Lululemon Opening its First Men’s Store

Lululemon, the Vancouver-based active wear retailer best known for its women’s yoga pants, is opening a men’s store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood this month.

The 1,600 sq. ft. store, scheduled to open on Black Friday is casting a much wider net for its male customers, who aren’t statistically as yoga-crazed as their female counterparts. Lululemon’s male-focused social media campaigns have been featuring rock climbers, runners, surfers, skiers and snowboarders.

Lululemon’s SVP of men’s Felix del Toro told Time Magazine today about the target customer: “We call him the ‘athletic opportunist’,” del Toro says. “He’s a guy who does a variety of things, whether he’s on vacation and he’s going to pick up surfing or in the mountains going skiing for the weekend. He could be a team sport player, he could be a triathlete, he could be a marathon runner.”

Del Toro said that Lululemon will open men’s stores in Santa Monica and Miami before the end of year.

Lululemon was founded in Vancouver in 1998 as a retail space inside a yoga studio. The company operates about 270 stores in the U.S. and Canada. Its men’s business has historically been less than 15 percent of total.