competitors selling a commodity. It also owns trademark registrations for the details of many of its commodities. (Larcker, Sarah and Brian 14-16).

The Lululemon company succeeded due to the well structural arrangements that it undertook. It implemented a perfect structure which make it unique. It has opted to go with a purposeful organizational policy. A practical organizational policy is one of those conjoint organization policies. This kind of policy enable the organization to cluster workers constructed of expert, similar types of duties or responsibilities (Thomas, Jane and Cara 105).

Management, governance and social responsibility.

Lululemon is headed by a Chief Executive officer and a board of directors It is the duty of this board to establish standards for the company's employees and officers. It is the mandate of the board to oversee the management of the company to ensure it is running in the best interest of the shareholders in fulfilling this, the management sets out procedures, standards and policies to follow these guidelines are subject to regular revisions by the management to what the board seems to be appropriate and with the considerations of the applicable laws and regulations (Tushman et al.41).The company also plans to eliminate, reduced or recycled its packaging products to safeguard the environment. The company also hosts free yoga classes and mediations in the studio or public gatherings.   

Conclusion.                                                                                                                                    

Business models outlines the standards, guidelines, procedures or policies that should be followed by an organisation in the pursuit of its goals and objectives. Business models aligns the operations of the employees and the organization's goals. The business model envies the company to cope with competitors by devising several methods after understanding the strategies of these competing firms. Industrial overview envies interested investors to understand the performance of the company before making a decision to be shareholder and owner if the company (Fawcett and Stanley et al. 441).

References 

Agnihotri, Arpita, and Saurabh Bhattacharya. Executive Crisis at Lululemon: Who Is Responsible for Establishing Company Culture? SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals, 2019.

Fawcett, Stanley E., et al. "Spirituality and organizational culture: Cultivating the ABCs of an inspiring workplace." Intl Journal of Public Administration 31.4 (2008): 420-438.

Horan, Mary Rebecca. Where's the buzz? why no one is talking about lululemon athletica's sustainability initiatives. University of Manitoba (Canada), 2011.

Iamartino, Antonia, and Natalie Martz. "Jacket." U.S. Patent Application No. 29/358,367.

 Larcker David F., Sarah Larcker, and Brian Tayan. "Lululemon: A Sheer Debacle in Risk Management." Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Closer Look Series:

Topics, Issues and Controversies in Corporate Governance and Leadership No. CGRP-41 (2014):14-21.

Lavrence, Christine, and Kristin Lozanski. "“This Is Not Your Practice Life”: lululemon and the Neoliberal Governance of Self." Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie

51.1 (2014): 76-94.

Parker, Lindsay M. "SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND INDIVIDUATION: SOME THOUGHTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL SPIRITUALITY IN RELATION TO HIGH PERFORMING WORKPLACE CULTURES." (2013).

Stokes, Carlie Charlene, and Mary Louise Adams. "Healthist ideologies: the case of Lululemon Athletica." (2018).

Thomas, Jane Boyd, and Cara Peters. "Lululemon Athletica and a Series of Bad Marketing Decisions." Journal of Critical Incidents 8 (2015): 102-05.

Tushman, Michael, Ruth Page, and Tom Ryder. "Leadership, culture, and transition at lululemon." (2011).