Is lululemon's Guest Experience Revamp Improving Store Traffic?

lululemon athletica inc. LULU has been actively reshaping its guest experience as part of a broader effort to reinvigorate its U.S. business. Management emphasized that “product activation” is a core pillar of its action plan, with a strong focus on elevating the in-store environment and making stores more locally relevant.

Key initiatives include curating assortments by market, reducing product density to improve visual merchandising and enhancing storytelling through better adjacencies and category flow. The company has also rolled out a redesigned website and refreshed its membership program, while leveraging community activations and educators to bring the brand to life in stores.

New store formats, such as the recently opened SoHo location, showcase improved layouts and merchandising designed to deliver a more seamless and elevated shopping experience.

These efforts are beginning to show tangible benefits for store traffic and engagement. Management noted encouraging performance in the Thanksgiving shopping period, highlighting increased store visits and strong guest interactions, particularly as educators executed the updated in-store playbook. Improved merchandising helped lululemon clear seasonal inventory and successfully introduce full-price products, supporting healthier traffic patterns.

While U.S. revenue trends remain pressured, executives pointed to modest improvement expected in fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 versus the third quarter, suggesting early traction from experience-led initiatives. Importantly, guest metrics remain solid, with growth in total and retained guests across age groups, indicating that enhanced experiences are helping attract and retain shoppers even in a cautious consumer environment.

Although traffic softened somewhat post-Thanksgiving, lululemon’s ongoing store experience upgrades position it to better convert visits into purchases as product newness ramps up in 2026.

Store Traffic Playbooks: What LULU’s Peers RL & GES Are Doing Differently

As store traffic remains under pressure across discretionary retail, lululemon’s peers, Ralph Lauren Corporation RL and Guess? Inc. GES, are taking distinct, experience-led approaches to bring shoppers back into physical stores.

Ralph Lauren’s second-quarter fiscal 2026 transcript suggests its guest experience investments are translating into healthier store traffic and engagement. Management highlighted double-digit retail comps globally, driven by elevated store environments, brand storytelling and key city ecosystem strategies. Flagship and remodeled stores are outperforming, while strong in-store execution and full-price focus are supporting higher-quality traffic, longer dwell times and improved conversion despite macro uncertainty.

Guess’s guest experience initiatives are supporting steadier store traffic trends. Management highlighted progress from refreshed store layouts, improved visual merchandising and a stronger focus on brand storytelling, particularly across key European locations. These efforts, combined with better product curation and marketing activations, have helped drive improved engagement and more consistent traffic, even as demand remains uneven across regions.

The Zacks Rundown for LULU

lululemon’s shares have gained 20.1% in the past three months compared with the industry’s growth of 6.5%.

From a valuation standpoint, LULU trades at a forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio of 15.97X, lower than the industry’s 16.49X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for lululemon’s fiscal 2025 and 2026 earnings implies year-over-year declines of 10.7% and 2.5%, respectively. Earnings estimates for fiscal 2025 have been northbound in the past seven days, whereas that for fiscal 2026 has been southbound in the same period.

LULU currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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