lululemon’s Global Sourcing team is committed to producing our garments in environments that are safe and healthy, both for the factory worker and the surrounding community. Our team of quality and compliance experts spends a good part of the year traveling to our factory locations to insure these safe environments, as well as creating relationships with factories that share our core values. These relationships extend from Canada, the United States, China, Taiwan, Peru, Israel, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
In 2008, our educators in our lululemon stores were requesting more information on how and where our products are made. They wanted to provide our guests with a full understanding of our global factory environments so they could then have authentic conversations as to how our factories operate. We realized, what better way to provide this information to our store educators than to literally send them on an upcoming sourcing trip.
Two educators were chosen from a long list of strong candidates, and these two rising stars, Carolyn and Rob, accompanied Bryan, our head of global production, on a sourcing trip to China and Cambodia.
Rob and Carolyn spent two weeks shadowing Bryan and being part of the factory approval and garment production process. They inspected fabric, sat in on prototype reviews, did in line quality checks, watched third party inspections, and were able to see how lululemon insures that our products are produced in a safe and healthy environment.
Learn more about our people and our factories on the community legacies pages. For an inside look, check out pictures of our factory partners and more information on our global sourcing process here.
How about some pictures of INSIDE the factory, to give us consumers as idea of the conditions. These photos are a gloss over. I would appreciate seeing more detailed information, please and thanks
Comment by Brenda — July 17, 2009 @ 7:27 am
Calling the pictures a gloss over is indeed a baseless assumption. Go to the Community Legacies page and check out the pics in the factory.
Comment by susan — July 18, 2009 @ 6:21 am
Thanks for the suggestion Brenda! You can take an inside look at our factories here: http://www.lululemon.com/legacies/factories
~Carolyn
Comment by lululemon — July 18, 2009 @ 2:41 pm
Nope. Not baseless. No pictures to be found of Chinese or Cambodian factories. I would not expect them to be pretty or fancy, but I would hope for decent light, lack of crowding, etc. Work policies are as important as the facilities–break times, rules about who can work there (are you fired if pregnant?), and whether salaries are locally reasonable. Cambodia is really poor, so pay scales are low. But they are trying for a reputation of decent factory working conditions. Would like to know whether they are succeeding and where lululemon’s fits in.
Comment by Ann Littlewood — July 19, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
Take a look at the pictures on ‘Our Factories’ page of our website. The center image on the left column is a Cambodian factory, and the second and forth images on the left column and the last two on the right column are Chinese factories. The others images show the environments in North America and Indonesia manufacturing facilities.
It’s also worthwhile to take a look at our Code of Conduct, which is based on international principles and sets the standards for the type of work environment where our garments are produced, and the values sharedby our manufacturing partners. http://www.lululemon.com/community/legacies/code
All our active Cambodia factories are participating in an ILO program called Better Factories Cambodia. The program benefits workers, employers and their organizations by monitoring and reporting on working conditions in Cambodian garment factories according to national and international standards, by helping factories to improve working conditions and productivity, and by working with the Government and international buyers to ensure a rigorous and transparent cycle of improvement. The ILO auditors will inspect the factory every six months without notice to the factory. Our factories share with us all ILO reports and action plan and our compliance team visits the factory regularly to ensure all ILO recommendations are put into action.
Comment by Amy CS — July 21, 2009 @ 12:29 pm
Why aren’t you manufacturing clothing where your customers live? If there are no decent jobs who will buy all this great clothing?
Comment by Alex — July 30, 2009 @ 8:08 pm
I was really impressed with the look of your factories. The developing economies of Asia have a long way to go in terms of meeting international standards of quality of life, but your pictures look promising. I was especially pleased to see the factory in Cambodia, a country where people are hanging on by their fingertips. What about salaries and working hours? I have lived in Asia for more than 20 years, including Hong Kong and Indonesia, and I know that many people–even those who are ‘working’–are living beneath the poverty line.
Comment by Laura — August 1, 2009 @ 6:15 am
I agree with Alex. Why do you have to outsource your production when there is an abundance of people who can do this locally?
Locally made products means less carbon footprint, right?
-Mary
Comment by Mary — August 11, 2009 @ 8:02 am