lululemon Healthier Communities

Your Challenge

lululemon wants your ideas to improve the mind, body, and community of lululemon guests when they spend time in our store and community spaces. 

Winners of this challenge will have the opportunity to partner with lululemon’s R&D and Innovation Lab, Whitespace Explorations, and may see their ideas or technologies brought to life for lululemon guests.  Challenge participants will also have the opportunity to win merchandise, cash, and other awards. 

Why This Matters

lululemon is rapidly expanding and has over 450 stores around the world. If each of these spaces were to influence the well-being of just 100 guests each day, we would impact over 16 million lives a year. That’s twice the population of New York! 

These physical spaces provide a community focused influence to make a difference, and as a group they create a global network that focuses on enhancing wellbeing.

We are committed to driving innovation for societal betterment through empowerment of the individual and their communities,  and we are clear that our means to do so is rooted in discovering and elevating the potential that exists within all of us.

We need your diverse perspectives, game-changing ideas, and belief busting breakthroughs to realise our vision, and will provide you the support and platform you need to do so. 

Background

At lululemon, we believe in the three pillars of wellbeing that we call the Sweatlife: the mind, the body, and the community around us. 

For the body, we believe regular physical activity and simple whole food nutrition are the foundation. 

For the mind, we believe in emotional fitness: awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. 

For the community, we believe a human is more than just the individual, and is part of something larger.  As individuals we are a global community in a close, interconnected network of people. 

Why focus on retail and community spaces?

In an ever increasing digital world, we still see the utmost importance in bringing people together physically. Our stores are designed to be multi-functional spaces promoting community where people can not only shop, but learn, grow, and connect with each other. 

The goal of this challenge is to use your ideas to expand the concept of what a lululemon store is and could be.We want individuals and the larger community to leave our stores enriched and better than they were before entering.

These spaces offer configurability and an opportunity to regularly connect with individuals on variable cadences. What these hubs offer now will continue to evolve as the needs of the collective continues to evolve. And most importantly, we don’t take ourselves too seriously at lululemon.  While wellbeing can be serious business, we believe that true wellbeing can only be achieved if we don’t sweat the small stuff and instead, infuse fun and enjoyment in all we do.

Helpful Context Links

The links below are some of our favorite thinkers and perspectives on various aspects of proactive well-being and living better, longer. There isn’t one specific thing to take away necessary, but a perusal of these works, at a high level, should give you a sense of the angle we take when we say “healthy”, the approach toward building a codified lifestyle that is effective and accessible, and the notion that sometimes the most interesting and innovative ideas are the ones that strip out the complexity for the beautifully simple. We aren’t looking for, nor do we expect a submission to quote or reference any of these works directly. Consider them simply as a context-creator to put you on the path to your world changing idea:) Enjoy!

https://www.bluezones.com

https://www.drdansiegel.com/books/mind/

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691175317/how-behavior-spreads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBr_i1mH_08

Let your Imagination Soar

You may have an idea of what lululemon stores look like today, how it feels to be inside of them, the goal of your visit, and how much time you spend there. What would be possible if we removed those constraints?

• What if you visited the space just once for 2 hours? 6 hours? Overnight? How might you improve the wellbeing of an individual?
• What if you visited the space on a regular basis? How might you improve the wellbeing of an individual in this instance?
• What if the space was not confined by the four walls? What if the space was configurable?
• What new technology could be incorporated into these physical locations that would meaningfully improve the health of an individual and/or a community in a single visit?
• What if there was only one person in the store? What if there were 300 people?
• What if the stores were not primarily transactional and didn’t even need to make money?

Challenge Structure

You may submit your idea to one of two categories:

1. Ideation Category: Submit your high-level idea to influence the health and well-being of lululemon guests. If you were to share this idea at a cocktail party, what would you say? The submission is a short description explaining the opportunity, innovation, and action plan of your idea.
2. Proposal Category: Submit your detailed proposal describing the main details of the concept (user experience, technology, rough plan to execution)

Please see the Submission Form below for the required entry format.

You can submit multiple ideas to each round. Each idea must be submitted separately.

