Lululemon Responds To The Company’s Founder After He Slammed The Athletic Brand For It’s Outlook On “Diversity And Inclusion”: “Chip Has Not Been Involved With The Company Since His Resignation From The Board”

Chip Wilson, the founder and former CEO of Lululemon, expressed disapproval of the corporate’s latest efforts to broaden its product vary to succeed in a bigger viewers.

Throughout a latest interview with Forbes, Chip, who based the yoga attire model in 1998, voiced his criticism of the corporate’s “whole diversity and inclusion thing.” Wilson additionally identified that he disapproved of the corporate’s commercials that includes people whom he described as showing “unhealthy,” “sickly,” and “lacking in inspiration.”

“They’re trying to become like the Gap, everything to everybody,” he mentioned. “And I think the definition of a brand is that you’re not everything to everybody… You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”

Lululemon has since launched an announcement to disassociate itself from Wilson, clarifying that he has not been actively concerned within the firm’s day-to-day operations for a substantial time period.

“Chip Wilson does not speak for Lululemon, and his comments do not reflect our company views or beliefs,” the corporate mentioned. “Chip has not been involved with the company since his resignation from the board in 2015 and we are a very different company today.”

Wilson resigned because the Chairman of Lululemon in 2013 because of controversial feedback associated to contraception, his endorsement of libertarian thinker Ayn Rand, and his assertion that the controversy surrounding the corporate’s clear pants that 12 months stemmed from the assumption that “some women’s bodies just actually don’t work for it.”