An improved version of Lululemon’s black yoga pants are back on the market three months after they were pulled from store shelves for being too see through.
The activewear company had said the pants’ sheerness was a result of a style change and faulty production when they were removed from shelves in March. Retailing between $72 and $98, the Luon yoga pants were one of Lululemon’s best-selling items and accounted for nearly 17% of sales. Chief product officer Sheree Waterson left Lululemon shortly after the pants recall, and the company predicted a $57 million to $67 million loss in revenue as a result of the too-sheer bottoms. But despite the bad press, Lululemon’s stock shares gained 18 percent following the flap and grew another 1.9%, to $72.29, according to the AP, after the company’s announcement this week that the pants were back on the market.
In a blog post on its site, Lululemon said the “recipe” for its Luon pants hadn’t changed, but that their testing process had. “The truth of the matter is the only way you can actually test for the issue is to put the pants on and bend over,” said CEO Christine Day, on a call with investors after the pants were pulled. The new standards require pants to go through about 15 tests for coverage, according to Lululemon, who even tapped university scientists to develop a “sheer-o-metre” to measure the pants’ sheerness in various poses. Still, even Lululemon acknowledges that the method isn’t perfect, and that future problems over opacity are possible: “luon is a knit fabric—if you stretch a knit fabric far enough, it will go sheer,” the post warns.
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