Back in December, ‘09, the Nobel Foundations announced Elinor Ostrom as a recipient of the prestigious Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. I remember hearing the announcement on the radio and fleetingly thinking to myself, “First woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics, that’s neat, good for her.” I did not note, I’ll admit, why Ostrom received the prize or what particular area her work is in – perhaps because I was tackling extremely rainy roads and night driving just outside of Seattle.

Just recently, Ostrom’s name came to my attention again, and this time, I did look up her area of work. As it turns out, her research falls right in line with my own curiosity about the role of community in our world.

To explicate, I’ll try to sum up Ostrom’s work:

Much of today’s economic thought is structured around Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons theory. The Tragedy of the Commons model basically states that people will inevitably pursue personal gain at the expense of a group where a common resource is concerned (see my previous blog entry for an explanation of the Tragedy of the Commons). The end result of self-interested individuals sharing a commons is eventual degradation of the commons. Garrett Hardin’s suggested solution to this tragedy is a) privatization of resources, or b) socialism where nobody owns the resource. In other words, he advocates against communally managed resources (“Revisiting the Commons”).

Ostrom’s work proves that privatization and socialism are not the only answers to the commons tragedy. Instead, her work has proved that individuals will act for the good of the group even with personal costs to themselves. In some cases, Ostrom has seen that communally managed commons have actually proved to be better managed than traditional models.

In Mongolia, for example, Ostrom found that nomadic herders managed commonly shared grasslands far better than their neighbors in China who had privatized agricultural lands. Degradation of the Mongolian ecosystem made up 1/10 of the used area whereas degradation of the Chinese lands was 1/3. Similarly, in Russia, where land was managed under a more socialist regime, degradation made up 3/4 of the area used (The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences).

Based on this example, it would appear that group cooperation can, in fact, serve as a functional institution to manage resources.

Check out this video for Ostrom’s own words on her work. The video starts to get pretty exciting at the end when Ostrom explains our reluctance to engage in mutually beneficial relationships base on trust is a result of our fear of being what she calls, “suckers.” It’s entertaining; I recommend you watch it!

Ostrom argues that we need a diversity of institutions. We can’t just operation in markets where privatization is the norm, and we can’t operate in markets where nobody owns the resources. We need a multiplicity of institutions, and a communal institutional most definitely has a place in that multiplicity. Our world is complex, why would we limit ourselves?

Even with that multiplicity of institutions, Ostrom holds that the distribution of “communication, information, and trust” is incredibly important to a properly functioning society and a well-maintained commons (“Revisiting the Commons”). Successful governance, in turn, is dictated by “active participation of users in creating and enforcing rules” (The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). Participation, communication, and trust are not features of the top management down approach of the past. They are features of community.

What does all of this mean for those of us who interested in the role that community plays in our lives? It means that we could be seeing changes in the way businesses are run, in the way that conservation efforts are approached, in the way we look at global development, and even in the way we carry out the education of our youth. Group cooperation is possible, sometimes it’s better than the traditional alternatives, and it will, in the future, be incorporated into the institutional structure of our lives.

Clash of the Communities in Vancouver, BC

I am at the Olympics!

Yes, feel free to envy me for having the opportunity to witness the world’s greatest athletes going at it neck to neck, to despise me for supporting what some people think is just a corporate grab for money funded by taxpayers dollars, or to be completely indifferent to the fact that I’m in Vancouver… The point that I want to make is that the Olympics have made up the largest gathering of communities I have ever seen.

My mom and I in the middle of Olympic crowds.

First you have your national communities, people from all different cultures from all over the world have flocked to Vancouver and the Sea to Sky corridor, proudly wearing their national colors and, in some cases, traditional dress garb.

You have your sports communities: The community of snowboarders, the community of Nordic skiers, the community of bobsledders,the  figureskaters, the curlers, the hockey players, speed skaters, etc etc.

And then of course you have all the other communities not directly related to sport diverging on this one geographic point, communities of musicians, artists, protestors, and all of their fan groups.

It’s really pretty incredible to see all of these different groups in one area forming what you could argue is one, gigantic, international community united by one common goal: to celebrate the athleticism and accomplishments of our athletes.

Me, trying to be part of both the American and Canadian Nordic Ski Fan Communities at the same time... not sure if I was 100% successful.

