Where's the buzz? why no one is talking about lululemon athletica's sustainability initiatives

Abstract

Many highly recognizable apparel brands are voluntarily adopting corporate social and environmental sustainability plans. This thesis evaluated the sustainability initiatives of the lululemon athletica Corporation and the operations of one of its retail stores, lululemon athletica Polo Park in Winnipeg, Manitoba. lululemon athletica Inc. was compared with industry sustainability leaders Nike, Timberland and Mountain Equipment Co-op. This comparison revealed that lululemon athletica has few sustainability best practices and little and out of date sustainability information available to their stakeholders. At the store level, two surveys were conducted to determine the employee and customer knowledge of sustainability initiatives at the company and store level. It was determined that employees require more training and stronger senior and middle management presence for sustainability initiatives to be a success, and that customers do not associate lululemon athletica with sustainability. lululemon athletica does not communicate about sustainability sufficiently to create a buzz about sustainability.