The 2% Club by Wellness Growth Ventures #34
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Costco Vs Lululemon…But Here’s What the Lawsuit Doesn’t Tell You 🛍️
We all know I love Lululemon. I’ve taught in their clothes, partnered with their team, hosted events in their studios. They’ve shown up for me time and time again, and I’m deeply grateful. So yes, this is a biased note—but it’s also an honest one.
This week, Lululemon filed a lawsuit against Costco over their long-running Align dupe. And here’s what’s interesting: This isn’t a new thing. That dupe has been floating around for years. But the fact that Costco—the king of bulk everything—is knocking them off? That’s the signal that Lululemon isn’t just a cult brand anymore. It’s mainstream. It’s cultural shorthand. It’s reached the level of Kleenex and Q-tip—where even the copycats are aspirational.
What Lululemon did next? Honestly, masterful.
In LA, they hosted a full-scale Dupe Trade-In Event—where people brought in their knockoff leggings and traded them in for real Aligns. This wasn’t a quiet PR move. It was a full production. A flex. A brand savvy way of turning shade into shine.
But here’s the flip side:
Shares of LULU are down 37% this year.
They just cut their full-year guidance.
And they’re citing a “dynamic macro environment,” including declining foot traffic in U.S. stores.
Let’s talk about that foot traffic. Because to me, the answer isn’t just macro—it’s community.
Somewhere along the way, they lost it.
The in-store events that used to anchor local studios? Gone.
The grassroots ambassador network that helped build real loyalty in each zip code? Don’t hate me for saying this 😣…watered down and pivoted toward more scaled influencer partnerships. Which again, not inherently bad—but different.
Lululemon has always understood how to blend performance with culture. But what made the brand powerful wasn’t just the product. It was the people. The Sunday morning run clubs. The yoga teachers leading community classes in-store. The coffee after.
Today, they might still bring on entertainers and macro influencers like Hannah Berner—which is fun and smart and needed at the brand level—but if they want store-level foot traffic, they need store-level community builders.
In a world of algorithm fatigue and TikTok trend-chasing, people are craving IRL connection. And Lululemon is sitting on one of the richest ecosystems of real-world wellness advocates—studio owners, fitness instructors, retreat hosts, local leaders—who would kill to build with them again.
So yes, sue Costco. Protect the Align IP.
But don’t forget what built the brand in the first place.
It wasn’t just leggings. It was loyalty.
Menopause Is Having a Moment—But the System Didn’t Get the Memo
I was halfway through an NPR article on menopause when I hit a line that made me audibly laugh:
“Just under a third of OB-GYN residency programs offer training on menopause, even though half the population experiences it.”
It’s the kind of stat that would be shocking—if it weren’t so predictable. Imagine if only a third of cardiologists were trained to treat heart attacks. We’d call that a public health crisis. But when it comes to menopause, we call it...a wellness trend.
The reality is, menopause is a biological guarantee for half the planet. Women spend up to a third of their lives in perimenopause or menopause.
But this gap in care isn’t just inconvenient. It’s dangerous. Cognitive symptoms like brain fog and memory loss are so intense that some women have been misdiagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. A Mayo Clinic study found 44% of women said their symptoms affected their work, and 85% said they disrupted daily life. But fewer than 7% were getting hormone therapy—not because they didn’t want it, but because no one ever brought it up.
Then came the kicker at the end of the article:
“Illinois and Louisiana have started to mandate insurance coverage for some menopause treatments.”
‘Some’. Meanwhile, erectile dysfunction meds are covered across the board—no questions asked. We’ll just leave that contrast right there.
Menopause may finally be having its cultural moment—startups like Midi and Evernow are raising capital, Gen X women are leading the conversation on TikTok, and content about hormone health is (finally) losing the stigma. But structurally, we’re still at square one. The clinical training, the insurance coverage, the funding flows—they haven’t caught up.
And for the record? I’m not mad. Just deeply unimpressed—and very curious who’s going to step up and change that.
📵 Logging off is the new luxury
Searches for “social media detox,” “landline mode,” and “how to break my phone addiction” are all surging. And it’s not just Gen Z.
Millennials are burnout-aware. Gen X is reclaiming their mornings. Even Boomers are trading screen time for step count.
This is a cross-generational shift—a cultural rebalancing—where presence is power, and IRL is finally getting the credit it deserves.
So what does this mean for brands?
Design for resonance, not just reach. The best brands today aren't just trying to go viral. They’re trying to feel true.
→ Alo Yoga turned retail into ritual with in-store breathwork, movement, and saunas.
→ The Class by Taryn Toomey offers catharsis, not just a sweat.
Show up where your people want to gather—not just where they scroll. IRL is the new frontier, but only when done with depth.
→ Mia Lind’s Hot Girl Walks became a global wellness movement because they were free, inclusive, and didn’t ask anyone to buy anything—just to move and connect.
→ Erewhon turned grocery shopping into a cultural experience (see: smoothie collabs, celebrity sightings, real-world virality).
Slow is sticky. In a sea of infinite content, what stands out is what feels—intentional, generous, human. The brands that are winning hearts aren’t necessarily the loudest. They’re the ones building trust before the transaction.
So yes, post the Reel. But also? Host the walk. Start the supper club. Design the store that feels like a sanctuary.
Because the next era of brand loyalty won’t be built in DMs.
It’ll be built in the moments that make us put our phones down—and look up.
QSBS Just Got a Glow-Up
The new BBB quietly ushered in some of the most investor-friendly updates to QSBS we’ve seen in years—and it’s a big deal for anyone backing early-stage businesses.
The biggest shift? Investors no longer have to wait five years to benefit from QSBS tax advantages. The new structure introduces a tiered system: after just three years, you’re eligible to exclude 50% of your capital gains. Hold for four years, and you get a 75% exclusion. At five years, it’s still the full 100%—just as before. In practical terms, this means if a compelling secondary opportunity shows up in year three, we might finally be able to take some chips off the table and keep part of the upside tax-free.
Another quiet win: the QSBS gain exclusion cap just got bumped from $10M to $15M. The 10x cost basis cap is still in place, but this gives more headroom to those rare but magical high-upside outcomes. And in a move that reflects how much the startup landscape has evolved, the gross asset limit for a business to qualify as “small” under QSBS is now $75M, up from $50M. That’s a meaningful shift that could expand eligibility to slightly later-stage or capital-intensive companies.
What’s wild is how bipartisan this tax treatment has always been. It was introduced under Clinton, beefed up by Obama, and now extended under Trump—proof that incentivizing innovation is one of the few things everyone can agree on.
For funds like Wellness Growth Ventures, this makes a compelling case for staying patient, playing long games, and structuring investments with this in mind. We’ll continue leaning into this kind of strategy, especially as more founders build meaningful businesses in wellness—where valuations may be muted for now, but long-term potential remains massive.
Early is hard. But when it works? It really works. And with QSBS getting more flexible, the upside just got a little sweeter.
Cheers to my obsession with menopause, telling people I’m 40 (I am not…), being a forever lululemon ambassador, QSBS getting its best glowup yet and to me logging off more in Thailand.
All the best,
Rachel & WGV Team