It’s no wonder big corporations like McDonalds and Coca-Cola are sponsoring the Olympics. They suddenly have monopolized and targeted access to multiple groups of people . If they convert a few members of one of these groups into avid consumers, then they have an ‘in’! Though on a bit of a side tangent, you have to wonder at the irony of McDonalds and Coca-Cola – the gold medal winners for least healthy choice of nourishment – sponsoring one of the largest athletic events in the world. I highly doubt the athletes that appear in McDonald’s advertisements happily munch away on Egg McMuffins and fries everyday.

How do the Olympics bring in so many different communities?

There’s something about the Olympics, and other sporting events for that matter, which really excel in attracting people in a way that your average business cannot replicate. Is it because, as humans, we’re attracted to greatness? Do we always want to see the very best of the best? Partly…

I would argue that it’s because so many fans of sporting events (including the athletes themselves) become emotionally involved with their respective sports. People tie their own happiness and success to the success of the athletes. They see themselves as playing some sort of role in determining the outcome for team or idol – the louder you cheer, the faster your athlete goes (not entirely, but that’s the idea).

We are attracted to greatness, but more importantly, we are attracted to somehow tying ourselves to that greatness. If we contributed to that greatness, then we ourselves share in that greatness.

I guess the interesting challenge for your average business person out there would be to emulate the Olympics:

1. Compete like an athlete – be open and personal

2. Appeal to the emotions of your potential clients through stories of your triumphs and failures and be sure to invite them to share in those triumphs and failures.

3. Lastly, surround yourself with greatness (easier said than done!).

The communities will come flocking!

I like Ted Talks, can you tell? I think it’s an amazing database full of amazing videos featuring amazing people and their amazing ideas!

The video above features Majora Carter, founder of an organization called Sustainable South Bronx which works to promote holistic community and sustainability developments in New York’s South Bronx. Carter speaks passionately in this Ted Talk about the connections between economic degradation, environmental degradation, and social degradation. It’s an inspiring presentation and definitely worth watching!

In terms of community, I think Carter hits on a couple of important points, as follows:

1. Healthy communities need healthy environments. Carter mentions how the residents of South Bronx have higher rates of obesity and asthmatic inflictions. A community that does not or cannot care for its common space cannot fully prosper even at the basic health levels.
2. Sustainable, holistic development carried our from a bottom-up and people-first approach can lead to long term economic and social success.
3. Sometimes identifying with a community can have negative implications for a group of people. As Carter says, ”If you are told from your earliest days that nothing good is going to come from your community, that it is bad and ugly, how could it not reflect on you?”

I never thought of community in this light. I’ve always assumed it was 100% positive, and that people need and thrive in a community atmosphere. While I still maintain that people need community, I think it makes sense that sometimes the ’shared’ or ‘common belief’ that knits a community together can be negative, especially if the community ethos has been defined by society as negative. Food for thought!

Prosuming

Opening up to open sourcing as a profitable business model is one of the newest trends among businesses. Many different companies are embracing the idea that their consumers and the public at large could produce valuable contributions to product design. Starbucks, for example, allows consumers to design their own coffee drink. Puma’s Mongolian Shoe BBQ lets the public design their own shoe. Amazon.com, IBM, craigslist, and a host of other businesses are all looking to open source as a new way to market, to design products, and to compete in what is becoming a ‘prosumer’ world.

Here are some more examples of companies integrating Open Source procedures into their business philosophy:

Fashion – Threadless

Why hire a product design team to come up with catchy phrases and designs for t-shirts when you can have the public do it for free?

Threadless is a Chicago-based T-shirt company which serves as the perfect example of a business capitalizing on prosumers. All of the tees produced by Threadless are designed and voted on by the public. Up to 300 designs are submitted daily, the favorites are picked by the public, and then the winners are awarded $2,000 per creation.

According to an article in Forbes Magazine, this translates into a T-shirt company with no product design team who made $30 million in revenue in 2009, secured 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and 100,000 fans on Facebook. Not bad for a company of only 50 actual employees.

Threadless has expertly cultivated a community of loyal fans and contributors that has proved to be the key to its success.

As Cam Balzer, the vice president of marketing at Threadless says:

“We’ve got a close-knit group of loyal customers and have worked hard to build that. The people who submit ideas to us, vote and buy our products aren’t random people, and they aren’t producing random work. We work closely with our consumers and give them a place on our site, the Threadless forum, where they can exchange ideas with one another–ideas that go beyond designing T-shirts. We have consumers who have voted on 150,000 designs, which means they’ve spent hours interacting on our site … They’re part of the community we’ve cultivated.”

