 The billionaire founder of Lululemon has said some more controversial statements about the brand but will it actually affect the brand and will it affect people buying it? Let's talk about it. Even though he named the brand to hear us say Lululemon wrong, we still buy it in Japan. Listen, Andrew Chip Wilson, the 68-year-old billionaire founder of Lululemon, even though he has not been involved with the brand for 10 years, still owns like 8% of it. He recently made some comments that caused some controversy in the media. Andrew, he said, listen, I'm slamming the company's diversity inclusion efforts. You've got to be clear that you don't want some customers coming in. We're going to break it down. How problematic was it? Was the quote twisted? Make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications to Andrew. The reason we're talking about this news today is because a lot of Asians wear Lululemon. Yeah, a lot. Yeah, a lot of Asians buy Lululemon. In fact, I was just gifted a pair of Lululemon shorts for the first time. My first Lululemon piece, I did not buy it, but it was gifted. You look like a guy who would wear it. Yeah, but I've seen you walking to the store more than me. You're more interested in that clothes than me, actually. Anyways, guys, if you're not, just check out smileysauce.com. Asians also like this sauce. Non-Asians, too. But anyways, Daniel. Who wears Lululemon though? Because a lot of Asians buy it. I want to say obviously perceived to be originally upper middle class white females yoga brand from Vancouver, Canada. But a lot of Asians have adopted it. I will say this. I think the largest demographic buyer of Lululemon menswear is preppy Asian guys. Specifically like Chinese guys. Of mens? I think that is a sizable demographic. I don't know if that's the most of the men that buy it, but either way. We got a preppy Hong Kong friend in Vancouver, Canada. Literally every single piece of clothing out of like 80 things in his wardrobe is Lululemon. You might not wear a lot of Lululemon, but you know someone who makes at least $80,000 a year who likes to wear a lot. That is definitely the $80,000 a year clothing. Right, right, right. But anyways, I guess to delve deeper into the quote, he said he was giving an interview to Fortune magazine about the state of the company. And this guy is definitely like anti-woke. Like this guy, Chip Wilson, okay, he's a billionaire. Billionaires are saying whatever they want nowadays because they are above the line of consequence. You cannot touch them. I heard this guy owns 5,000 properties in the Vancouver area. Yeah, so at the end of the day, whatever he says doesn't matter because, well, he doesn't care because he's not part of the board of the company. But he still owns the largest share of the company of any single individual. Right. But that doesn't, who's really watching over what he says? He can kind of pop off, whatever he said. Anyways, he's talking about, I believe he's referring more to body shapes because Lululemon has released a lot more plus-size clothing. Their advertisements are more plus-size. Or people who are quote, unquote, like he said, sickly and look non-aspirational. Right. So basically people who are not super fit gym bodies. So the former general image of Lululemon has always been like a thin white woman. But in really good shape. In good shape, right? And then now they're advertising their plus-size line and it's bigger people. Obviously people are fatter. It's the truth, right? And he does not like that. He's like, yo, nah, man, you got to let people know that this brand is not everything for everybody. Some people should not be wearing it because he made comments throughout the years about this. You know what I mean? He's been consistently and he will say what he said about Asians before too. But you know what's interesting? Andrew Chip Wilson himself, he doesn't look like he's in great shape. He's actually a former skater who just had a really great idea. By the way, just because you have great ideas and you're smart and you can like run a great company to a billion dollars. It doesn't mean you're also not saying the wrong bad thing, racist things or whatever, right? He said they're trying to become like the gap, everything to everybody. I think the definition of a brand is that you're not everything to everybody. You've got to be clear that you don't want certain customers coming in. Yeah, so this is exclusivity versus inclusivity. If you think about a brand that's really cool like Supreme, it was basically thriving off exclusivity for many, many decades while Supreme was very cool. Nowadays Supreme is a little bit more accessible. It's less cool. Which makes it less cool. And guess what Andrew? Supreme was also started by white skaters and they also recently had charges of sort of like a problematic pro-white male company culture too. By the way, I'm not saying what's true or when that's not true, but I'm just saying why is there so many charges out there? I guess do you think these statements in itself are super problematic or just like kind of un-PC? I just feel like they're pretty honest of us, like a rich straight white guy from his generation. Right, right. That's why I think that I believe everything that happened at Supreme too, but I believe that in 2023 we're clearly in a different era that these older rich white