These days you can get almost anything and everything at Costco, but if Lululemon has its way you’ll need to shop elsewhere for your athleisure gear.
What happened: Vancouver-based Lululemon filed a lawsuit against Costco, alleging that it is selling knock-offs of its most popular products, including hoodies, sweatshirts, and pants.
- Costco’s Kirkland Signature performance pants are so similar to Lululemon’s ABC pant — which has become a staple of comfy business casual wear — that they spawned a New York Times deep dive into the similarities, despite retailing for around 1/6th of the price.
Why it matters: After years of inflation, cost-conscious consumers are turning to affordable “dupes” of their favourite products, pushing premium brands like Lululemon to aggressively protect their intellectual property.
- A plethora of online platforms have sprung up to help shoppers find products that are nearly-identical to brand-name items in categories ranging from clothes to furniture to cosmetics.
- Recently, TikTok was flooded with videos claiming to show users how to purchase brand name products directly from Chinese factories for a fraction of the retail price.
Yes, but: Paying more for a brand name product may actually mean getting a higher-quality item, at least in some cases — in the case of Lululemon’s ABC pants, the New York Times concluded that the real deal were of significantly higher quality than the Kirkland comparables.