- Forbes Magazine

The Web – Mozilla Firefox

The widespread use of the internet plays an integral in bringing open sourcing to the forefront of business practice. Without it, companies wouldn’t have nearly as much access to the opinions and contributions of prosumers. It therefore makes sense that web browsers like Mozilla Firefox (along with many other web-based software and applications) would be open source.

Introduced in 1998, Mozilla Firefox was designed around the idea that the internet “should be public, open, and accessible.” To that end, Mozilla brings together thousands of volunteers to aid its small staff in creating products which are available for free to the public. The company’s operations are open and transparent, the entire code for the browser is therefore a public resource, and the company hierarchy not defined by seniority or necessarily ownership, but by who contributes the most to product design and ultimately to “making the internet better for everyone.”

Media – NowPublic

NowPublic is a Vancvouer-based, online news source based entirely on stories and news submitted by the public. All of the audio, video, images, and written stories come from the public. The public even chose the lead story by voting on their favorite. The entire content of NowPublic is produced by 200,000 citizen journalists living in 5,500 different cities in 160 different countries. This makes NowPublic the largest participatory news organization in the world.

Still a relatively new company, NowPublic is rapidly making its mark in the media as reliable and remarkably current. Because NowPublic’s journalists are regular people with access to technology – whether it’s a computer, cell phone, camera, or anything else – NowPublic often finds itself the first news source to run a story. Other news sources have to bring in the reporters, ship them over to the drama lugging camera equipment in a manner which isn’t entirely expedious. For NowPublic, all it takes is one person with a Camcorder and an internet connection.

In 2007, NowPublic was named by Time Magazine as one of the top 50 websites for the year.

The Gold Industry – Goldcorp

Open Source methods have even found their way to gold!

When Goldcorp CEO Rob McEwen found himself heading up a dying mining company out of a 50 year old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, he knew he had do something different and radical to keep Goldcorp from folding.

Taking a page out of Linus Torvalds book, he decided to open up to the public and allow them to tell him where to dig for gold. McEwen published all of Goldcorp’s geological data on the web – an unprecedented move in the gold industry – and waited for mass collaboration to work its magic…. and it didn’t disappoint.

1,000 people from 50 countries competed for a grand price of $575,000 in what McEwen called the Goldcorp challenge. The virtual prospecting resulting in 110 targets being pinpointed by the public. 80% of those targets were profitable and resulted in $3 billion dollars worth of gold.

Goldcorp was transformed from the underperforming, dying company it used to be into a $9 billion company. Open sourcing proved to be the company’s savior.

A New and Open Breed of Enterprise

I’ll sign out with a quote from Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams from a Wikinomics series they wrote for Business Week in 2007:

“A new breed of 21st-century enterprise is emerging—one that opens its doors to the world; co-innovates with everyone, especially customers; shares resources that were previously closely guarded; harnesses the power of mass collaboration; and behaves not as a multi-national, but as something new: a truly global business. These new modus operandi revolve around four powerful new ideas: openness, ‘peering,’ sharing, and acting globally.”

Community, Consumer Loyalty, and Word-of-Mouth Marketing

When a company creates community around its products, it ensures customer loyalty. When engaged in a community, consumers no longer feel like they’re consumers. Rather, they see themselves as guests, members, and participants congregating around a common goal or belief. That change in mindset plays an integral role in up-keeping consumer commitment and in encouraging word-of-mouth marketing.

But why stop there? If community cultivating can serve as a marketing strategy and as the best possible customer care model available, shouldn’t it be able to do more?

Well, it can. A business’s community of fans, clients, followers, subscribers, guests…whatever you want to call them… can also take care of product design.

Peering and Linux

The idea of outsourcing product design to the public has become much more popular with the invention of the internet. It is the internet that has allowed businesses to source the intellect of people all over the world. What we’re seeing, as the Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams describe it, is a “new form of horizontal organization [that] is emerging [to rival] the hierarchical firm in its capacity to create information-based products and services, and in some cases, physical things” (22).

Tapscott and Williams call this new form of organization ‘peering,’ but the act of increasing corporate transparency and bringing in the public to help design and create a product is also becoming known under different vocabulary such as ‘open sourcing,’ ‘crowd sourcing,’ ‘peer-to-peer production,’ and ‘community-based design.’

