Dan Caplinger

It opened up an entire new category of these so-called athleisure products.

It brought a new meaning to casual Fridays at the office.

It's been instrumental and spawned a whole bunch of other specialty retail concepts as well.

Business had done really well, but after briefly topping $500 a share late in 2023, early in 2024, we've seen the stock plunge 70%.

Well, what happened?

Growth trends slowed.

They even reversed in the core North American market.

Even now, the company is guarded about its immediate outlook.

It seems like it's trying to bottom, but even most recent quarter, we saw same-store sales in the North American segment drop.

There's a lot of questions about Lululemon right now, but the thing I focus on is, we have seen Lululemon be resilient before.

Turn back the clock, what, 10, 11 years or so, from around 2012 to 2014, the stock was down about 50%.

What happened?

Yoga pants were suddenly see-through.

We had all these quality control issues.

That was exacerbated by some comments from the then-CEO, now former CEO,

and founder, which I won't bother to repeat here, but it took a while for the company to right the ship after that big boondoggle.

But the payoff was, the stock was a 10-bagger by 2021.

So, come back to today, now we're facing a similarly interesting moment.

Lululemon just announced its quarterly results earlier this month, but it also said CEO Calvin McDonald is stepping down.

Shareholders were happy with that move.