We are, we're gonna get started. Thanks, thanks for being here again. Hope you guys enjoyed yesterday. I'm just gonna do quick logistics. We'll have some presentations in this room this morning. We'll go do a quick lunch, pretty early, around 11:30 A.M.-ish, something like that. We'll come back, a couple more presentations, and then Q&A. We'll get most of you to the airport on time for your flights. And, yeah, so we're excited about this morning. I was given two slides in this presentation. This is the first one. Please, please take notes. Please take note. This is not my slide. This is Calvin's slide, and you'll see my second one this afternoon. So, Calvin, over to you.
Right. Did you tell them where the washroom is?
Oh, yeah, I was supposed to do that.
They're very awkwardly behind the stage, so just so you know. I get the mouse. Thank you. So we promised to keep you moving yesterday, and today is probably the day where you get all the information you want, but you're gonna have to struggle through day two of jet lag. But we'll try to keep it moving. I know you're gonna get a chance to meet the management team, both local, as well as André and his team members, as they share our international growth story, which is really why we wanted to bring you out on this trip. We talk a lot in North America about the business globally, but I think it's great when you can come and see it.
So we just, again, really appreciate you taking the time to join us, to be here physically, 'cause I do think seeing it is very different than me always talking about it. And I do hope yesterday what you were able to get an appreciation for is the quality of the brand expression here, the quality of the assets, the uniqueness, approach, attention to detail that goes into store design, making it locally relevant to the community, the strength of the educator and the store management team. All these things are important when you're in a super growth organization, to make sure you're building the culture, building the talent, as you're equally building the volume of the business.
Hopefully, you got a sense yesterday. We're really energized about the people that Sun Choe, Eric continue to recruit, develop, and have, you know, interacting with our guests. We had a chance to see the mixture of portfolio, from traditional mall-based stores to local community, to obviously, Kerry Centre, more of our traditional flagship store. As well, the World Mental Health Day execution, which was one of a few of the larger activations that we do in this region. We kick off with a run event in the spring. We do Summer Sweat Games in the summertime, and then the World Mental Health Day this time of year. Thousands will go through that booth, the museum that you saw. They will participate in live sweat events, both recovery, training, and yoga.
It's just one of many ways in which we are building the community, the relationships and the uniqueness of this brand. I do think that foundation is so incredibly important, and it's one of the big differentiators that I see, being, I guess, a Western brand building our business here is: Could we go quicker? Sure. I think I've said that to many of you. We could go quicker in any of our international markets, but we choose not to, 'cause we believe building that foundation is critical. It's what differentiates us, and it takes time to build that foundation through events, through building relationships with ambassadors, building your collective, activating events, and nurturing that.
We've always taken this approach of being globally a global brand that's locally relevant, and local relevance is empowering, and you're gonna hear from Lynn later, empowering the team to activate the brand, to connect ways in which are relevant to each of those markets. So we want to represent. So every store you went into, you knew you were in a Lululemon, but there was that unique local sense, and then clearly through our activations. So I think the strength is through the community and the relationships in every market.
If we brought you to Japan, if we brought you to Australia, if we brought you in through Europe, you would see sort of that eighty/twenty balance of where the global shows up and then the nuance and the empowerment of the local team to really bring the brand to life through that community connection, which has always been a big driver of ours. From an agenda perspective, I'm gonna hand it over to André. Then you're gonna hear from San Yan. Elliot will walk you through merchandising product and the team plans that he's championing. You're gonna hear from Lynn on all the brand activation community initiatives. Gareth will share Asia Pacific point of view.
André, I think, is also gonna talk a little bit to EMEA in Europe. You're gonna get a really full comprehensive international conversation. Meghan will share some perspective on numbers. No new guidance. I think she mentioned that yesterday. We're gonna be all on the panel for any Q&A you have. We're gonna try to flow through the presentations. Write down any questions you have, and there's definitely gonna be Q&A time, if not during breaks, as we did all day yesterday, but sort of a panel at the end. I'm just gonna touch on a few slides. Obviously, you're familiar with our Power of Three 2 growth initiative that we shared. This is our third year. No changes to the pillars.
It's driven through product innovation, it's driven through brand and community activation, and it's driven through market expansion. The goal is to double men's. The goal to quadruple our international and to double our digital is what the team continues to work towards while making impact on people and planet. End of this year, we have guided we are ahead of plan, ahead of schedule. International business continues to perform incredibly well for us. I think the math in this, if you work it out, is sort of low thirties is the CAGR. And that the international business to date through the three years is operating closer to the forties. So we're running ahead there.
We've talked about the opportunity, Canada, strong opportunity in US women's, that the team is working through from an opportunity perspective. But guiding ahead of schedule through to the end of this year and really what is still driving for the next few years, the initiatives that we'll talk to and share with you. Our international business, we break it into the three regions, EMEA, Mainland China, and APAC. It represents a total of 21% of our revenue. We're in 26 markets, over 300 stores, as you see, and André and the team will lay out which ones we are in through our own strategy, a franchise strategy, and how we think of market entry moving forward.
You know, I think the main headline is we have significant runway of growth in the markets we're in, and we're gonna continue to invest, develop, and grow those. We will continue to seed incremental markets, and André will share some of those with you. But definitely, when we look at our international portfolio and we look at the markets we're in, we are single-digit market share. We are, in most of them, single-digit brand awareness, just a few that are in the low teens. So a real opportunity to just continue to invest and build, as I said, that foundation through community activation and incredible stores and great teams. I think I've said a few times, international today, 21% of our business, there's nothing preventing, you know, as we look forward, the portfolio being a 50/50.
Now, we continue to see growth in North America, so I'm not gonna get to 50/50 because North America is not growing, but it's to indicate, obviously, international is gonna continue to outpace our North American growth. But 21% today, two and a bit years left in our current Power of Three x2. And when we think of the next five-year growth plan and beyond, there's nothing systemic that's preventing this brand through our modeling, through the success and the way it's resonating, that we don't believe. We continue to see this outsized growth internationally and building a mix of the portfolio that is 50/50 when we look at the global scale. So it really is a Canadian brand that grew up in North America, first went to Australia, and now in 26 markets, and seeing double-digit growth in every market we're in internationally.
Seeing huge pull from the guests in every market we're in, and as I said, taking a very measured approach to build that foundation, to connect locally with the guests so that they see it, quite frankly, as their local brand versus a Western brand that has come to sort of project a point of view. We wanna, you know, grow up locally and work with them on really just their well-being through movement, which is our point of view. But we're gonna talk about our opportunity in China Mainland, which is a big part of our international. Not the only part, as you'll hear from André and Gareth, but a big part. It most likely next year will become our second-largest market internationally. In 2023, we grew 67%.
Year to date, we're just below 40%, so you're continuing to see this momentum in this market. What I hope you walk away from is realizing, even in Shanghai, Beijing, where we have a number of beautiful stores and assets, there is significant room for growth, not to mention Tier One and a half, Tier Two, and testing in some Tier Three cities, the digital, the growth, what's happening in the market, the focus on movement and well-being and health, working with local partners who notion of Healthy China and the role that we can play and are playing to help drive that initiative. It's exciting to see that opportunity. Lastly, I'll touch on, and I sort of alluded to it at the beginning, is the importance of our culture.
Internationally, whenever I go to a store, I always sort of, you know, stand, try to imagine closing my eyes and just feel that vibe, that sense you get within a store. And does it feel like a lululemon? Am I hearing the educators interacting with the guests, sort of the same level of enthusiasm? Are we collectively waking up in the morning and going for a sweat before we have a meeting or a town hall? These are the unique attributes of the culture that really puts this notion of winning matters to us. We're a high-performing organization, but how we win matters more, and we win through others. So is there that team spirit, performance driven, but is movement and well-being and guest at the center of the culture?
And do you feel that everywhere we go as we grow to make sure that sort of is the nucleus of this organization? And again, hopefully, I think, what you experienced yesterday, what I continue to experience, been asked a few times. I usually in market three to four times in mainland China, APAC twice, usually a race or two, which Gareth always looks forward to getting him and the team out, and EMEA once, is sort of, you know, sort of my travel internationally, not to mention North America. And a big part of that is because you can't say culture matters if you're not physically in market, interacting, talking to the teams, and you know, living the sweat life, as we call it, with them, to represent.
