Lululemon CEO Christine Day, at the helm since 2008, is stepping down, sending the beleaguered brand’s stock into a 14 percent plunge while the retailer continues to recover from a costly manufacturing hiccup that resulted in the recall of its top-selling yoga pants. 

"This was a personal decision of mine," Day told the Wall Street Journal. "It's never a perfect time to leave a company you love." She also plans to step down from the board, citing exhaustion from the long work days and not wanting to begin a demanding travel schedule as the brand expands internationally. "We’ll probably hear talk that she was asked to step aside given the big black eye of the see-through pants incident, but she’s not leaving today,” retail analyst Brian Sozzi, CEO of Belus Capital Advisors told Forbes. “There wasn’t a lot of animosity.”Continue reading...

Nearly three months after Lululemon suffered a crushing quality control issue effecting its popular black Luon yoga pants, in turn causing a social media firestorm over the brand's handling of the recall, new and improved (read: not sheer) pants are making their way onto store shelves. 

The company plans to restock stores through June with its Astro and Groove yoga pants, while its Wunder Unders appeared for sale on the website this week. 

Back in March, the cult-like Canadian retailer pulled 17 percent of its yoga pants made of Luon, a proprietary Lycra-based fabric, as customer complaints rolled in claiming the pants were sheer—like completely see through, embarrassing sheer. That was quite a problem for a company that touts the benefits of yoga and its many body-bending positions. In an ill-advised move, the brand only posted one, vague blog post about the issue and recall, failing to identify the styles effected or provide any specific information for concerned customers.Continue reading...

Uniqlo, the fourth-largest retail brand in the world, has gone the way of Walmart and refused to sign the Bangladesh safety agreement, opting instead to monitor its factories on its own.

"We want to first focus on what we can do right now, on our own," Yukihiro Nitta, head of Fast Retailing's Corporate Social Responsibility group told the Wall Street Journal. He said the company also will hire a Japanese company to assess the soundness of its suppliers' factories in Bangladesh, noting that ultrasound and x-ray technology can be used to check for cracks in concrete and piping.

Most of the 30 companies who have signed, including Uniqlo’s rival H&M, are European. Meanwhile, American companies including Walmart, Gap, JCPenney, Sears and Target have all held out on the point that the agreement includes a legally-binding clause, one that they argue could hurt US companies more than their international counterparts. For Uniqlo, this isn’t the first time the company, owned by Japan’s Fast Retailing, has come under activist pressure. Earlier this year, the brand bowed to a cause to sign a detox pledge spearheaded by Greenpeace, in which the company agreed to stop releasing hazardous chemicals throughout its supply chain and products by 2020.Continue reading...

Mega tech manufacturer Foxconn has been in the negative spotlight a lot over the past few months. Despite once being the main manufacturer for Apple products—as well as a significant player for Hewlettt-Packard, and to a lesser extent, Sony, Dell and Acer—Apple recently decided to take their iPhone 4S and iPad mini business to Taiwanese competitor, Pegatron. Apple has also promised to eventually bring a chunk of their manufacturing work back to the United States to help create new jobs.

Unfortunately, Foxconn was thrust back into the spotlight recently as reports of three employee suicides surfaced. While Foxconn is hardly the only Chinese or global company to be accused of archaic and dangerous labor conditions, the recent suicides mark a new low in the category, especially since the company had previously come under fire and had supposedly reformed many of its practices.Continue reading...

Almost one month to the day after the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh killing 1,127 people, American retailers and their international counterparts remain at odds over the plan to improve labor conditions, with legal liability still at the top of US concerns.   

Gap, one of the largest American retailers implicated in industry accidents in Bangladesh has said in recent weeks that it was close to signing the proposed agreement, if only clauses regarding arbitration were removed. “In the United States, there’s maybe a bigger legal risk than there is in Europe,” said Gap CEO Glenn Murphy, according to The New York Times. “If we were to sign onto something that had unlimited legal liability and risk, I think our shareholders should care about that.” Calling the language of the agreement "vague and unclear," Gap, along with Walmart, Target, JCPenney, Sears and other major US retailers have bilked at signing the accord, despite the fact that over 30 global brands had signed on by the proposed May 15 deadline.Continue reading...

As the May 15 deadline has come and gone to sign the IndustriALL-backed Bangladesh safety agreement, the abscence of a number of US brands has become even more apparent as more than 30 international retailers have agreed to the terms defined by international labor organizations to ensure the repair and future maintenance of Bangladesh's growing garment industry. Last month, Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory employing mostly young women collapsed, killing 1,127 people.  

While American clothing brands and retailers have been actively involved in the ensuing dialogue, the only two to sign the agreement by the deadline were PVH (which owns the Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Van Heusen brands) and Abercrombie & Fitch, while Walmart and Gap publicly declared their opposition to the plan. 

To date, the list of signatories includes: Abercrombie & Fitch, Aldi, Benetton, C&A, Carrefour, El Corte Ingles, Esprit, G-Star, H&M, Helly Hansen, Hess Natur, Inditex (Zara's owner), jbc, KiK New Look, Lidl, Loblaws on behalf of its Joe Fresh and Primark brands, Mango, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, N Brown Group, Next, PVH, Rewe, Sainsbury's, Stockmann, Switcher, Tchibo, Tesco and WE Europe.Continue reading...

The death toll at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh has surpassed 900 as another factory fire has claimed an additional eight lives in the industrial district of Mirpur. 

Fortunately, the fire in the 11-story building that manufactured mainly sweaters was closed for the night and workers had left the premises, according to Reuters. According to reports, the factory's managing director, a member of the board of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association was meeting with friends in the building when the blaze broke out. The fire was fueled by massive piles of acrylic products used to make cardigans, jumpers and pajamas for customers including Britain's Primark and Spain’s Inditex Group. The eight victims died of suffocation in stairwells trying to escape from the smoldering acrylic that produced immense amounts of smoke and poison gas. Among the victims were also two local government officials.

For what it's worth, the horrific state of factories in Bangladesh, magnified by global news coverage and relentless social media attention is finally starting to have an effect on those involved.Continue reading...

Walmart is definitely getting at something with its new TV and digital advertising campaign, "The Real Walmart." By focusing on a simple and clear-eyed approach on the strengths of the company and how various huge constituencies—American consumers, Walmart workers, and the company's supply-chain participants—benefit, the world's largest retailer has a good shot at engendering more of the endemic kind of goodwill that has often escaped it.

The campaign relies on TV ads that feature real Walmart customers, another that tells the story of a 19-year old employee in Chicago, and a third that explains some of the super-efficiencies inherent in the retailer's system that may be very familiar to MBA students but whose understanding really hasn't trickled down to the rank-and-file American consumer.

"We have wanted to do this for a long time because we know that people trust Walmart even more when they understand the opportunities we provide our associates, who the customers are that shop with us and how we deliver low prices," Bill Simon, president and CEO of Walmart US, said in a press release.Continue reading...