A major Nike rival will axe 150 workers — and it may replace them with AI.
Lululemon, the Canada-based athleisure brand known for its buttery-soft leggings and sweat-wicking men’s shirts and pants, confirmed that it is eliminating roles on its support centre team.
The affected employees handled a range of responsibilities, including product, brand, technology, digital, finance, and legal.
‘As we continue to deliver on our strategy, we regularly assess our business operations to ensure we are well-positioned for the future,’ a company spokesperson told DailyMail.com.
‘Following a recent review, we have decided to evolve some aspects of our organizational structure to operate with more agility and further invest in our growth.’
While lululemon’s support centres house a range of functional teams, independent retail analysts told CBC that the cuts appear aimed at streamlining costs and improving efficiency.
The reduncancies were likely aided by productivity gains from AI. Currently, Lululemon employs 39,000 people globally.
The company did not answer DailyMail.com’s questions about its future AI policy.
The ultra-popular Lululemon athleisure brand is expecting sales growth in 2025 – but interest in North America has slowed this year
Independent retail analysts don’t believe the job cuts indicate any issues for the brand. Still, under the hood, there are concerns.
‘They are now struggling to generate growth in their core North American market,’ Neil Saunders, a retail expert at GlobalData, told DailyMail.com.
‘With costs rising, including from tariffs, Lululemon is gently pruning roles to keep costs in check.’
The layoffs also come as the company reassesses its tariff strategy.
A majority of Lululemon’s products are made in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia — countries that could face sweeping reciprocal tariffs if President Donald Trump reinstates them.
In June, the company’s CFO, Meghan Frank, admitted that the brand would need to raise prices to offset the levies.
‘We are planning to take strategic price increases,’ Frank said during the company’s last earnings call.
‘It will be price increases on a small portion of our assortment, and they will be modest in nature.’
Lululemon’s CEO, Calvin McDonald, admitted on the company’s June earnings call that the price of its leggings would increase
Lululemon makes women’s tights and yoga pants that have rivaled some of America’s biggest athletic brands
Price hikes are expected in stores in the fall.
Lululemon pulled in $2.4 billion in revenue during its last quarter, but a majority of the company’s growth came from international markets.
The company currently operates 465 stores in the US and 760 globally.
Jobs jettisoned
Some of America’s biggest companies have announced sweeping job cuts this year.
In May, Walmart — America’s largest employer — announced it was cutting 1,500 jobs from its tech operations and e-commerce teams.
Procter & Gamble, the owner of Tide detergent and Gillette shaving products, is also undergoing significant cuts.
The company said it would eliminate 7,000 positions.
Job losses have been even more pronounced in the tech sector, as firms increasingly replace human employees with hyper-intelligent machines.
The AI-driven job bloodbath marks a major shift for American workers. For years, mass layoffs were concentrated in US manufacturing plants.
Now, they’re impacting college-educated, high-to-middle-class earners.
Microsoft — one of the leading firms investing in AI — is expected to lay off thousands of employees next month as it shifts resources toward deeper investments.
Intel, the flagging tech giant, is also letting go of 10 to 15 percent of its manufacturing staff.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently said the quiet part out loud: the technology will uproot thousands of Americans from their jobs.
‘As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,’ he wrote to his employees in a memo.
‘It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.’
So far, the cuts haven’t had a statistically significant impact on overall job numbers in the US. Last month, employers continued to add jobs.
But job creation is starting to slow.