So, with that, we're just getting started, and I'm gonna hand it over to André to share with you just where we are getting started internationally and with EMEA.
Good morning, everyone. It was really a pleasure to have you yesterday, visiting stores, and the teams were so proud to have you. As Calvin, you mentioned, there's nothing that beats this kind of seeing live and experience it for your own self, so it was great to see. And for you, it gives you the idea of how we build our brand, store by store, community by community, and market by market. I think, Calvin, you referred to that. So it's three regions, but as you know, we say we separate mainland China and the rest of the world with APAC and EMEA. So that's how we kind of communicate the results period after period.
We are already at more than 300 stores and 21% of the business. We presented to you two and a half years ago the Power of Three x2, right? Half of you, I think, were there in the room, and I stood up and I say: "We're going to quadruple the business." Okay. You have a good time there because it feels bold, you know. You kind of have a little bit of clapping, and then two years later, you need to show, so where are you by doing that? Because nothing beats the numbers. At that time, we were at around $960 million business on the three regions, so international.
We closed last year at $2 billion, meaning we double in this first part of our five-year plan, our business. Yes, San Yan and the team opened the champagne because they reached the $1 billion mark. That was a goal for China, so it's quite spectacular to see how much China helped contribute. Also, it means that the rest of the world also represents a billion. That's super important for us because then we have an approach that is maximizing the portfolio of markets and making sure that we tap into the opportunities, market after market. To give you a sense of, you know, the journey, we used to have eighteen markets. We are at 26 now. 167 stores. We close at 309.
So it gives you the size of the development of the stores, like the ones, the four that you visited yesterday. And in terms of employees, we double them, and as you know, most of them are retail educators, so we invest a lot in making sure that we own this relationship with our guests. And also, it's good to have doubling the business, but we are a premium brand. We want to have a premium experience, so the way we do it is really position ourselves in a premium way in the market, rooted in our purpose, the wellbeing for all. We achieve that, and microeconomics, politics is quite uncertain. So by saying that, I'm saying that we can trust the strength of our business model. And to tap on those, I think, Calvin, you mentioned them.
First is the product superiority. It comes back and back. It's so critical to make sure that every guest that enters in our doors or connects online understands the fabric, the fit, and the design, and that makes, over time, the loyalty once you recruit the guest. So product superiority, we have been investing in each region. Now we have a buying team, planning allocation team, to make sure that we curate the range, that's the global range, to the local needs. And for us, has been really important to then have a lot of product education, the science of feel for every educator, for them to be equipped to present in an engaging way, our products to the guests. So product superiority. Second is our direct-to-consumer model. We don't delegate this interaction with the guest to customers, right?
We own it, and it means that we will deliver premium experience to each one of the guests, premium pricing, realization, to make sure that that's our go-to market and our way of, of doing business, and the third, you've been to the exhibition yesterday, where we have the communities, the activities, and that's super important. How do you become relevant as of day one in any country you enter? It's through communities. It's through having people in the store that speak the language, that are engaging with the guests, that know the ambassadors around the stores, that understands who are the opinion leaders of the Sweat Life, of the categories that we participate in, the yoga, the running, the training, the tennis, and so on and so forth, and that creates advocacy for our products....
what you saw is the flywheel, right? Then there is advocacy for our product. It goes into our DTC, direct to consumer, and we keep kind of spinning the wheel to get the traction and the momentum in the business. So where are we? I think you pointed out, Calvin, is to say we were 15% of the total business. We closed last year at 21. We foresee, at the end of the five-year plan, a 31%. And yes, in a potential future, a 50%. And as you mentioned, quadrupling the business is in arm's reach. It means a 30%, around a 30% CAGR, and we are at 44%, so far. So we're on track to achieve our targets. You mentioned, too, unaided awareness. What's the potential ahead?
Instead of building too much of a, you know, an analysis of the different levers, I think this is very compelling. This is the unaided awareness, that when you ask the question of people, guests that are potentially buyers of the premium activewear, so it's not total population, then, I wouldn't even be able to present numbers to you. This is on the guests that are able to, to kind of be participating in our business. You can see our oldest market is Australia, 28%. China, we spoke, 15, meaning 85% still. We will do a much to develop, and Lynn, you will come back to that, and the other markets are below 10%. So with this, we want to underline and show how big is the opportunity and the momentum that we can build ahead.
So that means that we are at early stages of our growth in international, and we are going to deploy our four strategies. That is, you know, the retail expansion through new stores opening and optimizations. Digital is a fundamental part of how we also scale and the reach of our guests. Building brand awareness, activation, brand building, and also start seeding the future markets to keep kind of having markets that will complement the main markets that we operate. I'm going to come back to briefly each one of them, and the first one is the new store openings. There are three ways for you to kind of dimensionalize that. The first is having great flagship stores in the key cities around the world, especially the capital cities. So you saw Kerry Centre.
So in Shanghai, it's the stage. It showcased the brand so powerfully. And we have in Beijing, we have Sanlitun, opened earlier this year. So Champs-Élysées, Regent Street in London, Chadstone in Australia. So big format, present the breadth and the width of the range and the activation and the engagement of the guest. And on those, not only we can tap into the local guest, but also the traffic driven by tourism. We have a significant component that brings with the tourism in all these key cities, making those stores really not only great in terms of sales, but very profitable. The second lever is new stores opening. So we are going to continue opening stores.
We were, you know, discussing yesterday in China, for example. Had a question: What about beyond Shanghai and Beijing, right? And how many of the key doors in the top 10 in China are not in Beijing and Shanghai? Seven out of 10. So it illustrates the breadth of the possibilities we have in keeping building our network of stores. And we see a future where we will have more stores than in the North American business over time. Digital is a fundamental part of our business. In APAC and EMEA, we invest as much CapEx in digital than in a store, because beyond the key cities, beyond these anchor doors, we need to reach the guests around the countries.
We will keep investing in our user experience, in making sure that the payment, the easiness to shop in us is gonna be really strong. Brand activations. I think I won't be too long here because Lynn, you will take the example of China and tell us how you dimensionalize the brand, how you engage the guest in a unique way, and keep building this advocacy and the brand awareness for the brand. Without forgetting new markets. Let me come back to new markets in the approach, in the EMEA section, just right after now. We will keep seeding new markets to keep kind of having the momentum going. Of course, everything underpinned by our product superiority.
Elliot will, you know, detail for international, as you are leading that area, how we are going to leverage fully the potential of our product superiority to achieve the goals that we have. That's the four key strategies, you know, enhanced by the product, and that will make us hitting quadrupling the business for international. San Yan, you are in the room, Gareth also. Sarah Clark, that leads Europe, is not part of the presentation, so I'll tap into EMEA just briefly to share with you how also we're tapping into the opportunity for EMEA. There are three things to consider. First, the big markets. There are two maximized markets that we have in Europe, which are the U.K. and Germany.
They have the biggest premium activewear potential in the market, and there, we will deploy the full activation of the marketplace, including top-of-funnel media marketing, to just step up significantly our awareness in those markets. Those markets also, we are constantly improving our footprint. This year, I think it's just as we speak, like Saturday, we are opening Berlin Mitte. We are relocating and optimization, so we are doubling the store there. Regent Street will be next, at the end of plus 50% footprint. And we know that the recipe is successful. When we double the size of the store, the productivity per sq ft of the sales increased by 180%. So we know that then we have the leverage because then we have the store manager, et cetera.
So it's also key in those cities to keep kind of rejuvenating our footprint, especially in those two markets. Then we have the scale markets, which are the other big five countries. We opened Champs-Élysées. That was less than two years ago, and immediately it is in the top three of our stores in Europe. You see here the execution of you know the Olympics, when we were in Olympics, Team Canada, the activation, that was a highlight. It was great to have this beacon store to really you know express to the world at that stage our partnership with Team Canada. And you have Madrid. So in Spain, we have Madrid and Barcelona. Same, top five stores in Europe immediately.
