Photo: click to article about the tactics of lululemon founder chip wilson! (Use your back button to get back to this page)
And no I'm NOT wearing their clothing!
My response to this article:
If you ever looked closely at the corporate culture of this place (can't even say the name) it was never meant to embrace the "values" of yoga. It was a marketing ploy - as simple as that. And it worked. Why? Because it never really embraced the depth of the "values" of yoga and was a marketing ploy.
Chip wanted to turn it into a cult and it almost happened - only stopped by the constant stream of people leaving the place.
I sold my soul and became an ambassador years ago. What did it get me? Not much - except $1000 worth of clothing which at the time was great because I was poor and couldn't afford anything let alone at their prices. I've stopped wearing their stuff the minute I got a whiff of their cultish corporate tactics.
I worked with them for three years and tried to instill a yoga-sensability to no avail. I was the only one who tried to encourage participants to bring the only "payment" asked of them (on the website) for the Sunday yoga class which was a dry or canned good for the food bank. Only one person would bring anything every week out of sometimes 30+ people. I was appalled. There was no encouragement from the staff and I sometimes got looks. This to me was fostering a selfish, ego-driven, entitled culture of lemons and I wanted no part of it.
So yoga values - what are those anyway? Telling us to "breathe"? "Be Happy"? "Do one thing that scares you". These are not yoga values. The New Age equivalent of yoga values. You ate it up. That's why they're so successful. What a great marketing ploy!
To Chip and the lemons yoga values meant one thing and that was looking good in your expensive enviable yoga gear even if you didn't do yoga.
