National Post (National Edition)
FINANCIAL POST
Lululemon’s plight: How to rid the world of sheer pants.
The too-sheer yoga pants at the heart of Lululemon Athletica Inc.’ s recall this week have become a pop-culture punchline, the target of jokes on Twitter and mockery in the form of a faux-serious PSA from late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
And despite seeing its shares fall about 7% this week, the Vancouver-based retailer caught the problem early, pulling the items from store shelves and warehouses before many customers bought them.
That, however, could leave the yoga apparel giant with another big problem — the potential PR mess of what to do with the unsellable pants.
It is not clear how many pairs of the sheer pants were made, but 17% of all womens’ pants “is a LOT of pants,” Toronto-based apparel retailing expert Kaileen Millard-Ruff, director of retail at Pop-Up Retail Group, said this week, noting that quality control screeners for mass apparel do not generally count every individual pair, just a selected number per shipment.
It is unlikely, given the corporate health and environment-loving Vancouver retailer’s ethical reputation, that it would follow a long-held dirty little secret in retail: A high percentage of clothing that is never bought winds up in landfill sites each year — a level that experts say has risen in tandem with the “fast-fashion,” good-for-one-season apparel from the likes of Joe Fresh and Forever 21.
Many retailers choose to offload unsold or slightly damaged goods to an off-sales discount retailer such as Winners or Marshalls or donate them to a charity like Goodwill.
But there can be a stigma associated with discounting the brand through a mass, low-priced channel.
And, while the pants are not threadbare but are clearly not up to the retailer’s bend-over-and-get-an-eyeful “four-way stretch” test, Lululemon’s future plans for the togs are unclear.
Asked by an analyst whether or not the product could be sold off at a discount, chief executive Christine Day said Lululemon is keeping all of the affected apparel to see if it can be salvaged. “There actually might be some treatment solutions that we are investigating that could actually solve some of the problems,” she said on Thursday. “So until we get those test results back, we haven’t made a decision at this point in time.”
After an H&M New York employee was caught in 2010 tossing new clothing that had been deliberately slashed before its disposal in a garbage bin, the Swedish apparel company faced a public outcry and reiterated its policy of donating or recycling unsold items. David’s Bridal, a U.S. chain with more than 300 stores in the U.S. and Canada, got into hot water last year when an employee in Edina, Minn. was spotted spray painting dresses, including a $6,000 Vera Wang, and throwing them into a dumpster as the parent company was in the process of shutting down a subsidiary chain.
“[Discarding unsold apparel] was happening a lot and it is still happening,” said Kerry–Ann Ingram, sales and marketing coordinator at the retail unit of Toronto-based charitable organization Windfall, which has takes new clothing donations from retailers and manufacturers and gives them to people living in poverty or crisis.
“We came about because retailers were throwing out or incinerating their clothing,” she said. “If Lululemon is looking to donate the clothing, we would definitely take it. If they are worried about devaluing of their brand, we can always cut off labels. We do have a lot of high-end donors who do not want to lose the credibility of their brand.”
Textile recycling is another option that is gaining popularity among retailers, with companies such as U.S.-based TerraCycle using apparel and footwear donations and refashioning them into messenger bags and laptop sleeves.
Lululemon, lauded for its product and design innovation, could also recycle the fabric itself: its separate Vancouver “innovation hub,” Lululemon Lab, designs, produces and sells its own separate lines of limited edition clothing to test new ideas.