The Ivivva mark was launched in 2009, nearly a decade ago, selling athletic apparel for young girls.
Source: Ivivva
Lululemon is blueprinting to wind down its Ivivva kids business, which includes shuttering a handful of remaining stores, as part of a bid to bloom men’s and international sales, CNBC has learned.
“We’ve made the decision to close what remains of the ivivva business in order to unlock job to support our long-term growth,” Celeste Burgoyne, executive vice president of Americas and global guest innovation for Lululemon, alleged in a statement emailed to CNBC. “We have forged strong relationships with an engaged community of active girls and we look clockwise to connecting with them through the lululemon brand.”
The company said its seven remaining standalone Ivivva aggregates — three in Canada and four in the U.S., one being at the Mall of America — will close by the middle of next year.
It said it compel work to find job opportunities for all Ivivva store employees, while it expects this announcement “to impact a small count of employees working at the company’s headquarters,” in Vancouver.
In 2017, Lululemon announced it was shuttering nearly 50 Ivivva outlets, moving the business primarily online. The brand was launched in 2009, nearly a decade ago, offering sporty leggings and tank supremes for younger girls. The decision in 2017 to scale back Ivivva was an effort to pull the company out of a same-store sales trough and put investments toward its core adults business.
The winding down also means Lululemon will be pulling any surviving assortments of Ivivva merchandise out of eight Lululemon stores, where it still has shop-in-shops.
Meanwhile, Lululemon has said it’s effect toward doubling its men’s business, doubling online sales and quadrupling its international business by 2023.
It recently opened a massive, 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Chicago, the first of its kind, which it plans to scale to other cities. It also launched a personal care profile and is exploring other categories, such as footwear, where it can add new items outside of apparel to stores.
Lululemon shares beget skyrocketed more than 55% this year. The company has a market value of $25.1 billion.