guys they don't really fully fit into. Would you agree with that? Like their thoughts, even though they're being lucid, like you said, because they're billionaires and they could do whatever they want, it's not fitting with the times. Yeah, and it's like different because they are white. Like if you're a minority that you started Lululemon, you probably wouldn't say this stuff because you're already a minority. So you can't say like you're already going to be a little bit more tapped into the inclusivity, but not all brands do offer plus size stuff. But you know, it's like, I have a question though, what if a brand was more discriminatory based on price? Like what if he was like, yo, we are going to price our stuff at 120, I don't care. So that's pricing out other people, but is that discriminatory? Yeah. It's not, right? I'll say this. I think that Chip Wilson can say whatever he wants. He founded the brand. He's attached to the stock price, his net worth is, but actually I think he's wrong. I think that Lululemon's stock price will continue to go up and are the stocks doing really well because of the inclusivity though. Because think about that, doesn't that open up the market, especially if, let's be honest, Americans or North Americans in general are kind of getting fatter. Why wouldn't you need to open up some of the sizing and the cuts to fit more of the population's body type? Yeah, ultimately, listen, if they make more money as a company, then that's going to speak for itself because the whole point is not to keep Lululemon exclusive. That's never the point of a business. But that's cool points, not the actual stock points, right? The actual point of a business is to build the business and make as much money as possible, right? So whatever makes you the most money, you'll do. What do you think about this point, Andrew? Will Asians still buy it? Because he had a quote from back in the day because he actually used to run a skateboard brand called Homeless. That was his other brand before he struck it big with Lululemon. He said that he loved the name because he always wanted to hear Japanese people say it because it's true that Japanese, they struggle to say L's. So he wanted to hear them say Lululemon. And he thought it was really funny, but it was like that ended up getting taken as such an anti-Asian quote, but then, but Asians still bought the brand. And then a lot of people were like, how come Asians always buy these anti-Asian brands, whether it was Abercrombie that was so pro-white or Dolce and Gabana had that anti-Chinese ad sort of, and then it got canceled in China. Well, the truth is most Asians didn't even know that he said that. Most Asians do not care. And most Asians, I could see a number of Asians not even finding any problems with that statement. I'm saying some Asians were very offended and some Asians, even if you told them about it, they're like, oh, he said that? Oh, okay. I don't know. That sounds weird, but I'm still gonna buy it. Right, because they like the brand image is very clean. Yeah, you're not buying it. It's very like, I will say this, I'm not gonna lie, the technical fabrics at Lulu Lemon, I think are pretty strong from what I've heard from people in the clothing field, even relative to other athleisure brands. You wanna know how hard it is to boycott a brand you already love to literally stop buying your favorite brand. You know how hard that is. You know how much you have to hate that person. He's not, he wasn't even the CEO at that time. He was just the founder. And I don't even know about that story. This story doesn't even make any sense to me because what was he in Japan? Like how many Japanese people was he around? Well, I guess he had known Japanese people and Vancouver from his previous skate brand. I don't know. I think it's tough. Like a lot of people do not feel that political, militant, feeling emotionally strong enough to literally stop buying a brand that they already are. Especially preppy people who like have a Tesla Model 3 and a bunch of Lulu Lemon. Yeah, they already don't care about those types of issues. So I don't, I think Asians are gonna keep buying it. I think everybody's gonna keep buying. I think chubby people are still gonna keep buying Lulu Lemon because most people won't even hear about what he said. This is not like massive news. You know, it's news, but it's not like the biggest news. So yeah, I know. I think people still buy it. No, Lulu Lemon has become, and to your point, the Rolex of its sphere. It's gonna take more. I'm not saying Rolex is the best luxury watch, but I'm just saying Rolex is Rolex. BMW is BMW. It's gonna take more than the former founder saying some un-PC stuff to take it down. I think so. What do you think about brands in general, Andrew, being like a tribal marker? Because obviously nowadays, I'm not endorsing them, by the way, because they have this weird like sort of membership pricing, but like you can get these knockoff Lulu Lemon brands where it's cut very similar to your body for like one-tenth of the price. You could get a microfiber shirt for $10. It still has that slim fit look, but obviously people are still willing to pay $70, $80 for a Lulu Lemon t-shirt. Is it because they just had the first mover advantage and premium LF leisure, or is it just people still buying into brands? I mean, when the girls come