We see that the scale markets immediately are ready to take on and keep growing. And that's the list of markets. Before going to each individual kind of market that you see here, we use the Sweat Index, which is the mix of premium activewear market, how many of the guests in each market or city is able, interested in the category, can afford participating into that. Second, the ease of doing business. Can be, you know, the regulations, can be the access to real estate, so ease of doing business. And third, the proper Sweat Life, which is how many studios, how many clubs, how many fitness centers, and all that gives us an index that then we prioritize the next markets to go.
Accordingly, we will open two stores in Italy next year, mid of the year. One in Milan, six months before the Winter Olympics, and you know that we have a range quite spectacular for the Winter Olympics, and in Rome, the two major cities of the market. Then it's Istanbul, also, like at the end of Q1, we'll have a store, probably a second store, east, west, in a city that's more than twenty million inhabitants and receives every year, lots of tourism. I won't detail them all, but Prague, Brussels, and Copenhagen are also in the roadmap of cities that we are going to open.
And we will do that with a mix of own and, as we use in Europe, is the case for Turkey. We'll have a franchise partner, as we do in the Middle East, to help us in this market for this complexity. So that's for retail expansion, key city approach, and of course, digital. Digital Europe is our highest market in terms of digital penetration. We're close to 50%, and we will, you know, invest in our user experience. And also, we selectively chosen Zalando as a marketplace in continental Europe to complement our reach, traffic, and we saw that 95% of the guests we received through Zalando were new to the brand, and we know that after a year, also more than 50 then shop within our stores or our own website.
A lot also happening in terms of digital. That's about it for the highlights on Europe. I just wanted to summarize, and you will see that, what are our key competitive advantage that position us to win in the future in our markets? Product superiority, I think it was clear. The community activations, you will see more of that. This Omni-operating Model, which is direct to consumer, owning this relationship with the guest, and the culture. And you mentioned that, Calvin, it, it's, you know, I don't know, Howard, if you do press, you know, quarterly release, how you speak about people, how you transform, to say, you know, this is the secret sauce of the company is the culture.
It's how you make sure, as a retailer, you have the best motivated people that are engaged, that are engaged in a unique way. Day after day, these unique relationships that they build with their guests, that brings, you know, the product to life with the science of fit, which brings, you know, the emotion and the interaction, and then the loyalty, because then they know the guests. In the example of China, you saw that they can continue this conversation with their guests, with the WeChat and the WeCom. It's the fundamental, I would say, base of our success for the future. When it comes to community, it's better for me to show you a video.
To have, in the case of China, you're hosting us, you prepare it to say in the last year, what have been the major community activations that we've been doing in the marketplace? Thank you very much.
Good morning to all of you. I'm happy to see you again this morning. When I started in lululemon, we only had ten stores, and we're barely trying to figure out how we operate in China. And our office is actually at WeWork. And fast-forward today, I'm really privileged to be in this journey, in this organization, with my team, to witness the growth and the success and the opportunity that we see in this market. As you saw in the video, as well as the World Mental Health Day execution at the West Bund yesterday, we have successfully infused a local flair to a global brand, and how we actually help to forge a closer relationship with the community in China.
Our ability to blend global brand value and expertise, as well as our local culture understanding, has always been a key success of our in this market. As we examine our current landscape in China Mainland, the athletic sector has experienced remarkable growth. This growth is mainly driven by government initiatives such as Healthy China 2030 Plan and the rising awareness of health and fitness in China. The pandemic has actually opened up the public's understanding of wellness beyond just physical fitness into mental health being, as well as work-life balance. During the recent Two Sessions and annual meeting conference in March 2024, key priorities were identified as drivers to promote growth in the country, and that includes well-being, sports, activity participation, and hosting large-scale sports event.
This China sportswear market has grown over 20% since 2019, making it one of the fastest growing category in the retail segment. With more than 500 million people in China participating in regular sports, and that includes running, yoga, as well as fitness classes. This increase in participation has also created a strong demand for apparel as well as sports equipment, and the Chinese consumers seek products that are both functional, stylish, and also tailored to their local lifestyle. However, we know that the broader economic landscape remains a little uncertain. The Chinese economy shows signs of recovery after COVID, as partly driven by government stimulus to aim at boosting consumption, but yet consumer spending remains a little lukewarm, but we have noticed a shift in experiential spending that has emerged in most of the cities in China.
The consumers are now prioritizing experiences over material goods, and these experiences include dining, traveling, entertainment, and more relevant to us, fitness, outdoor events, as well as well-being events. The shift towards experiences now intersects with the current economic climate that's creating potential uncertainty in some consumer behavior. They're more cautious about discretionary spending, especially on non-essential purchases. Our industry is less impacted by these trends. This durability really depends on our ability to deliver relevant, functional products that continue to support our Chinese guests in the pursuit of active lifestyle and their experiences. By aligning our offering and our consumer priorities, we can actually help to mitigate some of these challenges posed by the economic climate. Over the years, the Chinese activewear market has become increasingly competitive. Local brands now have been promoting their product with better quality and speak directly to the Chinese guests.
Our strategy in this environment is really to combine our global brand values with the local needs and expectation through product distortion, as well as content acceleration, where you'll hear from Elliot and Lynn. Our approach is really to make our offering compelling and relevant to the Chinese guests by adapting to the local tastes and the cultural nuances expected. Our aim is really to maintain our global brand appeal while creating powerful connection with our local audience, driving growth, awareness, and a strong, stronger market presence. As both Calvin and André mentioned earlier, our international growth story is just in the beginning, and lululemon China is really in the early stages of our growth. We believe that we're uniquely positioned in the China mainland versus our competition because we remain true to our core of our brand, and that is our product, our community, and our omni-operating model.
On product. Our product strategy is the key differentiator in the Chinese market. Elliot will elaborate shortly on that. In China Mainland, we maintain a premium brand positioning compared to international and local competitors. Our product are engineered for technical performance, and they're designed to make you feel your best so that you perform your best. We implemented a local assortment strategy with up to 30% of our sales actually come from product tailored for China. We anticipate this percentage to grow in the next few years, further strengthening our local relevance. Our community. We take a holistic approach to well-being, mindfulness, and active, healthy living. In China, we bring this to life via large size event, which we activate with the largest event across the company. First half the year, we focus on physical well-being, starting from Spring Run to Summer Sweat Games.
For the last four summers, we've been hosting Summer Sweat Games across various cities and engaged thousands of guests across the country to interact with us through a CrossFit challenge. In the second half of the year, we shifted to mental well-being, which you caught yesterday a glimpse of how we actually activate that. These large-size events, on top of our regular store community events, supported Healthy China 2030 initiatives, as we bring mental, social, and physical well-being to the Chinese guests. Lynn will be able to share more on that. Our omni-operating model. I get a lot of questions on this yesterday as we visited the store. We are a D2C business model, so we leverage our omni-channel model to provide our guests beyond just the full access to our inventory, but also extending our educators beyond the store.
To achieve this, we tap on WeChat ecosystem by utilizing WeChat Mini Program alongside with WeCom. I know not every one of you are familiar with WeChat, and during our break later, there will be a video to explain how this ecosystem work and how we leverage on this technology. In WeChat Mini Program, it integrates content, community, and commerce in just one app. Our goal is actually to expand WeChat Mini Program as the largest store in China, so that anywhere you are in China, wherever you are, whenever you are, you can access to our WeChat Mini Program. WeCom is actually a tool that allow us to engage with our guests one to many, as well as one to one. This personalized interaction is just beyond transactional.
WeCom allow us to actually show our guests clienteling, telling of events that we're organizing, our community activation, as well as just personal outfitting that, that is available in the store. By leveraging WeChat ecosystem, it help us to elevate our omni-channel strategy, enabling a deeper connection with our guests. Our growth drivers. We continue to address the growing consumer appetite needs for fitness and wellness. In such a dynamic market like China, we believe that experimenting, analyzing, as well as adapting, will let us stay ahead of the curve, is what we call test and learn. We've also leaned into localization, which is bringing product and experiences to our guests that is relevant and resonate strongly with the local communities.
