How a Canadian Activewear Company Used Branded Bags to Develop Their Reputation

It’s common for businesses to underestimate the impact that branded bags can have on their profits; sometimes it takes an undeniable success story to really drive home just how beneficial they can be.

Enter Lululemon, the Canadian activewear phenomenon. They produce a range of athletic apparel, with a clear focus on yoga-inspired clothing, and they’ve used branded bags to dramatically increase awareness, extend their message, and drive up sales.

When you get to the counter at a Lululemon, you’ll be offered bags in a number of formats and sizes. As well as selecting how large you’d like your bag to be, you can choose from gym bags, lunch bags, standard shopping bags, and several other options. As part of their branding strategy, Lululemon don’t even call their bags ‘bags’ – instead, what you take away with you is a ‘shopper’.

The Lululemon bag – sorry, Lululemon shopper – has become a fashion item in its own right. In fact, they’ve developed their own resale value, with eBay listings typically running from $0.99 right through to $12 per bag. That’s a pretty clear sign of the literal value that savvy branding can grant to your bags, and that desirability makes it both more likely for people to carry their Lululemon shoppers visibly and more likely for passers-by to be influenced to shop there themselves.

Styling is bold, with black, white, and red bags being the most iconic. As such, a Lululemon shopper can be easily picked out of a crowd.

Providing several bagging formats also helps; if you let people decide what type of bag would be most useful, they’re going to be likely to use it for a long time to come. Lululemon have even used their bags to reflect their eco-friendly message and Yoga-inspired design; bags are made from eco-friendly materials, and the fact that they are reusable means that they won’t go to waste.

Lululemon have become hugely influential and fashionable, and their clever use of branded bags has been a big part of what’s made that happen. If you’d like to follow their example, why not order your own branded shopping bags and see if they can help boost your business.