New Lululemon CEO faces multifront battle to refashion company’s edge

Come Tuesday, Heidi O’Neill will likely have the loftiest to-do list in all of Canadian retail.

The former Nike executive is taking over one of the country’s most cherished brands — Lululemon Athletica Inc. — at a time when it’s lost a lot of its lustre.

Her job? Prove the 28-year-old athleisure retailer is down but not out.

“It’s a herculean task,” said Richard Leblanc, a governance, law and ethics professor at York University. “The targets are moving and there are divergent interests and expectations from stakeholders, customers, employees, investors, the founder, board members, competitors. It will be very challenging.”

While the Vancouver-based company still notches the kind of revenues most Canadian retailers would be envious of, they’ve been shrinking and the company’s Nasdaq-listed stock price has dropped from its peak of around US$500 in December 2023 to roughly $100 lately.

It’s been criticized for a lack of new styles, had to temporarily remove a leggings line that was too see-through and abandoned another that gave customers’ backsides a whale tail look.

Overshadowing much of that up until recently was an ugly, public spat with its founder, who’s grown incensed by the direction of the company and its inability to keep up with hot, new competitors like Alo and Vuori.

O’Neill will take Lululemon’s reins months after that founder, Chip Wilson, agreed in May to pause disparaging the brand — but she still has her work cut out for her.

“She’s fighting a multifront war,” said Leblanc. “It’s investors, talent, the boardroom and strategy, so she really has to have her ducks in line and hit the ground running on day one.”

Lululemon declined to comment for this story or make O’Neill available for an interview.

However, it pointed The Canadian Press toward a Thursday call with analysts where interim chief executive Meghan Frank said the company expects O’Neill “will take a deep dive into the business, evaluating our strategy and current action plan.”

Among O’Neill’s first tasks will be building relations with a fractured board, including two new members hand-picked by Wilson in exchange for an 18-month break from him publicly attacking the brand. A third board pick, with apparel product and brand experience, has been promised to him by Oct. 1 but has yet to be named.

Making sure the board members and O’Neill are all on the same page is crucial from the start because it can impact how much resistance a CEO’s ideas will face in the future and how much leeway they are given to govern.

“What you don’t want … is a new CEO fighting the board. You want the board and the CEO to be aligned, so the CEO can focus her 2,500 hours a year on beating the competition and creating shareholder value,” Leblanc said.

At the same time, O’Neill will have to rebuild the company’s ranks and quickly inspire loyalty.

When Lululemon carried out a layoff last year that partially struck its headquarters, it sent unaffected staff fleeing to nearby rivals like Arc’teryx, said Laurent Vasilescu, senior analyst at BNP Paribas Equity Research, in a recent note to investors.

The last year of turmoil has only exacerbated that flow, he said.

In August, Lululemon lost its chief artificial intelligence and technology officer after less than a year and its longtime chief strategy officer after 14. Its chief communications officer was also scheduled to leave days before O’Neill took the helm.

Departures so close to a new CEO’s reign are “increasingly concerning,” Vasilescu said, while predicting “there may be more employee turnover over the coming months.”

Retail watchers say the transformation O’Neill will have to preside over should repair Lululemon’s executive ranks as much as its store shelves.

“Lululemon has lost its innovative edge. It has become boring and predictable, and it’s simply not justifying its price points in the way it once did,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said.

“The response to this so far has been to try and add more general casualwear pieces to the assortment. Unfortunately, this has confused some shoppers and has weakened Lululemon’s reputation for being on the cutting edge of athleisure.”

Lululemon needs to get back to convincing customers its products are worth the premium prices by launching merchandise that prioritizes fit and comfort, innovating with new fabrics and technology and injecting fashion into final designs, Saunders reasons.

An update to Lululemon stores also wouldn’t hurt. Some of its locations are looking “quite uninteresting,” he said.

If Lululemon refreshed its product offerings and stores, Saunders thinks it would help win back customers and get them to spend more.

That, in turn, would help with what he sees as the company’s biggest challenge: convincing critics Lululemon hasn’t hit its North American ceiling.

Analysts have worried Lululemon has saturated its home market as it can because recent quarters brought declines in its North American revenues.

Turning things around won’t be easy because the market is “way more competitive” and athleisure spending has slowed, Saunders said.

Yet he thinks O’Neill can more than handle these tasks.

While Lululemon’s stock dipped after her April appointment announcement, she’s no retail rookie. He credits her with transforming Nike’s women’s business from a sub-category into a multi-billion-dollar growth driver.

Lululemon said she was also instrumental in reducing Nike’s product development timelines, speeding up its release schedule and shaping the business into a US$45 billion global leader.

While many investors will want to see that same prowess at Lululemon, Leblanc thinks they won’t have much patience.

After all, they spent the winter and spring waiting for Lululemon to name its next CEO and then, the summer waiting for O’Neill to start while the clock ticked down on Wilson’s silence.

They’ll want her to quickly find her footing, deliver a turnaround plan and win their loyalty, he said, so “the pressure is on to get it right coming out of the gate.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2026.