I wanted to share how this model drives growth, especially when it comes to attracting new guests and leveraging different channels and trying new marketing tactics. Let's start with men's. The men's segment presents a significant growth for us in China, and we capture this opportunity by planning, designing, and expanding the space in our store, so that we appear dual-gender and not just a female-oriented brand. Due to the versatility of our product, male guests are more likely to choose our brand across categories and occasions, in both performance as well as casual, and this presents substantial opportunity to grow our share in the closet. We continue to have opportunity in digital. When I look at digital, I look at it in three different pillars. We talk about WeChat, WeChat Mini Program, which is positioned as our proprietary site.
We have marketplaces, which all of you are familiar with, which is Tmall and JD.com. What we are experimenting and exploring right now is actually social commerce. Douyin, or as you know as TikTok, has enormous reach and influence as it is in other parts of the world. It shapes trend, influence consumer behavior, and has become a significant part of China's digital social culture. However, in China, Douyin is also a very powerful commerce platform, driving awareness and sales through short video content as well as live streaming.
This year, early this year, we've expanded our presence in Douyin, experimenting with a diverse format and measuring our engagement results, and yielded very promising results and at full price. At the same time, we are also positioning Douyin as our brand education channel, utilizing streaming and tools to bring brand awareness, product recommendation, product education, as well as styling tips. This has significantly expanded our reach to younger profiles, as well as potential guests in lower-tier cities that we do not have physical store presence. Pop-ups. In China, brand pop-up stores have become a crucial marketing strategy. Our pop-ups offer a unique and immersive experience that creates a sense of novelty and surprise, breaking through traditional retail and marketing channels. Its temporary nature creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity, which resonates strongly with the Chinese consumer, who value unique experiences.
Since last year, we have been building and testing a series of pop-up through men's as well as the Gen Z demographic. We built equity on outerwear last year through Wunder Puff franchise. We're now amplifying our outerwear presence with a pop-up in Harbin last month in northern China, as seen here in the picture. This move, which is driven by a combination of outerwear market dynamics as an integrated marketing, has generated an overwhelming interest and response from our guests. Notably, our second-layer products such as Scuba, Define, Softstreme, has actually emerged as top-performing franchise, which actually confirms the outerwear strategy that we want is effective in building credibility in this market. By leveraging pop-up, we can create memorable, culturally, seasonally relevant experience that resonate with the Chinese consumer, driving brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty.
I'm gonna spend a bit of time talking about new store opening, as I got a lot of questions yesterday on this. We categorize our cities by Tier One, two, and three, and this categorization is an unofficial way for Chinese cities based on factors such as economic development, population, and geopolitical, you know, importance, political importance. I'm sorry. So Tier One cities being the most developed and influential, which is Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. The Tier Two cities are primarily provincial capitals and economically significant cities, and Tier Three are typically smaller cities or prefecture capitals. There's a new category that's emerging that you often hear about it, called Tier One point five or tier one and a half. This is actually the rapidly developing and approaching a Tier One status with increasing national importance, and examples include Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Nanjing.
Two months ago, I traveled to Xi'an with Kai and Eric, and when we went there, there is a sense of optimism. And the restaurants are busy. Our stores' foot traffic is going up. There's a sense of forward-looking, suggesting really a positive outlook in the future ongoing consumer in this region. The overall consumption number that you see from report may be a little underwhelming for Xi'an, but focusing solely on these brand metric fail to capture the nuances of this market. The heightened confidence in the second-tier city comes from factors like lower cost of living, more affordable housing, less mortgage pressure, as well as better job security. As a result, consumer in lower-tier cities are increasingly aspirational. They value lifestyles upgrade and particularly related to area of health and wellness. In lululemon, we take a three-prong approach in our opening strategy.
One, we densify Tier One city so that we have strong presence because we have strong presence and recognition. We focus on expansion on Tier One point five and two city, as it has the most growth potential and is ready for the next wave of stores. And three, we strategically test a couple of Tier Three cities, guided by our key selection criteria, which is rigorous test-and-learn approach. And what is this approach? And I think André mentioned about it, which is our Sweat Index. So we employ a proven market expansion formula, which provide insights into income level, potential premium activewear, as well as city sweat readiness, which is actually an assessment of how active and mindful the city is. And I want to stress that we do not open store for the sake of opening store.
We assess the city's long-term capacity, determining how many stores it can sustain over the next five years, and it also helps us to manage our pace to avoid overexposure. I would like to close by saying that lululemon China is a truly global brand, with our local flair comes distinctively to show up distinctively in China. We firmly believe in experimentation that fuels progress. We will test various ideas, explore different channels, target diverse consumer segments, and we will continuously adapt and stay ahead of the curve. Our adaptability actually ensures that we're always learning, we're always improving, we're always delivering better products and experiences for our guests in China.
This approach actually opens up significant opportunities for growth, innovation in this dynamic market, and we really feel confident that our strategy, blend with global expertise and ex-China insights and local positioning, will uniquely capitalize on the evolving Chinese consumer market. Thank you, and we will take a 15-minute coffee break right now, and we will be back where Elliot will touch on products. Thank you.
All right. Everybody doing okay? Good. Certainly a pleasure to meet many of you last night and this morning, but for those of you who I haven't met, my name is Elliot Harris. I've been with the brand for seven years, and for the last three years, I've had the distinct pleasure and honor to lead our merchandising and planning functions across our international markets. Now I'm excited because you saw a lot of numbers, but now we get to talk product. And we'll spend the next few minutes talking about product opportunities and our approach to localization in China Mainland, and actually across international as well. Now, China Mainland holds a $33 billion active lifestyle market, and within that market, we see some of the highest participation rates, weekly participation rates in the activities of running and yoga.
Now, this is a huge opportunity for our brand to lead in these spaces just based on our history as a brand being rooted in yoga. Now, it's true that our opportunity to resonate with local guests. Really, localization plays a huge role in that effort. But what we've learned is that the most significant opportunity we have from a localization perspective is how we distort and amplify and allocate our global product line to meet the local guests' needs here in China Mainland. It's also true that we've been developing over the last three years, capability and capacity to locally design and develop product as well. And so far, where we've seen the most success with that is when we combine local fit, local features, and preferences with our known lululemon fabric and functionality.
Now, our ability to leverage the global product line through the guest insights to create locally developed and designed product, all of that is really rooted in guest insights, and the ability to develop those guest insights really rests in having a team here. I'm not developing the insights, right? Three years ago, we had exactly two employees whose job it was to wake up every morning and think exclusively about product assortment strategy in Mainland China, and we've grown that into an entire team who obsess over it daily, and the investment in that team is paying off. Now, we talk about localized product strategy. Let me break that down a bit for you and how we look at it.
So you were in stores yesterday, and about 25% of the sales that we get here in Mainland China are coming from global line product that is exclusively adopted or modified for fit or color to resonate with the local Chinese guests. And then there's up to 10% of sales coming from product that we locally design and develop. And together, those two pieces of how we localize represent over 30% of assortment and product experience that's localized and fit specifically to address China Mainland guest needs. Now, the opportunity going forward is to increase that level of localization, and we see the opportunity to increase it really leveraging that level of locally designed and developed product. It's up to 10% today, as I mentioned.
We see an opportunity for it to be up to 15%. Now, localization is important, but I would tell you that a lot of the confidence we have in our goal to double the market share that we have here in China within five years really rests in our unique value proposition. And I would describe it in two ways. It starts with product, and as we think about product, there's really two focuses that we have: high performance and high style. We have the best product in the industry. It's unmatched from a functionality, a fit, a performance perspective. You know, we have high guest satisfaction rates across categories, and our iconic product, you know, our franchises, Align, ABC, Scuba, all these franchises are at the heart of our growth, and our customer keeps coming back.
Our guests keep coming back to us more and more for them. The franchises deliver an unmatched combination of functionality, fit, features, and versatility that leave our guests wanting more as we deliver new colors, new iterations, new styles within those franchises. And we believe that performing well begins with feeling good, and style is a big part of that equation. In addition to our superior product, our positioning in the market really create a unique advantage for us. You heard San Yan talk about it, this combination of performance apparel and premium positioning.
