Even though e-commerce sales are up across the board as homebound consumers turn to online shopping, Lululemon is still sticking to its brick-and-mortar experiential store expansion plans, the company said on its Thursday afternoon earnings call.
Last year, Lululemon said it was planning to dedicate 10 percent of its store fleet to experiential stores—one such venue, boasting 20,000 square feet, opened in Chicago last summer. Along with clothing, the store has a restaurant, rooms for meditation and yoga, and lots of pillows.
On Thursday’s call, analysts specifically asked about the plan to continue with the expansion into the experiential realm, given the new social-distancing requirements and germ phobia brought on by COVID-19.
“We are still very committed to growth in our store fleet,” said CEO Calvin McDonald. “Those larger stores—the experiential and what they were delivering to the community and role they were going to play—were always designed through an omni [digital and brick-and-mortar] lens.”