Lululemon Has 39,000 Employees. It Calls Head Office the Store Support Centre.

There is a version of community marketing that exists almost entirely in brand decks: the language of connection, belonging, and purpose that sounds meaningful and delivers very little. And then there is the version where you send community leads into a new market six months before the store opens, have them build relationships with local gyms and studios before a single product hits a rail, and end up with a Milan store whose local revenue significantly outpaces its tourist revenue on one of the most tourist-heavy streets in Italy.

Lululemon operates the second version. Sarah Clark, General Manager for EMEA and Global Franchise, presented at Shoptalk Europe 2026 in Barcelona with a clarity about the relationship between community investment and commercial outcomes that is worth paying attention to. The session was not a brand presentation. It was an operational account of how community-first thinking translates into measurable results at scale.

Community was the founding architecture, not a later addition

Lululemon was founded in 1998 as a yoga brand. The clothing rails in the original stores were designed to be pushed aside to make room for classes. Community was not retrofitted onto the business model. It was the business model. What Clark made clear is that as the brand has scaled to 800 plus stores globally across yoga, pilates, tennis, golf, training, and running, that original architecture has been deliberately maintained, not despite scale but because of it.

The language the company uses internally signals this orientation. Store staff are called educators. Head offices are called the Store Support Centre. “Although we have 39,000 employees, the most important job any of us does is to help our educators serve our guests and build our community.” These are not just labels. They are an operational hierarchy: every function in the business exists to support the person in the store, who exists to support the person in the community.

Community leads go in before the store does

The most operationally distinctive element of Lululemon’s expansion model is the sequencing. Before a new market opens, before the store exists, the first roles appointed are the community leads and strategic sales partners. Their job is to spend months in the market building relationships with local gyms, studios, and ambassadors, understanding the movement needs of that community, and establishing the network that the store will activate against when it opens.

The result is that by the time the store opens, it is not introducing itself to the community. It is joining one it has already been part of for months. Lululemon has approaching 2,000 ambassadors globally across its store and city-level programmes. In-store educators receive monthly allowances to access gyms and studios for free. Many work part time in the fitness industry. The people serving guests in Lululemon stores are, in many cases, working out in the same studios as those guests outside of work.

In the last 12 months, just in the EMEA region, Lululemon has met 55,000 people in person through community events, from running events at Tower Hill to yoga events alongside the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

The Regent Street case study: community converts to commercial

The Regent Street store was relocated last year to a nearly 14,000 square metre site. It welcomed 1.3 million visitors in its first year, just under half of them international. The store design specifically allocates significant space to community activation: a large community board, digital screens for ambassadors, and activation zones.

The London Marathon activation illustrates the model in practice. In partnership with Runna, the largest running training app in the world, Lululemon organised training runs from 11 London stores. The store offered a Marathon-specific capsule collection, Runna collaboration products, and a discount for any runner who brought in a Runna training badge. On the Saturday before the marathon, an in-store activation zone produced over 900 personalised cheer signs for supporters. The day after the race, the same space was converted into a medal engraving zone: 850 marathon finishers had their medals engraved. Community groups Run Dem Crew and The Mapping Moves were given funding and partnership support.

The commercial results are significant. Regent Street is Lululemon’s most successful store in EMEA. It has already doubled the revenue of the original store. The NPS is 80. More than 50% of its guests are local, which is a striking figure for a store on one of the most tourist-heavy streets in London.

The Milan case study: community-first in a new market

Milan was Lululemon’s first Italian store, opened last summer on a prominent tourist street. The community leads and strategic sales partners were appointed more than six months before opening. In the year since, the store has partnered with Midnight Runners for weekly city runs with over 200 participants, held a cheer station at the Stramilano, partnered with Soho House and Barry’s, and run yoga at the Duomo and the Velodromo.

During the Winter Olympics, the Milan store became the unofficial Canada House for Team Canada, partnering with Pride Milano, hosting Olympians and IOC representatives, and running a flag run through the city with over 300 participants through the Midnight Runners partnership. The commercial consequence: the store recorded its strongest trading week during that period, in the depths of winter.

Local revenue is significantly outpacing tourist revenue. Productivity per square metre is double the EMEA average.

[SPONSOR ANGLE: Fospha’s total commerce measurement proposition connects naturally here: Lululemon’s community-first model generates commercial outcomes that are often attributed to other channels or simply not attributed at all. The ability to connect offline event activation to commercial outcomes, store revenue, NPS, repeat rate, is precisely the measurement challenge that the Fospha measurement operating system addresses.]

What this means for senior marketers

Clark’s closing argument was simple and direct. Trading conditions are challenging. The question of whether community investment is worth it keeps arising. After 28 years, Lululemon’s answer is that it is not a discretionary investment. It is the foundation.

The operational proof is in the numbers: an NPS of 80 across a 100-educator store, a 50% local customer base on a tourist street, double EMEA average productivity per square metre in a first-year Italian store. These are not the results of a brand that does community as a marketing add-on. They are the results of a brand that has structured its entire operating model around what happens before, during, and after a guest walks through the door.

“People will rarely remember what you said, but they might remember how you made them feel.” Clark used it as a closing line. It is also a description of a commercial strategy.