We're priced above our competitors, but it's the quality of the product, the compelling storytelling that we have through our partners in brand and marketing, where our stores are placed, and how our guests interact with our educators in-store that create a product experience that's unmatched. The market is competitive. I'm reminded of it every day. We see new brands and existing brands entering into the activewear space, often, but we always strive to be first to market with new innovation and creating a valuable product experience for our guests. And there are several competitive advantages that allow us to do that. I'll focus on two. So the innovation philosophy that we have as we approach how we create product.
There's a truth that we believe in, that when you feel your best, you perform your best, and we blend the art of design and style with the science of how we innovate into our raw materials to create the best product in the industry. Also, our products are versatile. We design specifically for activities like run and yoga, and because of that design process, we've been able to design a breadth of product across activities, across gender, across categories. And that breadth of performance product that we've created, it creates a huge opportunity for our guests, especially as we innovate into casual spaces, to mix and match both performance and casual, to provide a unique fit and feel experience for our guests.
Now, I'm gonna talk a bit about the competitive advantages in the lens of opportunity that we have going forward in Mainland China. The focus is the growth drivers that our teams are focused on as we look to build the business, and we see that there's four real opportunities to build competitive advantages. I'll start by highlighting our what we call our hero items. Now, in most of our across all of our international regions, we're in growth mode, which means that acquisition is really important. And one of the best ways or best tools we have for acquisition is our hero products. We've selected over twenty hero items to really highlight within our stores and online, focus on them from an investment perspective to really drive acquisition within the market.
We believe these hero items are at the pinnacle of the expression of fit, functionality, and feel to drive that experience for the guests, and if we look at how we'll win in China with these items, I think the slide says something about high service, high service level and all these really cool terms that's on the slide, but I like to call it always on and always available, so how can we ensure that we have high levels of service through our investment in unit depth and consistent color offering for those hero items, and then we match that investment with evolved and enhanced inventory placement strategies that allow us to be flexible as we get results from the guest. That's really what's gonna allow us to win with our hero items.
Of course, we know innovation is key, so we work very closely with the global product team to ensure that we're always injecting newness and innovation into this group of hero items, so that we can offer a fresh assortment to the guests. Men's. Now, we have a huge opportunity to build a competitive advantage with our men's assortment, and really, the key there is driving share across both performance and casual. We've had early success in the China Mainland market in terms of building that momentum. We know we have opportunity. I mean, I'll go through a few things that light us up. We have industry-leading guest satisfaction metrics that really indicate the power of the product that we're offering our guests.
And with 60% of the male guests in China being considering the brand, being able to consider the brand, that's actually one of the highest consideration rates we have across all our markets, 60%. We also see early signals of success in categories like footwear, where the launch of our Cityverse last year actually was a huge driver of new guest acquisition. When it comes to guest satisfaction, we see it across both our performance apparel and casual categories. So casual being 62% of guests saying that they're satisfied with our product versus the industry, 43%, and it's 79% across our performance apparel.
We also feel we're well-positioned just based on the male guests' preferences and what they're thinking and concerned about in their everyday life, with 80% of males in the market saying that they're really concerned about maintaining and establishing a healthy lifestyle. You know, as we have these high consideration rates for our brand, what's really a key opportunity for us is guests, male guests. We see that they are more likely to transition between categories with us. So we may get them through performance, but we have a huge opportunity to expand our share of closet through casual, and we see the same thing going the other way. We get a lot of guests through casual, and our ability to expand our share of closet through performance is key. Outerwear.
You know, I talk a lot about outerwear with our global team, and it's really something that you have to be in the region to see. China has one of the most diverse and multiple number of climate zones that you'll see in the world, and that presents just a huge opportunity for us to lean into this category, and with the help of the equity that we've built in Wunder Puff, Sun Choe talked about it earlier, we've actually been able to drive a really big business in outerwear within our current mix. The activations that we saw around Wunder Puff, both last year and this year, have been phenomenal, but where we really see opportunity beyond insulated is with our transitional assortment.
We see huge opportunity to maintain a year-round business in outerwear, focusing on lightweight, transitional and insulated product. Now, how we'll win in China really depends on our ability to have a sophisticated distribution strategy, because with all of these climate zones and guest preferences, our ability to move and deliver product at the right time and the right place for our guests is really key. We also believe that there's an opportunity to premiumize our insulated assortment. So how do we level up insulated pieces like the Wunder Puff, and provide an elevated level of fabric and trim and color for our guests? And then last but not least, you know, this is one of the categories that really surprised me as I learned about the business in China, is our bags business.
You would have seen, as you were in stores yesterday, we've expanded the space that we dedicate to bags. And it's not just, you know, the core of the assortment that's working well. Obviously, you would be familiar with styles like the Everywhere Belt Bag. That's actually not the number one bag for us in China. We've really created a balanced assortment and have opportunity to uplevel the impact of that key item assortment through premium and premiumization as well. So thinking about updated trims and fabrics, to really elevate that offer for the guests. And our seasonal offer is also working well. Now, how will we maximize it for China? So there's an opportunity for us to further expand that display of bags, especially in our large format stores.
And there's a further opportunity for us to really leverage the category from a guest acquisition perspective on digital. Sun Choe talked about the reach that we are establishing in our Tier Two and Tier Three cities. Using bags as a category to reach those destinations is really key. So those four areas of distortion for us, they really are at the heart of what I believe will drive success for us as we go forward, in building the China market. Now I'll talk a little bit about the role of localization, how it plays in with those growth-driving categories. Now, when we think about localization, our approach to it is really across three buckets. We think about it in terms of local unmet needs, how we show up in culturally relevant moments with culturally relevant capsules.
More recently, we've been developing our capability to really lean into brand activation moments to provide special product to really bring those moments to life. As we look at local unmet needs, I'll point out kinda some of the product that we have over here. You'll be familiar with a lot of our tights assortment. Right now, about 70% of our tights assortment is being driven by Asia Fit. And what is Asia Fit? We have both Global Fit and Asia Fit in our assortment. Asia Fit really comes from our use of body data research that we outsource and our ability to collect guest feedback and wear test trials to adjust the fit of the garment, to make sure we maintain the promise that we have, that it's an unmatched feel in the market.
There's adjustments to the hip, the rise of those garments, those pants, those leggings to really create a unique experience for the guest. That started seven years ago with tights. We've expanded it to bras, men's pants, and we feel like there's tons of opportunity to expand it to other categories as we go forward. Also, within our ability to address local unmet needs is this capability that we've been developing over the last three years to really introduce newly developed and designed styles that are locally developed and designed to the market, and we are able to do this in a read and react or fast turn manner, so a shorter lead times in the global product line. I'll point out one style here that really exemplifies what we're able to do.
So about a year ago, several of the regional product teams identified an opportunity to get into varsity-inspired graphics. And luckily enough, at the time, that was already in the global product line to be delivered, actually next quarter, so winter 2024. But because we have the Asia product creation team and the ability to locally design and develop, we were able to deliver this graphic and this expression of the brand one season earlier, and it serves as a test and learn opportunity for the brand. Today, that capability that we've been developing is 10%. As I mentioned before, we have opportunity to grow it to 15% of total sales going forward...
We also, as I mentioned, lean into how we show up at culturally relevant events with capsules, and we use this read and react capability that I talked about before, to lean into those events as well. So, if you think about cultural events like Qixi or Chinese New Year, Qixi being the Chinese Valentine's Day, we're able to deliver relevant capsules that have special designs that really resonate with the local guests. And then lastly, and I'd say this is the part where we have a lot of opportunity to expand, is, you know, you'll hear from Lynn, the level of storytelling that's taking place in the market is incredible. And from a product perspective, we have a huge opportunity to complement those stories with special products.
Last year, you would have seen our efforts around launching the CityVerse in ABC with the ABC program, and we had an opportunity to react to a collaboration with Zhou Guanyu, the Formula One driver. We had an opportunity to create product really quickly. Lynn really pushed me on this one to have product come to the market that was specially designed and co-branded with his brand, and what that did is it created a huge amount of awareness, and it accomplished the goal of really shining a light on new product that we're really excited about, so our ability to do that on a consistent basis really is key to this storytelling element that separates us from the rest in the industry.