One of the most familiar cases of outsourcing product design to the public is the example of the Linux computer operating system. Linux was started by a man named Linus Torvalds in 1991. Torvalds took the existing Unix operating system, created a simpler version of it, and then posted that version online for other programmers to view and modify. Some of the programmers made changes, for free, Torvalds ended up licensing the program under a general public license, and Linux as an open source operating system was born (Tapscott and Williams, 24).

Today, thousands of volunteer programmers make modifications to Linux on a daily basis, and because it’s reliable and more importantly, free, Linux is considered an important “enterprise software keystone” for many companies (Tapscott and Williams, 24).

Linux represents the perfect example of an organization or a business sourcing the public to help design a product. With the internet, especially the onset of Web 2.0, with our still sour economy, more and more companies are adopting the open source model. It’s cheaper than supporting a bulky design team; it can be quicker than using traditional design methods; and perhaps most importantly, the transparency and trust inherent in peering and open source strategies are incredibly effective at cultivating that longed-for sense of community and customer loyalty around a product.

Of course, with that sense of community and loyalty centering around a product, businesses are rewarded with increased word-of-mouth marketing and increased participation in product design. It’s a virtuous circle. Open up to the public, allow them an opinion on the product design, secure their loyalties and their powers of advocacy, garner more interest in the product, and ultimately receive more input in product design!

I want to go into more detail on different businesses and companies that operate on the open source model, but I think a separate blog post should be dedicated to exploring those distinct examples. Look for it next week!

Collaboration = Wealth

For now, I would like to close out with a Ted Talk by Howard Rheingold on the history of human collaboration, current economic thought on human collaboration, and the future of human collaboration. In particular, I want to draw attention to the last six minutes of Rheingold’s talk where Rheingold starts to talk about how open sourcing, peer-production, and cooperation, can transform into wealth.

*Tapscott, Don and Anthony D. Willilams. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. USA: Portfolio, 2008.

A New Kind of Worker

Last spring, I came across a series of articles in Time Magazine called ‘The Future of Work.” The series stated that the coming decade will bring an end to the ‘climbing the corporate ladder’ trend that we’re all so familiar with.

The upcoming generation of workers, according to a consulting firm quoted in the Times series, will no longer be defining success by paycheck, rank, or seniority. Instead, people will begin to define success “‘by what matters to [them] on a personal level,’ whether that’s the chance to lead a new-product launch or being able to take winters off for snowboarding”(Fischer, “When Gen X Runs the Show”).

The series goes on to point out that workers are no longer as willing to commit themselves, body and soul, to their jobs and only their jobs. Balance in life is becoming a new and important priority.

A New Kind of Company?

My question is this: If money is no longer the primary determinant of success for individuals, how will this new trend affect the way our corporations and businesses measure success?

If this new generation of workers are defining success by how well they maintain a work/life balance and how often they’re able to achieve their personal goals, does that then mean that our companies will cease to operate only for money? Could there ever exist a future where entire businesses measure their success not by sales or clients but by their ability to attain certain goals while maintaining balance?

Being a bit of a realist and subscriber to free market philosophies, I’m not entirely convinced this could, indeed, be a feasible future.

However, it is interesting to note that there are already some companies who are seeking to define their success on these new, more balanced terms. The long-standing outdoor clothing company, Patagonia, Inc. is one of them.

Founded by climber and surfer, Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia has always been a little bit of an anomaly among businesses for a couple of reasons:

1. The goals of the management team and employees are closely related to the goals of the clients. Those goals are, predictably, enjoy the out-of-doors in comfortable out-of-door-wear. That’s how the company got started in the first place: Yvon Chouinard started making his own equipment for personal use.
2. The company’s long term success depends on the preservation of wild spaces.

So here we have a company run by people with personal goals of enjoying wild spaces with both a personal and corporate interest in the preservation of those wild spaces.

The end result? A company who, like the future generation of workers, measures it’s success in a new way.

As Yvon Chouinard writes in his book Let My People Go Surfing, Patagonia evaluates its success not on sales numbers but on the “number of [environmental] threats averted: old-growth forests that were not clear-cut, mines that were never dug in pristine areas, toxic pesticides that were not sprayed,” or conversely, on the positive results of dismantled dams, restored wild areas, and creation of parks and wildernesses (Chouinard, 78).