Prizes

Ideation Round:

lululemon will award up to 5 innovators for the best ideas in the Ideation Round:

1. 1st Place: $600 gift card and personalized fit session at your local lululemon store
2. 2nd Place: $400 gift card
3. 3rd Place: $300 gift card
4. People's Choice Awards: up to 2 winners will each receive a $200 gift card based on the ideas receiving the most votes

Proposal Round:

lululemon will recognize the top 3 innovators for the best submissions in the Proposal Round and winners will be announced on April 14, 2020. Following the winners selection and announcement, the top 3 winners will visit lululemon headquarters in Vancouver, Canada, to learn more about Whitespace and lululemon, and to present their proposals in-person to the Whitespace Explorations Executive Team*. The objective of this session will be to better determine the impact and viability of the idea and potentially to develop a roadmap for a guest facing demonstration of the submission.  The top 3 winners will each receive a monetary prize as well; $7,500 USD for 1st place, $5,000 USD for 2nd place, and $3,500 USD for 3rd place. Depending on circumstances, potential options for further integration of the idea include: 

1. Partnership in further developing the submission
2. An opportunity to showcase the technology at a lululemon event/location in front of the lululemon guest
3. A short-term contract with Whitespace Explorations

*lululemon will cover travel expenses for up to two team members to Vancouver, Canada from anywhere in the world. Winners are responsible for securing the necessary documentation/visas to enter Canada should they win. lululemon is unable to provide visa assistance.

How Do I Win?

In order to be eligible for an award, your solution must meet the following minimum requirements.  Solutions should:

1. Propose a solution that can be applied to the store environment
2. Propose a solution that is based on current scientific understanding
3. Address a pillar of well-being as discussed in the background section; Mind, Body, Community. Note, submissions will not be judged more favourably if they address all pillars.  Rather emphasis should be placed on the anticipated impact on overall guest well-being, with interventions with larger impact on guest well-being considered more favourable.
4. Focus on addressing proactive human well-being and not on alleviating clinical conditions.
5. Ft within a space the size of a store location or smaller (<1000sqft)

Solutions that meet the minimum requirements will be scored according to the judging criteria below and available for public voting (Ideation Category only).

Intellectual Property

All intellectual property rights will remain with the innovator. Please see the Challenge-Specific Agreement for complete details.

The Winners from the Proposal Round may be presented with an opportunity to partner with Whitespace Explorations to further develop their solutions and test them in a lululemon store environment. In such cases, the terms of the partnership, including intellectual property agreements, will be mutually negotiated following the competition.

Timeline

Challenge Launches: January 7th, 2020

Submission Deadline: March 3rd, 2020 at  5 pm PST

Judging Begins: March 4th, 2020

Public Voting for Ideation Round: March 24th to April 2nd, 2020

Judging Ends: April 6th, 2020

Winners Announced: April 14th, 2020

Additional Rules

Participation Eligibility:

The challenge is open to all adult individuals, aged 18 or older, with the exception of lululemon employees or contractors. lululemon employees and contractors are not eligible to participate in the challenge.

Teams may originate from any country. Submissions must be made in English. All challenge-related communication will be in English.

No specific qualifications or expertise in the field of health and wellness is required. Prize organizers encourage outside individuals and non-expert teams to compete and propose new solutions. 

To be eligible to compete, you must comply with all the terms of the challenge as defined in the Challenge-Specific Agreement.

Registration and Submissions:

Submissions must be made online (only), via upload to the HeroX.com website, on or before 5:00 pm PST on March 3rd. No late submissions will be accepted.

Selection of Winners:

Based on the winning criteria, prizes will be awarded per the Judging Criteria section above. In the case of a tie, the winner(s) will be selected based on the highest votes from the Judges.

Additional Information

• By participating in the challenge, each competitor agrees to submit only their original idea. Any indication of "copying" amongst competitors is grounds for disqualification.
• All applications will go through a process of due diligence; any application found to be misrepresentative, plagiarized, or sharing an idea that is not their own will be automatically disqualified.
• All ineligible applicants will be automatically removed from the competition with no recourse or reimbursement.
• No purchase or payment of any kind is necessary to enter or win the competition.
• Void wherever restricted or prohibited by law.