I advanced to your slide, Lynn, but look, I had a great time. Had a great time really pointing out some of the things that we're focused on from a product perspective. It's been a great journey so far, with so much opportunity ahead of us. And I'd leave you with this: We have superior product, but our ability to tell the story about that product in a way that resonates locally with the guests is really the key. And that's what I found to be the differentiator in how product shows up in the region. So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Elliot. Is the mic working? Hello, everyone. I'm a relatively new face, I guess, because I didn't go on the store tours with you, and I didn't sit with many of you at dinner last night. I'm Lynn, and I do brand marketing for China. So for the next thirty minutes or so, I will talk you through what we've been up to here and why we're just at the beginning of our story. I want to first start by our vision statement. I don't know how many of you are familiar with this statement. I'm gonna read it. Our vision is to create transformative products and experiences that build meaningful connections, unlocking greater possibility and well-being for all. Let me break this down. So really, what is the job of marketing?
The job of marketing, as I see it, laddering up to our vision statement, is to make our product famous. First job. Second job is to continue to nourish and grow our community, because that really, I feel, is a point of differentiation for our brand, especially because we are a directly managed company. Third pillar is: How do we play a part in advocating for well-being through mindful movement? So I'm gonna give you a few examples now on how do we, in China, make our product famous. I'm gonna touch on four examples. The first one is our core products. You see a lot of them here. A lot of them, you are familiar with. I see some of you wearing the ABC Pant. I'm sure some women here would have the Align Pant, the MVT T-shirt.
So the second, which is what Elliot touched on earlier, the Chinese New Year capsule, I thought would be a good example to show you how we activate in support of that product creation. The third pillar is men's. You've heard about our opportunity with men's, you know, from Calvin's strategy of double men's to San Yan earlier, and also to Elliot's presentation. And the last was an example, quite recent one, it just ended, on outerwear and our equity that we're building into the Wunder Puff. So core products. In 2023, last year, in China Mainland, we crossed our ten-year mark. So very young in China. And we thought: How can we celebrate this milestone, by highlighting all the products that our guests over the last ten years have said they love?
Because we have a network of stores and educators that are well connected with our guests, we went out and collected authentic guest testimonials of them speaking about why they love the Align, why they love the Fast and Free, why MBT is a staple. We received an overwhelming 400 over entries, and these were not little excerpts or quotes. These were full-on, like, picture-filled essays on how our product has transformed their performance or their daily lives. So I could not publish 400 of those stories. In this book, which you see lying around, we selected the best of 50, and we compiled it into a book to commemorate our 10-year mark in China. You can flip around later during the break. I apologize, it's all in Chinese. But I, I'm, I think some of you do read Chinese.
And from an integrated way, the faces that you see here, we chose 10 faces. These are actually all local China ambassadors. There's even one educator, our longest-serving educator in lululemon China. And we really aim to use these local faces, influencers in their respective communities, to bring to life our storytelling here. So here you are, each one of them talking about their favorite lululemon product. And these are an excerpt of the quotes that you will find in the book. Our stores. So many of you visited our stores yesterday, and you have heard many times today that in China, really, we have a premium positioning. Now, this is really a product of a collaborative effort in our leadership team.
We really look at real estate and think about how do we use our stores not only to sell product, but also to position the brand, and it's a key communication tool for us. On the left here, you might recognize this store. This is actually our Kerry Centre store under renovation. It's hoarded up, because when we ran this campaign, the store was still not open. So we really use the store hoarding also as an out-of-home panel to bring to life our campaigns. In our stores, because we are relatively new in this market, we also use visual merchandising and product storytelling in our stores to create clear zoning and demarcation, helping our guests find the product that they need. I'm gonna go to the next slide.
From an activation perspective, as you have heard earlier, community is a big part of what we do. We celebrated this ten-year milestone with a hero event in Beijing. We welcomed more than one thousand five hundred people in a full day of activities, starting with a 5K run. They did animal flow, they did HIIT, and ending with a sunset yoga session in Beijing at the Shougang Park. I'm gonna end with a video. We're all in Shanghai today. A lot of you don't have time to travel all around China, although Laurent told me he was gonna stay for two weeks more.
So I'm gonna show you this video because with the out of home that you see here, it gives you an idea about the scale of China and the work that we do to amplify our brand in this market. Okay, moving on to the next pillar, Chinese New Year. A personal favorite of mine this year. I'm Malaysian. That's a hint. So Chinese New Year, in Chinese, actually, it means it's Chunjie, which directly translates to Spring Festival. So when we started concepting about Chinese New Year this year, we asked ourselves: What does spring actually mean? Spring is a rebirth after the death of winter. Spring represents a new hope and a new beginning, and wouldn't it be great from a well-being perspective if we can hold on to this idea of forever spring?
When you think forever spring in Chinese, it translates to Yong Chun. Yong Chun, at that time, serendipitously, was being performed by a very well-known dance troupe in Shenzhen, and Yong Chun is also a form of martial arts. I don't know how many of you know that. But we were so impressed by the dance performance that we saw in theaters, at that time, that I thought, "It'd be great to cast them," you know, because they would be able to show our product in movement, in a beautiful way. It also gives us an opportunity to lean into this idea of well-being from an Eastern lens. I thought, Yong Chun was also the movie that Michelle Yeoh starred in thirty years ago in nineteen ninety-four, and is widely credited as being the movie that launched her into the silver screen.
I don't know if you remember, early this year, she was fresh off her Oscar nomination, and I was thinking, "Would she say yes to starring in a film with lululemon?" Fortunately for us, she did, and this was the result of the campaign. The tagline here says, "Be Spring," and that's the idea. It's to ask our guests to really keep that spring mindset throughout the year. Keeping hope and looking forward, as the optimism of the year unfolds. This is our capsule, that was developed by our Asia product creation team. And again, we really use hoarding, as a key out-of-home panel for us to create impact across our network throughout China. Okay, the third pillar, men's. How many of you are watching Netflix last night?
So the gentleman that you see here, he's only 24 years old, so he's part of the Gen Z population. He's a guy, which speaks to our male guest, and in 2023, we had an opportunity to sign with Zhou, and we love Zhou. You know, he's the only Chinese F1 driver. Sure, we're not in F1, I mean, lululemon, but the mental strength and the training that goes into preparing for an F1 race, we thought really resonated with us. So we signed him to launch our new men's footwear, the CityVerse shoe. In March of this year, this was the launch, and this was the campaign. And some of you may know, in March, we welcomed back the Shanghai F1 to Shanghai.
Being a Shanghainese boy and the Chinese pride at that moment, it was a huge cultural opportunity for us to speak to our collection through Zhou. So what did we do? After long discussions, we were with the love and support of his mom and his family be able to put together a mini exhibition at our Kerry Centre flagship to really chronicle the twenty-four years of his journey, starting with the first go-kart that he raced in when he was four years old. So needless to say, a lot of the F1 fans that were in town to watch the F1, a lot of our male guests, who never perhaps considered lululemon in the past, came through our doors, and it was a very successful moment for us. That's the event. Lastly, talking about outerwear. So as you know, we are on Tmall.
It is a marketplace platform for us in China that drives, you know, a lot of new guests to the brand. Tmall celebrates an e-com festival every year. It's called Super Brand Day. And during Super Brand Day, we thought it is the perfect opportunity for us to leverage this platform to build equity into Wunder Puff. Then the second objective that my boss gave me is: how do we create influence and visibility beyond Tier One cities? Third objective is: how do we connect with the Gen Z guest? Fourth objective is: how can we continue to test the pop-up strategy? So with the Wunder Puff and with all of this in mind, we decided to bring the event to our northernmost city, Harbin. How many of you have been there? No?
It's actually called the City of Ice, and as you know, the Wunder Puff is an outerwear. But again, being a brand that is rooted in movement, we always strive to show our product, if we can, through movement and in a premium way. So we took the Wunder Puff product and married it with figure skating and ice skating. This is the event we held in Harbin. We did it in two parts. What you see here is the daytime event, where we worked with the local community to really explore what are the training movements that ice skating and figure skaters need to train with on the ground before they go on ice. And we invited, you know, the local community to come and try those movements with us in our gear.
