In the first half of 2021, fitness-apparel company Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ:LULU) grew its sales an impressive 61% over the same period of two years ago. With this kind of business performance, perhaps it’s not surprising that the stock has more than doubled over the past two years. But don’t worry about missing all of Lululemon’s growth — there’s some future growth levers the company’s pulling right now.
In this video from Motley Fool Backstage Pass, recorded on Sept. 9, Fool contributor Jon Quast talks with fellow contributor Jason Hall about how Lululemon is growing the business for its fitness-hardware device, Mirror, its goals for its international business, and recent progress with its men’s apparel.
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Jason Hall: I think there’s some clear evidence that the growth story is not over there, right, Jon?
Jon Quast: Yeah. Looking ahead, there’s plenty more reasons for optimism regarding Lululemon. For those who don’t know, they acquired a company called Mirror last year. Mirror is Peloton-esque, in the sense that it is a hardware device, mostly used for yoga, but it has a subscription service along with that. You pay big up front for the Mirror. You pay an ongoing subscription fee for the content. Lululemon bought this business last year. It provides a significant cross-sell opportunity to bring this relatively obscure Mirror brand into the Lululemon family and provide this new revenue opportunity.
What was surprising to me is that they shared that Mirror is only in 150 Lululemon stores right now, and Lululemon has over 530 stores. So a very small percentage of these stores actually have Mirror at this time. They are hoping to get that up to 200 stores by the holidays, so there’s still a lot of growth ahead for Mirror, I believe.
This company also is still on track to quadruple their international business by 2023. They say their men’s business is on pace to double this year. So Lululemon is typically more of a women’s apparel company, but they’re growing that men’s business, too. So there’s a lot of growth levers that Lululemon is pulling right now as they continue their growth.
Hall: Jon, I didn’t hear you say it but I just want to touch on the, you may have said it and I just didn’t listen, because I get distracted, But the cool thing about adding Mirror is the services revenue for that. As we’ve learned from Peloton, it’s super high margin. It can generate, just, margins, and this is a really profitable apparel maker. [laughs] Taking good margins on their clothing, but they can get even better margins on the services that come along with Mirror.
Quast: Yeah. They don’t break it out a lot. You really have to do some digging. But one of the things that they did talk about regarding Mirror was the fact that they are really leaning into that. They’re beefing up their content. Right now they’re a little bit light on content, and they are really investing into having more instructors, more things that would entice people to join the Mirror family.
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