The context around Lululemon's acquisition of Mirror is important. Calvin McDonald became Lululemon's CEO in August 2018 coming off a five year stint at Sephora. Sephora is one of the best community building retailers out there, especially in the digital space.

Lululemon takes a stake in Mirror in 2019--not a surprise, Lululemon wants to be where its community is and understand how digital is changing their behaviors. Something Calvin saw firsthand with beauty at Sephora.

Lululemon needs to buy Mirror now because of COVID-19. Yes, more people are working out at home in general, but how many people are working out at Lululemon's stores now? None as far as I can tell--there are some online classes, but no in-store ones.

Lululemon lost a key traffic driver to stores and an important means of community building. Plus, the membership program, which is performing well, includes 1 free class and exclusive events. Again, those can't be done in-store anymore. Who knows when they will be able to resume?

Lululemon needs to replicate the in-store experience digitally and it's doing it with Mirror. I would imagine it will form other partnerships as well. I also wonder what this means for its store layouts going forward.

Calvin hasn't said that this isn't a means of selling more product, but I wouldn't rule it out. Sephora is a leader in AR try-ons. Mirror could build impressive capabilities there. Or in a low tech way, a better experience to talk to a stylist than through a Zoom call.

Oops. There's a typo in the above tweet. In his interview with CNBC, Calvin downplays the acquisition of Mirror as a strategy to sell product. I highly recommend that you watch the interview: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/lululemon-to-acquire-at-home-fitness-company-mirror-for-500-million.html