Good morning. Good morning. Phil Wahba writing this morning from New York. What’s a company to do when the founder has left—but hasn’t moved on? That’s the plight Lululemon, which reports earnings today after the bell today, finds itself in more than a decade after founder Chip Wilson departed its board. Though his methods have varied—full page newspaper ads berating the board, LinkedIn posts criticizing strategy, open letters to shareholders—Wilson has been adamant that leadership is doing just about everything wrong. I delve into the drama in my latest feature for Fortune. But the question I explore is one familiar to any company with a charismatic and dogged leader who sees the company they founded fumble—and can’t stay away.
There’s even a name for it, “post-founder syndrome,” in which executives who built highly successful companies criticize successors’ perceived stumbles with an “only I can do this properly” attitude. (See: the founders of Starbucks, Papa John’s Pizza, and Nike.) In his Wall Street Journal ad last autumn, Wilson delivered a rather self-aggrandizing disquisition on why Lululemon had drifted: “A company bereft of a visionary loses its singular voice for product and long term strategy,” he intoned.
Wilson’s latest volley was to launch a proxy war, followed by open letters (many of them) to make his case and convince other shareholders to replace three directors at the next annual meeting. He hopes to reshape Lululemon’s board which he blames for letting the company’s culture of innovation disintegrate.
Things between Wilson and the company went south after he left the board in 2015 (he stepped down as chairman in 2013 in the wake of comments about women’s bodies construed as fat-shaming, creating one of the biggest crises in the company’s history). However in the first nine years following his departure, Lululemon’s revenue proceeded to triple. (It is expected to report $11 billion a year in revenue for 2025.)
Today, though, he does have a lot of company in feeling Lululemon is adrift: shares have fallen 68% from their all-time high in 2023 as its U.S. sales have slid, raising fears that it hasn’t introduced enough new merchandise or uphold the technical leadership in its activewear, and has lost brand cache to brands like Alo Yoga. And in my reporting I found that like many founders, Wilson still wields enormous influence inside the company, especially with long-time employees who saw first hand how he stoked a culture of excellence and pioneering.
Last week, Wilson went as far to warn any prospective CEO to beware of a board “that it is not equipped to support a visionary leader and the necessary transformation of the Company.”
Needless to say the CEO who takes on this job won’t just be dealing with a turnaround and a demanding board, they’ll have to manage a post-founder too. You can read the full story here.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
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Today’s edition of CEO Daily was compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Nicholas Gordon and Lee Clifford.
