Marketing Skills of Companies

http://www.businessinsider.com/

Walking into stores like Abercrombie and Lululemon, you’ll notice a very homogenous group of workers. Lululemon is known for their fit,young workers with the “yoga” lifestyle. While walking into Abercrombie, you’ll notice a group of young, attractive teenagers working. Rarely, do you see someone who stands out from the “average” worker in these stores. Yet, this has had a negative effect on these companies such as,  “Abercrombie & Fitch has been sued several times before for violating federal anti-employment discrimination guidelines”. Companies like Lululemon and Abercrombie, even with many court cases on them, still have a continuous trend and appeal.

Before athleisure started, many women were embarrassed to even be seen wearing athletic clothes outside of their homes. Now, even when women aren’t working out, majority of the time when you’re at the airport or at the grocery store, you’ll probably notice more women wearing yoga pants than jeans for instance. Some have noticed that, “Lululemon was the first place that provided workout clothes that women weren’t embarrassed to be seen in, they could even grab dinner after yoga if they wanted to,” a New York yoga instructor told Business Insider. So how did Lululemon create and change the way people wear athleisure? Lululemon started in 1998, but the company really started becoming more popular wasn’t until 2007. Lululemon’s main goal was to target young, single women who are big on working out.  Huffington Post claims that Lululemon targets  women in their 20s-30s aren’t just buying expensive workout gear just to impress others, but they are to feel good about themselves and because they can. The company claims that they found a way to “exploit women’s deepest insecurities”, which is how Lululemon has evolved into creating the market for athleisure.

Opposite of the success Lululemon has had, Abercrombie & Fitch have had multiple cases where they have be sued due to their strict employee standard. Abercrombie & Fitch have been known to only hire the most attractive looking teenagers because that is how the company wants to be known for. Yet, in 2015 there was a court case that went to the United States Supreme Court over Abercrombie's decision to not hire a 17 year old Muslim worker because she was wearing a headscarf which they later denied her the job because of her attire. With this, and many other court cases, Abercrombie was not at successful as Lululemon was targeting a certain group of people. Abercrombie & Fitch has been on a constant decline in popularity while Lululemon has been a steady incline of popularity, which shows how beneficial and important marketing is to the success of a company.