Editor’s note: This article was first published in 2023. The original post appears below, followed by an update on how lululemon’s loyalty strategy has evolved since then.

The warm-up: lululemon’s loyalty program

For over twenty years, lululemon has been providing premium activewear to consumers seeking athleisure apparel. Lululemon was founded in 1998 as a retailer of women’s yoga pants and has expanded to also sell athletic wear, lifestyle apparel, accessories, and personal care products for both men and women. The company has 574 stores internationally as well as online.

In 2019, lululemon made an investment in MIRROR, a fitness startup that sells an interactive mirror equipped with a camera and speakers for at-home workouts. The two companies collaborated to create new content for the device, which began with meditation classes. In June 2020, lululemon acquired MIRROR in a $500 million deal, taking advantage of the increasing popularity of virtual home workouts due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Incremental gains in lululemon loyalty

lululemon initiated a pilot test for their paid loyalty program in 2018, which has since undergone frequent optimisation and adjustments. The program charged a fee of over $100 and offered customers a variety of benefits, such as exclusive member-only products, access to curated events like Sweat classes, personal development content, and free expedited shipping for online orders. In 2022, lululemon declared the pilot test successful and announced their plans to implement an official loyalty program.

Enter lululemon Essential and lululemon Studio. In January of 2023, lululemon officially relaunched their loyalty program with two levels of membership. lululemon Essential is free to join and offers a suite of additional benefits and value when shopping at lululemon. lululemon Studio is a paid tier of membership and requires the purchase of a lululemon Studio Mirror and an ongoing monthly subscription.

Let’s weigh up the benefits of lululemon Essential and Studio

One of the most enticing benefits of the Essential membership is early access to product drops, as highly sought-after products tend to sell out quickly. However, Essential members are competing with one another for these exclusive products, so it is still a gamble as to whether they will be able to secure the items they want. Fortunately, members can also sign up for back-in-stock notifications for desired items that have been restocked.

In addition, the Essential membership provides access to select Studio content. Members can join the program and download the app to try out a limited selection of workout classes, with new ones added regularly.

Overall, the Essential membership is relatively appealing and enhances the customer experience for members to a certain extent but the membership fails to recognise or reward the most loyal customers or necessarily incentivise an  increase in spend or frequency. It is clear the main objective of the Essential membership is to steer members towards the Studio membership. Let’s see what value the Studio membership has to offer.

Studio members can enjoy over 10,000 World-Class Workouts, unlock a 10% discount off select clothing, 20% off at partner fitness studios, unlimited experiential store classes and early access to events. Sounds good but what does it cost?

To access the Studio membership, members require a Studio Mirror. The Mirror packages start just under the $1000 mark and scale all the way up to just under $2000. On top of the cost of the Mirror members must then pay $39 per month with a one-year minimum commitment. That is a minimum of nearly $1500 in the first year and excludes the additional accessories like dumbbells and a bench needed for most workouts and not supplied as part of the basic package. 

Will the program increase member loyalty? Seems a stretch

We have previously written about paid subscription programs and premium membership programs like Club Marriott but what is particularly interesting in this instance is that lululemon appears to have revamped their loyalty program primarily to support the acquisition of MIRROR and drive product sales and subscriptions for the glorified 1080p screen.

Unfortunately, this strategy may not appeal to their loyal apparel customer base, who may not be interested in the home fitness offering. As a result, the success of the loyalty program now depends on striking a balance between lululemon’s free membership tier that offers limited value to loyal members over regular members and MIRROR’s paid membership tier that may turn out to be a regrettable purchase for members due to upfront and ongoing costs.

When it comes to home fitness, Peloton has a similar offering, but at least the Peloton bikes still function as bikes even if a member chooses to cancel their subscription. On the other hand, if a Studio member cancels their subscription, all they can do is sit and take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Blog update: Three years later

When this article was first published in 2023, the concern was that lululemon’s loyalty strategy had become too entangled with MIRROR and the paid Studio subscription model. What followed suggests that concern was well-founded. In 2024, rather than doubling down on MIRROR alone, lululemon struck a five-year strategic global partnership with Peloton, making Peloton its exclusive digital fitness content provider and becoming Peloton’s primary athletic apparel partner. At the time, the deal looked like an attempt to keep lululemon’s connected-fitness strategy alive by bringing Peloton in to strengthen the Studio Mirror offering. Since then, however, Peloton appears to have settled into a supporting role within a broader retail-led membership program.

That partnership has not disappeared, but nor does it appear to have become the centrepiece of lululemon’s loyalty strategy. The Studio Mirror is no longer sold, Studio All-Access is no longer open to new subscribers, and existing Studio members can still access workouts through the lululemon Studio app. lululemon also continues to offer select Peloton classes through its app, which suggests the Peloton relationship has survived in a narrower form as a content and perks layer rather than as the main engine of the membership.

Where lululemon has now landed is much closer to its retail roots. Its Membership program is free to join and structured around spend-based tiers – Collective, Plus and Pinnacle – but one of the clearest signs of the brand’s pivot is the emphasis now placed on Partner Perks. Launched in August 2024 with 12 partner brands, the benefit extends the program beyond apparel into a broader mix of wellness, fitness, food, beverage and lifestyle rewards. Current partners include Oura, Erewhon, AG1, La La Land, Function, American Express and Peloton. That is telling. Peloton remains part of the membership offer but no longer appears to sit at the centre of it. Instead, it has been relegated to one partner among many, alongside select Peloton classes in the app, while the wider loyalty proposition focuses on product access, convenience, experiences and brand-aligned partnerships.

The free membership base in North America has continued to grow, with lululemon reporting that it reached more than 17 million members in 2023 and 28 million members in 2024, the most recent figure available at the time of writing. Public disclosures do not clearly show how much of that growth came specifically after the current tiered structure was introduced, but the direction of travel is now clear enough. lululemon has stepped back from using connected fitness and a subscriber-based model as the engine of loyalty and returned to a premium, retail-led model built around access, experiences and selected brand partners. In that sense, the free membership pathway endured, while the paid Studio model that once sat at the centre of the strategy has been pushed to the margins.

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