The Strategy Behind Lululemon’s Pivot to Fitness Technology

Zach Werblo
Jul 13, 2020
acquisition Brett Larkin Video Daniel Litwin Video Growth Strategy Home Workout Lululemon Mirror Personal Gym retail strategy startup

 

Boasting more than 340,000 subscribers with classes that are streamed for over 4 million minutes each month, as well as the certification of over 1,300 viewers to become teaching and healing yogis, Brett Larkin is the creator of the award-winning YouTube channel, Uplifted™️ Yoga, as well as Uplifted™️ Online Yoga Teacher Trainings. And today, on MarketScale Live, host Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B, sits down with this entrepreneurial fitness influencer to unpack Lululemon’s recent $500 million purchase of the home workout startup Mirror, and discuss the viability and longevity of today’s online, interactive fitness market.

As the co-founder and seller of two successful health & wellness businesses before starting Uplifted, Larkin believes the acquisition of Mirror—“the nearly invisible home gym”—presents great potential for fitness accessory and apparel brand Lululemon, providing unique opportunities for them to expand their clothing-based business into the home fitness arena, particularly as viewership and sales for Uplifted have skyrocketed since the COVID-19 outbreak.

“It’s incredible. Our traffic to our key pages has increased 3X. Our YouTube properties—the amount of viewership has tripled; sales have tripled. People are really, really hungry for this. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” exclaimed Larkin.

But is this surge in the home fitness market a transitory response to the pandemic or more of a long-term shift in workout lifestyles?

“I think this Mirror acquisition is really emblematic of a huge shift in the health and wellness industry,” remarked Larkin. “They (Lululemon) see that there is a huge appetite long-term for working out at home—not just because of COVID, but because of convenience, right? I think what’s going to be the new normal and go mainstream is people recognizing the incredible potential of working from home—the quality, the cost-effectiveness, and not having to fit into someone else’s schedule.”

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