The second part of the activation was really then to showcase what our product could look like, and we worked with the Harbin Winter Sports Training Center. I finally got the name right. Because we chose forty of their young students, so again, the Gen Z objective. We choreographed with them with an ex-Olympic figure skater, a show performance, and invited Han Dongjun, he's a native of Harbin, and he's also a very famous male celebrity, to create buzz and drive visibility locally for this event. I'm gonna now play you the video, and you'll tell me what you think. I'm very glad to report that, you know, with this event up north. Actually, the North has been a stronghold for a lot of our local competitor brands.
And, after this activation, I think we've got a halo effect now in multiple northern cities like Shenyang, Changchun, Qingdao. I'm also very happy to report that our pop-up store is doing remarkably well. That's a positive. The second pillar that I'm now gonna transition to is talking about nourishing our community. You've heard all our leaders talk today about how community is important to us, to our culture, and why we're uniquely placed to continue to our growth in this market by continuing to make community a big part of our strategy. Summer Sweat Games. I saw in the notes that most of you are familiar with the games, but I'm gonna ground you a little bit on how we landed on this idea.
In 2021, when I joined, I was given a few challenges. One, how do we attract a male guest and acquire them into the brand, being a brand that was famous for yoga tights? Two, how can we insert ourselves into the guest calendar every year so that they remember us? And we thought, "Wouldn't it be great if we could own the summer months?" Three, how could we raise brand awareness in all the key cities beyond Shanghai and Beijing? And four, how do we find a way to showcase high-intensity performance product and demonstrate how these product attributes support our guests? So that was the birth of Summer Sweat Games. So how does it work, actually? So we say in lululemon that stores are at the heart of our community. So we have our guests form teams of four, two male and two female.
So I let you imagine how the recruitment conversation goes. They compete first at the store level, through a program of exercises that we publish with the help of our ambassador community. If they win, they progress to the city level. If they then win that, they progress to the regionals and then finally at the finals. So you could imagine that this is really an activation that engages the full lululemon store network, and it builds connection and understanding of our gear, not just for the guest. It's also for all the new educators every year that is coming into the brand as we grow aggressively and open new stores. So the Summer Sweat Games really is, has become something that we look forward to, both internally, and that our guests look forward to as well.
We now have ambassadors and studios that prepare our guests, training for it six months to twelve months in advance. This is the scale. So, you know, beyond Shanghai and Beijing, we really take it to a lot of regional key cities. We usually choose a space that is outdoors so that we drive visibility in that city. Aside from the competition part of it, we also set up at the regionals a Sweat Street, if you like, where we create games for walk-ins and for the public to participate when we are running the competition on site. Actually, the main road here, right outside of the hotel, Anyi Road, that's the full road that we take over when we do the Shanghai regionals. I'm gonna leave you with a video.
You have already seen, you know, snippets of this in everyone's presentation, but it was done for us to share with local press and on social. So it's in Chinese, but it gives you the kind of energy that you can expect to see at one of our events. Come and join us next year. Okay, I'm gonna end the last part of the discussion today on well-being and why we think we are well-placed to be advocates for this in Lululemon. We believe everyone has the right to be well, and the keyword there is everyone. So through our community model, this is really a unique position that we find ourselves in. In 2021, as a lot of you know, we launched our first well-being report. How do we dimensionalize well-being?
The first pillar is being physically well, so I think that's pretty straightforward, right? The second pillar is actually being mentally well, and the third pillar is being socially supported and with a community that you identify with. And with these three is what we see as the holistic well-being that we want to advocate for, and we are uniquely placed to do that because we're not about winning. Yoga, as you know, is a practice, is a conversation with yourself, is breathwork, is inward-looking. So every year during World Mental Health Day in fall, when we activate, you will see in the activities that we bring to life, you know, at the West Bund and around the country, it is a variety of activities, including meditation, including sound bath, including yoga, run, walks.
It's really a moment to welcome all of our community into our midst. There are usually two components to it. One is thought leadership. You would have missed these, but every year, we look for contemporary voices, influential voices from different industries, bringing them together and have them talk and discuss about what it really means. In the pursuit of well-being, what does it mean to be well? The second component is community. How do we invite guests in and show them what movement can really bring to their overall sense of well-being? Here, I'm gonna show you, you know, clips from all the efforts that we've done over the past four years in China. It's a little bit quick. Okay, the West Bund this year. The artist element really for us is just to provide the framework.
To provide the framework based on the research that we've done with the well-being report, and this year's was really about how urban living has impacted our overall sense of well-being and how nature is a natural antidote for that. So that's why we have partnered with Graphic Rewilding, bringing kind of nature through art into urban metropolises. You missed a lot of these events, so I thought I'll end with showing you some of the images, on how our guests are sweating, in the spaces that we created. And that's it. Recapping: product, community, and mindful movement and advocacy for well-being. Thank you.
All right, guys, we're gonna start up with our final session. We have Gareth, who runs APAC, will be speaking. Meghan will be speaking. We'll do Q&A for about half an hour, and then anyone who has to run out to catch flights feel free to do so, and anyone who doesn't have to quite run out, we're gonna have a little reception outside in the beautiful terrace out there at the very end after Q&A. So I knew you guys were waiting for this, but this is my second slide. Yeah, forward-looking statements. Okay. So please read that quickly, and now I'm gonna hand over to Gareth.
Thank you, Howard. Good afternoon, everyone. Enjoy your lunch? Yeah, yeah. Ready for the highlights? Okay, so if I haven't met you, I've met a few of you dinner at lunch. My name is Gareth, Gareth Pope, based in Hong Kong, manage the Asia Pacific region. I actually started my career in your seats. I started as a investment analyst, investment bank, long time ago, and twenty-five years now in sports apparel, retail, so probably got more to say about this stuff than what you're saying, but definitely looking forward to talking to you about Asia Pacific region and then any of the questions that come up later, so to start, who are we? It's sort of hard to see on the map, but we are by definition a diverse region. We...
When we say APAC for lululemon, we mean all of the markets in Asia and Pacific region outside of mainland China. So we started life, and it's come up a few times. I'll give it a little bit of a history lesson just to ground us all. We started life in this region, in Australia, in 2004, so just over twenty or twenty years ago. Just had our twentieth birthday in Australia, and that was the founders and the group at the time recognized there's a lot of similarities with the active lifestyle that Australians were living with Canada, so it seemed a natural place to start international expansion. Took ten years from then to open our first store in Asia. Our first store in Asia was actually in ION in Singapore.
Celebrated the ten-year anniversary here in China from 2013, but actually wasn't a store at that time. That was when the company was first registered, started doing showrooms, for those of you who know the history of the brand showroom model back then. But started proper in Asia, first store in ION Orchard in Singapore, 2014. Bought back the Australia business that same year, 2014. So then had two markets at that point. Quickly expanded the next four or five years, added another five, six markets, including mainland China at that time, such that by 2019, it became a big region, and that's when we decided to separate mainland China from the rest of APAC.
APAC that I manage is, as I said, the markets outside of mainland China, still headquartered in Hong Kong, and managing now 10 markets, excluding mainland China, and I'll talk a little bit about those markets. Again, what I'll try and do through the next 20 minutes or so is specifically talk to the markets that I represent or that we represent as part of APAC, and you'll see a little bit of crossover from what we've spoken to before, but I'll try and paint the picture of what that means for us in our markets in Asia Pacific. So, again, it is by definition a diverse region. We have Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, counter climate. You know, when it's summer for us, it's winter in Australia and vice versa.
Diverse climates, northern climates, cold weather climates, hot climates. Singapore never gets below thirty degrees Celsius. Real diversity, cultural diversity across the regions, Eastern cultures, Western cultures, et cetera. How we manage those cultures and business across those markets is the body of a lot of our work. These are the three elements that are consistent in how we differentiate ourselves from the competition or from other players that we go up against. The first one, you've heard it, but it's this global brand, locally relevant. I would say in my career, the real differentiator for us as local relevant is our operating model, how we're decentralized.
We talk a lot about culture, but it's this decentralized operating model, giving store teams, giving our SSC teams, our office teams, a lot of room to decide locally what's right for that market. So we just entered Thailand, for example, last year, and able to get locally relevant very quickly. If you compare with other brands from any sector, as a global brand goes into market, how can they be locally relevant? It is quite difficult if you're centrally trying to mandate that from a headquarters somewhere in Europe or North America. Whereas if you really are flip the model on its head and you're decentralizing your operating model, localization comes very naturally. So I think that's one of the key differentiators for us of how we can be locally relevant very early in our journey in these markets.
