Lululemon founder Chip Wilson has new book: highlights

Power Women are divorcées who came up through the sexual revolution and “put in 12-hour work days, kept a clean and orderly home, and did their best to give their children all the love they’d had pre-divorce,” Wilson writes. These women also gave up their social lives and sleep, he says.

Super Girls are the daughters of Power Women. They are Lululemon’s target customers.

“I defined a Super Girl to be 32 years old and born on the 28th of September. I called her Ocean. Each year, since 1998, Ocean never got a day older or a day younger,” Wilson writes. “Every Ocean in the world would be our sponsored athlete, just like Nike chooses a few specific men to sponsor.”

Super Girls’ “utopia” is to be a”fit 32-year-old with an amazing career and spectacular health,” Wilson writes. “She was traveling for business and pleasure, owned her own condo, and had a cat. She was fashionable and could afford quality. At 32, she was positioned to get married and have children if she chose to and to work full-time, part-time, or not at all. Anything was possible.”

Balance Girls are the same age as Super Girls. They are “type-A Wall Street personalities” that sought jobs at Lululemon to find a better balance in life. But they clashed with the company’s culture, Wilson says.

“They had been working 14-hour days in finance, were not dating, and could see no prospects for marriage or children,” Wilson writes. “Utopia for these women was to be zenned out, but this was not Lululemon. We soon had to rid ourselves of these Balance Girls.”