Lululemon's AI Leadership Gamble | Fast Five Shorts
Sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, and Quorso. Lululemon appoints AI veteran Ranju Das as its first Chief AI and Technology Officer, signaling a major strategic shift. Chris and Anne debate whether putting "AI" in his title shows innovation or reveals that Lululemon is lost from a leadership perspective.
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Transcript
Lululemon names its first C level AI officer according to Retail Touchpoints.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:So effective yesterday, Lululemon's current CIO, Julie Averill, will leave the company next month to pursue other to pursue other opportunities as part of a planned leadership transfer position.
Speaker A:Das, who will report to CEO Calvin McDonald, has over two decades of leadership experience, including driving AI first innovation in healthcare, financial and consumer technology.
Speaker A:He was CEO and founder of Swan AI Studios and served as CEO of Optum Labs, the R&D arm of UnitedHealth Group.
Speaker A:I can't stop thinking about Billy Madison.
Speaker A:Stop staring at me, Swan.
Speaker A:Prior to the position, he spent nearly eight years at Amazon, ultimately serving as GM for Amazon AI Services.
Speaker A:And he also has held engineering and leadership roles at Barnes and Noble.
Speaker A:And this is also our A and M. Put you on the spot.
Speaker A:Question of the week.
Speaker A:Are you ready?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Let's do it.
Speaker A:All right, here it is.
Speaker A:At Amazon and Swan Labs, and perhaps even at Optum, Ranju was dealing with an organization where tech or data were at the center of the value that was delivered.
Speaker A:This is a mindset that, that from.
Speaker A:This is a mindset shift from virtual to a physical supply chain.
Speaker A:How will he translate that experience?
Speaker A:And how will AI bring value to the physical world at Lululemon?
Speaker B:Well, A and M, better you than me.
Speaker B:I, I think A and M is right.
Speaker B:I mean, these are very different applications.
Speaker B:But I actually love Ranju's pedigree as seems CTO for Lululemon, because I think that it allows Lululemon to start thinking like a tech company instead of just an apparel company.
Speaker B:I like.
Speaker B:There's another competitor in the space, Fabletics, who actually considers themselves a tech company first.
Speaker B:They built their own, you know, supply chain.
Speaker B:They built their own engine, their own customer inspiration engine.
Speaker B:They built their own point of sale systems.
Speaker B:Like they've always been a tech company first.
Speaker B:And I wonder what, what Ron, you can bring to Lululemon to help them think differently, to get a better grip on supply chain, to get a better grip on what to manufacture, you know, what stores to drop product in.
Speaker B:Like, this is an area that Lululemon has not been successful in yet.
Speaker B:But I think maybe Ronju, with his diverse kind of AI background, will help each department within Lululemon understand where AI can support the most and how to really be thinking of the product of Lululemon, not just the products that they're selling.
Speaker B:In their store.
Speaker B:The biggest.
Speaker B:Watch out for me, though, I will say.
Speaker B:And what caught my attention about this headline was that they're putting AI in his title.
Speaker B:And I don't know that I would have done this if I was leadership at Lululemon, because I think it signals to me, like, this is the AI guy, you know, who everybody should go to about AI or like, who's expecting, you know, I.
Speaker B:To kind of.
Speaker B:Or to be the person that people go to for AI And I. I want all of my leaders, especially throughout Lululemon, I want them to be looking at how they can apply AI individually.
Speaker B:I don't think there should be, like, one person at the company who's kind of the.
Speaker B:The guru.
Speaker B:So my hope is that Ranji will be able to kind of partner with all the leadership across various teams at Lululemon to really help them figure out how to.
Speaker B:How to be thinking like a tech company.
Speaker B:How we thinking like a product company, not just thinking about their one responsibility and merchandising or supply chain or marketing or stores.
Speaker B:But that's.
Speaker B:That's my opinion of this guy and this headline.
Speaker B:Chris, what do you think?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I. I disagree with some of the points you made in there.
Speaker A:Like, I don't think.
Speaker A:I don't think Lululemon needs to be a tech company at all.
Speaker A:I think Lululemon just needs to be a better retailer and one that knows how to use tech to its fullest advantage.
Speaker A:If anything, I agree with you on the point about them calling out AI in his title.
Speaker A:I think this could be a canary in the coal mine for Lululemon, that they're a little bit lost from a leadership perspective.
Speaker A:Like, the.
Speaker A:The results have not been good of late, and now you're saying.
Speaker A:And you know, they're.
Speaker A:And you know, the media is picking this up from Lululemon.
Speaker A:So Lululemon is telling everyone, this is our first AIC suite Higher.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So that's how they're thinking about it.
Speaker A:And so you're right.
Speaker A:It does run the risk of people getting too far afield in terms of how much power this guy gets in the organization, what he wants to pull off.
Speaker A:And, you know, do you lose your focus on just creating great products and great retail experiences every day, which is what Lululemon's all about.
Speaker A:Like, I was reading today, like, they're just.
Speaker A:They're, like, throwing the kitchen sink at endorsements.
Speaker A:Like, they're endorsing golf and Formula One now and all this other stuff, and it just seems like it's Another thing that potentially something's just not right under the, you know, you know, under the covers here.
Speaker A:But to answer that question, I think, you know, if he's doing things the right way.
Speaker A:The value I see with AI and retail is a retail in general throughout its history has been set up or run, assuming everything runs perfectly.
Speaker A:And the beauty of AI, which, you know, Julian just shared on our show is that, you know, that we, you know, just shared in this 5 insightful minutes segment with us is that AI helps you with the unpredictable.
Speaker A:It helps you take action with things that you can't expect.
Speaker A:So it's tools like Corso or Simbi with its robots in the store doing the same thing.
Speaker A:That's, that's where AI's value is inherently.
Speaker A:And there's a ton of value in the store side.
Speaker A:There's a ton of value in the marketing side, which everyone always talks about.
Speaker A:But in the store side especially and on the inventory side, I can help you with what is unpredictable and that's the value I see.
Speaker A:And hopefully that's what he can do to help them become a better retailer versus I think becoming a better tech company.
Speaker A:That's where I take issue with, with that positioning.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think, I think it's hard to draw the lines right now clearly because I think that tech is important to having them have better grasps on inventory and the products that they're creating.
Speaker B:Like, I think it's, it's, it's a good hire ultimately for Lululemon, like I said in the beginning because I think, yeah, I think he will start to get those teams to stop thinking just about like what product we should put and just, you know, following our day to day operations and just pushing out product.
Speaker B:Because that's not working to your point.
Speaker B:Like that's not, that's not helping Lululemon be successful.
Speaker B:They've got inventory overages right now that they're dealing with.
Speaker B:They've got a dupe category or a dupe factor that's coming in that's undercutting them for price.
Speaker B:Like I think, I think it is important for them to have a leader like this, especially with his AI background to help them better address each of those areas.
Speaker B:So maybe not a tech company, but just getting them thinking differently about how they're deploying tech to make the stores and customer experience better.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Which is just the standard function of the CTO's job at the end of the day.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That's so funny about this.
Speaker A:Any CTO worth his salt has to understand AI, right?
Speaker A:Why does he need it?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:You would think, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
