If you want to learn some more about Lululemon and its philosophy this video is great. This talk was given at Google in California by Chip Wilson, the creator and founder of Lululemon. Chip discusses how and why he got into the high quality yoga clothing market, and his philosophy of “living in the moment”.

This video is about 30 minutes long, first half is the talk and the second half is questions and answers. If you don’t have the time to watch it a brief summary is given below.

Chip discusses primarily two things (i) the creation of Lululemon and (ii) the “living in the moment” philosophy. For those of you who don’t know, Chip originally designed snowboarding, surf, and skate clothing. After selling his company (Westbeach) in 1997 he started to partake in yoga. While at yoga, Chip noticed that all of the women were wearing sweats and he saw the market potential for a high-quality yoga clothing company. Chip reveals that the fabric that made Lululemon famous was originally created by him, back in the day, when he was designing women’s snowboard clothing. The original intent for the fabric was to be worn by women under their snowboard pants, so they could take their snowboard pants off in public without having to worry about exposing themselves. But, because of the cost to create these pants it was unsuccessful. However, Chip saw the potential for this fabric to be applied in the yoga industry and by creating Lululemon himself he could cut-out the middle man and keep the cost of the pants at a decent level. This is how Lululemon pants were created and how Lululemon was started.

Chip also discusses the “Living in the moment” philosophy, which is being in a state of creativity or in a state of creating something like a relationship or planning a trip. But the question that he states is “How can you create so you are always in the moment?” And he answers this by eliminating the past. He gives an example of how a bad experience in the past lives with you not in the past but in the future. If you can eliminate the bad experiences of the past then you can free your mind and you can live in the movement, and it is in this state you become the most powerful in your life. He says that as you can only hold one thought in your mind at a time, you can have the choose to have the thought to live in the moment. And this is not so bad, if you choose not to think about the past and think about living in the moment you will live in the moment, which is definitely good advice to live by. Thanks Chip for the great advice.