Lululemon Sues Costco for Allegedly Selling Knockoffs of its 128$ Pants

Lululemon accused Costco of selling prohibited version of its 128$ pants and plenty of other high-priced athleisure clothes.

Lululemon’s filed lawsuit on Friday reads Costco has illegally exploited athleisure brand’s reputation, goodwill and sweat equity by offering uncertified clothing for sale using imitation, breaching versions of its 128$ pants and other pricey products.

Particularly, the Vancour-based athletic apparel maker said that the Costco’s private-label line is selling similar products such as pants, hoodies, and jackets at extremely lower prices. The retailer allegedly says Costco actually confused consumers into believing that the authentic suppliers of the genuine products are trading branded dupes to Kirkland.

Lululemon put content as evidence in the 49-page lawsuit to show the alleged design similarities of its clothing with Costco’s and distinguish the price differences as well. Lululemon’s Scuba hoodie is represented in the lawsuit as an example sells for $118 by the company and Costco version is selling for just $8.

Costco’s response isn’t received yet by CNN’s request for comment.

We are an innovation-led company that puts money significantly into deep research, great development, and amazing design of our products, it’s our great responsibility to preserve and enforce intellectual property rights not lightly, and take proper legal action against violators, Lululemon said in a statement.

Lululemon said that selling dupes unfold a purpose is to lead consumers into believe that dupes conceive as Lululemon’s original product in reality they are not.

Lululemon is wanting full recovery of financial losses and soliciting unaccounted amount of monetary damage, expecting a court to demand that Costco to immediately halt vending $128 pants and other high-cost products.

The retailer has accused of others before and sued them. Lululemon filed a case against Peloton in 2021 accusing company of making similar-looking clothing. Two years later, companies partnered to vend the branded apparel after reconciling their relationships.

Quoting “dynamic microenvironment”, the clothing brand trimmed its full-year guidance, including scale down visits to US stores, the blow of levies, facing a tough competition from other brands like Vuori and Alo.

LULU’s shares tumbled 37% for the year.