By those measures, Patagonia has been extremely successful. As of 2006, Patagonia’s 1% for the Planet program in which 1% of the company’s sales are donated to grassroots, environmental groups has caught on with over 400 other companies (Chouinard, XI). Since 1985, over $22 million has gone to environmental groups from Patagonia alone (Chouinard, 78).

A Hopeful Outlook

Every company has a mission statement. Patagonia’s is: “make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis” (Chouinard, 78). The company focuses not just on a profit or even solely on producing a product. It also brings into consideration somewhat loftier goals like avoiding inflicting unnecessary harm and seeking to sustain the environment.

Perhaps the corporations of the future will have mission statements of a similar nature that look at success from a broader, more open perspective and that make more of an effort to incorporate all three of the elements of the Triple Bottom Line (people, planet, profit) than they do today. Profit will always be an integral part of business, but perhaps, someday, people will view profit as something that ca be achieved not through the ‘rape and pillage of the earth’ but rather by doing the right thing (Chouinard).

Perhaps someday, corporate success will be defined not just by numbers in a bank but also by what good that company has done for humanity at large. Perhaps someday, the new business philosophy will be: Why stop with profit alone when your business can change the world?

I’ll close out with another quote from Let My People Go Surfing that really highlights the potential role that business can play in making our world a better place:

“A certain void exists now with the decline of so many good institutions that used to guide our lives, such as social clubs, religions, athletic teams, neighborhoods, and nuclear families, all of which had a unifying effect. They gave us a sense of belonging to a group, working toward a common goal. People still need an ethical center, a sense of their role in society. A company can help fill that void if it shows its employees and its customers that it understands its own ethical responsibilities and then can help them respond to their own.

Patagonia will never be completely socially responsible. it will never make a totally sustainable non-damaging product. But it is committed to trying” (Chouinard, 259).

*Chouinard, Yvon. Let My People Go Surfing. New York: Penguin Books, 2005.

Wow. I thought I was being original when I first came up with this topic for a blog post. Turns out there’s a lot of debate floating around on the world wide web about whether or not Vancouver’s famed yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, Lululemon, is a corporate cult. Check out these two interesting articles on Lululemon’s cultish traits: “Lululemon’s Cult of Selling” by Fast Company and Lust for Lulu by New York Magazine.

Lululemon fans as pictured in New York Magazine's article "Lust for Lulu"

Defining our Terminology

Let’s start with a look at definitions.

Cult (as per Google)

• followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices
• fad: an interest followed with exaggerated zeal
• followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion or sect who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader
• a religion or sect that is generally considered to be unorthodox, extremist, or false

Community (also per Google)

• a group of people living in a particular local area
• common ownership
• a group of nations having common interests
• agreement as to goals
• residential district: a district where people live; occupied primarily by private residences
• (ecology) a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other

Based on these two definitions, it would appear the main difference between ‘community’ and ‘cult’ is the intensity of fervour possessed by the members and whether or not these members consider themselves as existing fully outside of society as we know it.

‘Community’ is made up of people with similar interests; ‘Cults’ are made up of people with similar beliefs, or zealously-held convictions rather.

Lululemon Cult?

As I said before, whether or not Lululemon Athletica is cult-like is a controversial issue.

Lululemon certainly seems to employ features of a cult. The company was founded in 1998 by Chip Wilson, newly ‘awakened’ yoga practitioner and avid subscriber to self-help books like The Secret and institutionalized inspiration such as that provisioned by the Landmark Forum.

Employees at Lululemon are required to subscribe to Wilson’s recipe-for-success-literature-and-educational-institutions. I’ve heard rumors to this end which almost makes working for Lululemon seem like something of a creepy employment option. Employees are required to listen to self-actualization tapes, told to post posters outlining their personal, health, and professional goals for all to see (and assist where needed), asked to indulge in literature like The Secret and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and after one year of employment, sent off to participate in a three-day Landmark forum.

According to the aforementioned New York Magazine article on Lululemon’s cult-like operations, the Landmark Forum has been accused of being a cult for quite some time…since the 70s actually. It’s a program “specifically designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of your life – in just three days.” Hmmm, could that be three days of brainwashing? Most attendees become what you could call full converts who believe quite passionately and fervently in the gospel of the forum. In other words, they become members of the Landmark cult. Chip Wilson could be one such member, and his corporation’s push to bring employees into the family of the Landmark forum could be interpreted as corporate cult cultivating.