over, they still want the bottle of 1942, right? Yeah, what do you think? I just think that people really like the status, right? Like you don't want to see the Costco vodka on the table, right? You want at least Cosmigos. Why do I know people who pay five, six times as much for just a white t-shirt that has no logo on it? You mean instead of going to like a Armani, Armani t-shirt, a John Elliott t-shirt, those t-shirts, they look like you could, if you know fashion, sure they're cut a little different, but from afar, it's a white or black t-shirt, but it costs about like $150 for a white or black t-shirt. That's crazy. Bull, I think it's because you feel a type of way about yourself, but also you may be so detail oriented that that 10, 15% material or look difference means a lot to you, right? I think that everybody has different standards and thresholds and when it comes to like, oh, is that item too cheap or is that item too expensive? You just got to analyze it for your own metrics on a per dollar ratio. For me, I don't value it that much. I've got a few things from Lululemon. We actually have somebody that we know in our family that gets Lululemon for really cheap because they, you know, whatever, but I still don't get it. People were talking about marketing exclusivity, Andrew. It's sort of like how Nike, Andrew, just recently re-upped the contract to reproduce Kobe's, right? But the Kobe Procho 6 is still incredibly limited to the point where it costs $400 or $500 to get some grinches just to play basketball in. Yeah. Don't you think, I mean, Andrew, couldn't Nike make a bunch of them if they wanted to and have everybody in Kobe Procho 6's? And then make a bunch of money? Yeah. Yeah, but then that might take away from their other lines of shoes, you know? There's so many different reasons why a company does something. Doesn't release, you know, doesn't release, re-release something that everybody likes. Why? Why not, right? Right, it's human nature. Somebody said that I don't even consider Lululemon a fitness company. It's a company for hot girls who go to yoga class for the social benefits and show their bodies off in a way that's plausibly deniable. I consider Lululemon a fashion company. Yeah? I mean, fashion, identity, branding. Listen, guys, these are all different things. But fashion and fitness, again, those two worlds have blended in the past 15 years, so. Somebody said, why do you think all these old white billionaires are just popping off crazy? Whether they're popping off in a good way, like Mark Cuban, or popping off in a problematic way, like whatever. You know, some people say Elon, Chip Wilson, Trump. And why do you think it seems like right now is the age of just like the billionaires? They just want to say it. If they got something on their heart, they got to spill it out. I mean, if you're looking, if you're a billionaire, right, and you're, it doesn't really matter what you say. Like you have your money tied up in so many different ways. 100 different things, right? And like you would have to say some horrific stuff to get canceled, right? For people to reconsider. But like, really, why wouldn't you want to say what you'd want to say? Because you feel like the world is, or these companies are going one way and you just feel so strongly. So I guess, I guess just say it. And to be honest, knowing that they're billionaires, it's true. A lot more people are going to listen to them. Right. Because they're successful. Whether or not you think it was off sheer luck or sheer skill or their background or what they were born with, regardless, they're successful dudes. So a lot of people are going to take their word for with some weight. You know what's interesting? You're saying, Andrew, that a multi-billionaire is above the line of consequences. But I feel like a lot of people that are just like screaming stuff on the street, they're almost below the line of consequences. And everybody in the middle is worried about what they say. But it's like the poorest guy and the richest guy. Those are the only guys who feel any freedom. The poorest guy, the guy with no money and the guy with all the money, both do not care what they say in public because you can't cancel them. What can you take away from them? If they got billions of dollars, they got their money tied up. They got houses already. You can't take away from them. Like if their family owns or if they own an oil field, no matter what they say, you cannot take it away from them. Yeah. Even if you say, even if they say something like race, super racist or terrible, like it's so hard to take that away. And then if they're homeless, it doesn't matter what they say either because you can't take anything away from them either. Hey, guys, man, maybe we're all just constricted in the middle. Anyway, let us know what you guys think of Chip Wilson's comments in the comments section below. Some people were defending him. Some people were 50-50 on it. Obviously, a lot of people were against him. I think my ultimate takeaway is that, yeah, man, I mean, I don't think what he said was that bad. So I don't think he's a horrible person. I don't think he's a cool person. I wouldn't want to be his friend. But also, I don't buy Lulu Lemon either. So let us know what you guys think in the comments section below. Until next time, we're the Hop Hop Boys. We out. Peace.