In a 2004 interview with Lululemon (lulu) – Get a free report Founder and former CEO Dennis J. “Chip” Wilson, the former director, revealed that the name of his popular sports brand has an incredibly problematic origin, noting that he came up with it after observing Japanese people pronouncing names with the letter English’. L’in it.
“The L is not in their vocabulary. It’s a difficult pronunciation for them. So I thought, next time I have a company, I’ll make a name with three Ls and see if I can make three times as much money,” Wilson told National. Post Business Magazine. “It’s kind of exotic to them. I was playing with Ls and I came up with Lululemon. It’s fun to watch them try to say it.”
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Although the founder has significantly distanced himself from the successful yoga and athlesiure brand, signs are emerging of a problematic company culture for the Canadian brand.
A recent report by Sheena Butler-Young in the Fashion Business contains accounts from 14 current and former Lululemon employees across the company, alleging “a company culture that is unwelcoming to Black people” and where “leaders regularly use stereotypes to define and ostracize minority employees, who face barriers for career advancement that doesn’t “seem to apply to white colleagues.”
Lululemon was one of many companies that promised to actively improve their internal diversity and create more capital within their company during the summer of 2020.
In November 2020, it formed a new department called “Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Action” or IDEA, which was tasked with increasing staff diversity, expanding DEI training and development, and creating ongoing dialogue among underrepresented employees. and its executive director. , Calvin McDonald.
Although this seemed like a genuine effort from the outside, employees told BoF that it was intended to protect the company’s image first and ensure the well-being and careers of minority employees second.
Miya Dotson, a former IDEA manager, told BoF that her supervisor told her that “IDEA is a wave in the company and… we just have to ride the wave until there’s something else,” before joining the team.
Kenosha Armstrong, the store’s operations leader, told the publication that her experience working for the yoga pants giant felt like “smoke and mirrors.”
“(Lululemon) makes you feel like it’s going to be supportive and that you’re not going to be a part of the story of microaggressive behavior and that’s just not the case,” Armstrong said.
Highlights of the report revolve around Lululemon’s now-closed Hyde Park location on Chicago’s historically Black South Side, which was run by its then-general manager Michael “Muffy” Collins.
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He and six of the store’s 16 former employees have filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging racial discrimination within the company.
Collins and other staff members who worked alongside him told BoF about several instances in which the company made it known that their efforts to manage the store were not welcome.
According to Collins, Lululemon regional managers and executives based in its corporate office in Vancouver told him on numerous occasions to hire white and Asian sales associates, “to reflect the racial makeup of the nearby University of Chicago.”
Additionally, other accounts provided to the EEOC noted that regional managers regularly referred to black staff members as “you people,” denied black employees job opportunities in favor of their less qualified white counterparts, and that the company referred employees to black employees to other Chicago-area Lululemon offices. stores that would “better fit the Hyde Park location.”
Another former employee, Adetimisola “Timi” Ogundipe, told BoF that he believes the reason he was fired from his position as a talent manager in August 2022 was due to a racial discrimination complaint he filed with Human Resources.
As a Black employee, he believes he came under scrutiny from managers for not “code-switching” or adjusting his vocabulary, syntax and grammar to fit “professional” white corporate environments in emails and other correspondence.
In June 2022, Ogundipe was placed on a performance improvement plan by the company, who expressed that communication between him and other employees lacked “clarity, consistency, professionalism and timeliness”; noting several emails to his colleagues that included phrases like “my bad” and “no,” even though other colleagues responded similarly.
However, she filed a racial discrimination complaint with Lululemon’s people and culture team, who hired a third party to investigate, but found nothing to support her claims after a six-week investigation. He would be fired the following week, as Lululemon cited that his “belief that Lululemon has a discriminatory culture” affected his ability to promote the company as “a positive place to work.”
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In a statement, Lululemon said it “has made considerable progress since launching IDEA and we are proud of the goals we have achieved, which include maintaining an ongoing two-way dialogue with our people… We remain steadfast in our focus on achieving our IDEA. commitments and we trust in the leadership of the IDEA team.”
TheStreet has contacted Lululemon for comment.
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