The Lululemon Community

In light of the above, while I suppose what Lululemon does is a bit cult-like, the company also fully cultivates community. I suppose this is logical considering cult is really an intensification of community.

"Friends are more important than money?" Perhaps it should say, "More friends equals more money."

One of Lulu’s foundational philosophies is that “a company can only be truly great when it has a close relationship to the community it serves” (see Lululemon website). In order to get closer to its spandex-wearing, flexible “yogini” community, Lululemon has sacked the traditional retail ‘salesperson’ and replaced them with Lululemon-termed ‘Educators’ who exist to communicate the company’s core values and product information to customers….errr….’Guests’ I mean.

Both Guests and Educators both have access to free yoga classes, usually on store premises. They’re also encouraged to share their goals with the ‘community’ and work towards personal growth through what resources Lululemon graciously provides including its online forums and social media. In this manner, Lululemon is not only representing itself as a clothing company to consumers but rather as a means for personal development.

Lulu has also sacked the traditional methods of advertising in favour of 100% word-of-mouth marketing. Instead of TV commercials and ads, the company as recruited ‘Ambassadors,’ or athletically fit and inspiring individuals (usually yoga instructors though also triathletes and runners) who spread the good Lululemon word to newcomers.

With a simple change of terminology, some free sessions of downward dog and toe-touching, and innovative marketing ,Lululemon has managed to change itself from a retailer into a community hub. And not just that, but it’s managed to “grow from a single storefront on the surfside of Vancouver, British Columbia, to a public company with more than 100 outlets and $340 million in annual revenue” (Fastcompany.com). Lululemon makes $1,200 more per square foot than J.Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch using “virtually zero advertising” (Fast Company).

Cult Brands

Cult? Community? Who cares? Whatever Lululemon is doing, it seems to be working for the company in terms of sales.

Douglas Atkin, author of The Culting of Brands, would argue that Lululemon is successfully forming its brand into a cult. Atkin would add that, if you’re wanting to sell a product, ‘cult’ is not a bad thing.

According to Atkin, our society has progressed to such a state of consumerism that branding is no longer used, as it was traditionally, to validate the quality and authenticity of a product. Instead, brands are used to differential products. As Atkin says, “Nowadays, producers of brands realize that the consumer needs to say: ‘No, this is my product, I identify with it. The Apple computer is my computer because it stands for creativity and nonconformism, just like I do’” (“Interview with Douglas Atkin.” PBS) . Basically, there’s too much stuff out there, and a lot of that stuff really isn’t that much different from other stuff except that it might be branded differently. When a brand can get a consumer to identify with it, to see it as a representation of who they are, that’s when the brand starts selling the stuff.

The best way to get a consumer to identify and claim a brand as their own is via word of mouth. People trust their acquaintances far more than they trust advertisements or commercials. According to Atkin, advertising as it was done traditionally is on its way out entirely as more and more companies embrace word-of-mouth marketing strategies. Creating a Cult Brand is the best way to fully take advantage of word-of-mouth-marketing.

I should point out that cults aren’t necessarily bad. They have a negative connotation to them, but that’s probably more likely due to the fact that you tend to hear about satanic cults or suicidal cults more than you hear about the harmless cults. Atkin says, “We need cults, and the people who join them are very, very normal [...] And the reasons they join cults — and cult brands, as I learned from my research — are universal reasons to do with the human condition. They join because they want to belong to something, and they want to make meaning. They want to have a reason for being. Those are two very, very simple reasons that all of us in the human race need to express” (Interview with Douglas Atkin.” PBS).

The empty clothes racks and increased profits indicate that Lululemon is meeting with success in its efforts to create meaning and sense of belonging for its ‘Guests.’ Yes, the company does step over the line between community and cult in the way it tries to imbue its employees with Landmark Forum and self-help-book scripture, but the way it engages its community is highly effective in upping sales and bringing in the cash. Zero advertising, ambassadors armed with the word-of-mouth, and an interest (even if it is just a perceived interest) in connecting its clients to a healthier lifestyle through free yoga classes and other such resources are all brilliant innovations for a business model of a new century.

To quote Atkin again, consumer loyalty “…comes from a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and a sense of buying into something – a worldview in which [the consumer] believes. ”More than community, more than cult, Lululemon is cultivating consumer loyalty, and it’s that loyalty that is proving to be the key to the company’s success.