Vancouve-based sportswear company Lululemon recently announced that it will cut approximately 150 corporate positions worldwide to optimize its organizational structure and enhance operational efficiency.
It is learned that the current round of layoffs mainly focuses on the "Store Support Center" team, which belongs to the company's back-end support staff. The company stated in the announcement: "We will regularly assess our business operations to ensure we are well-prepared for the future." This organizational adjustment aims to enhance flexibility and free up more resources for future growth.
In June 2025, lululemon's stock price experienced a sharp fluctuation. The brand, once known as "the Hermes of yoga pants", has seen its market value shrink by more than 20%.
If calculated from its peak at the end of 2023, its market value has plummeted from over 460 billion yuan to over 220 billion yuan, with 230 billion yuan of wealth evaporating in just over a year.
I remember that there were still many people praising lululemon on social media platforms before, making it a symbol of the "middle class" for a time.
Why has this brand, which once swept the world with high-end yoga clothing, fallen into such a situation?
This round of layoffs comes at a time when US President Donald Trump's global tariff war has hit supply chains and damaged company profits. Trump's tariffs are particularly targeted at China (a major market for Lululemon) and some "holy lands" for clothing manufacturers - Middle Eastern and Asian countries.
Bloomberg Intelligence retail analysts Poonam Goyal and Sydney Goodman wrote that this layoff seems "aimed at further cutting costs and improving efficiency - possibly benefiting from the productivity boost brought by [artificial intelligence] - in the context of the current increasing global economic uncertainty - to deal with the growing consumer uncertainty."
They wrote: "This move may also help maintain profits when the company responds to consumers' more cautious spending."
Analysts pointed out that before the latest round of layoffs, Lululemon had closed a US distribution center in 2024 and discontinued its connected fitness product Mirror in 2023.
According to Lululemon's first-quarter financial results for fiscal year 2025 released on June 5th, the company's net revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 was 2.4 billion US dollars, representing a year-on-year increase of 7%. The gross profit margin in the first quarter was 58.3%, compared with 57.7% in the same period of the previous year. The quarterly operating profit was 439 million US dollars, accounting for 18.5% of the net income, compared with 19.6% in the same period of the previous year.
Lululemon pointed out in its financial report that the tariffs imposed by the United States in April have raised the cost of conducting business in the US, which may lead to a "significant decline in profitability".
The price is about to increase.
Since the company released its first-quarter financial report, Lululemon's share price has dropped by nearly 29%.
Chief Executive Officer Calvin McDonald said at that time that although Lululemon was positioned better than most companies, its business had witnessed a decline in store foot traffic, especially in the United States.
The company stated in its first-quarter financial results released earlier this month that due to the need to deal with US tariffs, it plans to strategically raise prices and pass on some of the costs to consumers. The increase in product prices is expected to be moderate and will only affect a few Lululemon products.
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