We've talked about premium product, versatile product. I'd say in nearly all of the markets we operate, we are certainly the number one premium activewear brand, often the only premium activewear brand in that market, so that is a differentiator by fact. And then the third element we talked about is this community, inclusive community, wellbeing for all. And again, that is a foundational element we bring to all markets. And again, I would say we're the only brand in our sector that's really approaching it with that mindset and with that approach. We've seen a lot of success, like, again, André shared some of these numbers. Certainly on our way to quadrupling the APAC business in the 2021-2026 period, so we've more than doubled in that 2021-2023 period.
Gonna be close to triple by 2024, so certainly on the way to quadruple by 2026. You can see in some of the things that have happened, when we started this journey in 2021, we were in nine markets. As I just mentioned, we entered Thailand last year with our first store in Bangkok. By the end of this year, we'll have four stores in Thailand in that eighteen-month period. Bless you. Entered Vietnam. We do manage a lot of the supply chain and sort of global sourcing out of this region. So Vietnam, we've entered from a source-based perspective, opened an office there. And you can see we're opening generally, approximately a store a month, with between 10 and 15 new stores per year in APAC region over the last couple of years.
So a lot of the growth has been driven by those new stores, by that square footage growth that we've seen. I'm gonna come back to the, to the region and how we manage it, 'cause I would say we, we have more opportunities than we have resources available. We... You talk about Mainland China, you talk about EMEA, you talk about APAC. There's significant opportunity for us. The challenge is, which opportunity do we go after, and how do we try and phase our growth? So André mentioned it, but I'm gonna spend a little bit time talking about what we call seed scale maximizers. Financial, analysts, you understand the portfolio models. We have a portfolio of brands, and what we're essentially trying to do is take markets from pre-entry, that markets we're not in.
How do we get guests and consumers in that market excited about who we are? To seed, we start entering, we start working with the communities, working in the market, up to a scale, up to a maximize. So it's. When we talk about seed, scale, maximize, we're talking about individual markets, and there's two dimensions we primarily look at. One is the maturity, or how much pull are we getting? How much success are we having in that market? And the second one is, what is the opportunity ahead of us? How, how, how long is that roadway runway for us? So those two dimensions determine where you are from a seed, scale, maximize perspective. So seed market is an obvious one. I just mentioned Thailand, we just literally entered last year, so that's at the seed stage for us. Malaysia's another one.
We've had five stores in Malaysia, a couple years of entry, and it's still at the early stages, building community, building the foundations of the business. You then go up to a scale situation, and Japan for us is in there. New Zealand's in there. We've been there for some time. Japan, too, just getting to double digits stores, 10, 11 stores in Japan. Seeing momentum, but still relatively early in our growth. And then for us in APAC, we've got two maximize markets currently, which is Australia, as I said, 20-year-old market, had a lot of success, but still seeing a lot of runway still ahead of us. And South Korea, that's the market we've really had a huge momentum and huge pull to come into that market. Seeing huge success.
Three years ago, five stores, now up to 20 stores in a very short period of time. So real pull and really using that as a maximize market, how can we take the brand to another level and start operating more like what things you saw that Lynn was sharing? Those are the types of things we're starting to do in South Korea. Again, this is similar to what you've seen. I'd say these are the three elements when we talk about any market; these are the three key success factors for us. I won't dwell on this, and I'll give examples of what it means for Australia and the other markets. It is around innovation. Elliot spoke to it.
How do we maintain our differentiation from a product's perspective against the competitors, against what's, what else is in the market? So how we, how we always come and lead with innovation, and then how we balance that with localization. And somebody was asking me at lunch, we in across the Asia markets, a lot of the localization Elliot was talking, Asia Fit, that will be universal. Those 25% is a similar number to what we see in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, et cetera. Local creation, sometimes it will be created for China. Often, that will work for other markets. Sometimes it's created for a Korean, it will go other ways. So it's that 10% is, I'd say, is relatively consistent as well for us across Asia. The second piece I'm gonna talk to is recognizing the difference in these markets.
Mall-based markets, street-based markets, different types of channels, and how you operate is a key part to how you're gonna be successful. I'll give a specific example of South Korea, if you know that market. There's a unique way you have to get to market there, and then, as all of us have spoken about brand, it really starts with community, and for all the 10 markets that I'm talking about, we would not start playing bigger until you have that community foundation. Calvin spoke about taking time, and that to me is the foundation of our business, is being embedded in the local communities with the local activities, run, train, yoga, with ambassadors, with studios, with partners.
If that's not there, you don't have the authenticity or the right to build on top of that with bigger events, bigger moments, et cetera. So that is the foundation of everything we do. So I'm just gonna jump through a few of these markets, just to give you a sense of what we're doing in those markets, as well as what it means to be in a maximized market versus a scale or a seed market. So starting at the one end, at the maximizer Australia, the market that we've been in the longest and have the highest brand share. We have the highest unaided awareness of all the markets in APAC. We've been there, as I say, 20 years, and those of you who know Australia, and if you don't, it's a very athletic market.
It's a lot of sports participation, very high active user, active consumer, outdoor lifestyle. So for us, it's about how do we bring that technical innovation to make sure that we are differentiated from a lot of competition in that market. At the same sense as recognizing it's obviously counterseasonal, so it is the only counterseasonal market we have, so how we focus our product lines. Typically, we are bringing product there the season after we've launched, like summer in northern hemisphere, we take summer six months later. Sometimes we do test and learn with product and see which if there's something specifically we think is gonna resonate with Australia, we would take it there before it comes to northern hemisphere markets. But just how you manage that counterseasonality is obviously a really important criteria for Australia.
Again, those of you who've been following the brand, I know a number of you have. When you have a franchise partner and a license partner, the locations they were able to get ten, fifteen, twenty years ago were not the prime fifty-yard line location. So what we spent a lot of time in the last few years is optimizing that portfolio. So we have 30+ stores in Australia. 75% of those in the last five years have been optimized, so better locations and bigger footprints. So André mentioned Chadstone is the busiest, biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere, just went from a 4,000 sq ft location to an 8,000 sq ft location. Emporium Mall in Melbourne currently a 5,000 sq ft location, optimizing it right now, will open in November, 11,000 sq ft location.
So just huge room to have better locations, bigger, bigger footprints, and just to be able to tell the story of what the brand is, men's, women's, footwear, apparel, et cetera, the full assortment. I'd say the third unique piece around Australia is, as I said, it's a very active consumer-active market. So for us, it wasn't about going in and trying to bring movement, mindful movement to a guest space. It was actually partnering with existing strong community foundations that already exist, and what can we add to that and how can we bring our support to that? So this is actually a picture of Movember. So it's made, I think, to North America. Movember is guys grow a mustache in November to raise awareness for men's health. So we partnered with them.
They had a very, big, I guess, guest base or consumer base that knew Movember. They were looking for a brand to come and partner and add some life to that. So that's how we brought our DNA to their movement and just created strength from the two of us combining. So it's more about who we're partnering with, like-minded partners that we can add something to. So if you contrast that to a market like South Korea, again, much newer for us in South Korea, about seven years of presence there. And again, in my career, I've never seen a market more influenced by celebrity culture. K-pop, K-beauty, K-anything is huge, not just in Korea, but in Asia and increasingly the world. So that even transfers to product. Elliot spoke about heroes or icons.
What we've really stood for in Korea is these icons standing for the Align or the Fast and Free or the Metal Vent Tech, the Pace Breaker, ABC, really heroing those items, 'cause it is a hero worship culture, even as far as product. Really want to know what the product is, what product the celebrity's wearing, and it becomes the Amotti short or the PSJ's top. But they really sort of resonate with these hero or icon elements. The channel piece in Korea is unique. It's very strong department stores. There are 3, Shinsegae, Lotte, Hyundai. Department store, mall operators, a conglomerate that even own baseball teams, for example. But of the 22 stores we have, 13 of those are within the Shop-in-Shop format. So for us, that was a recognition. That was where the guest is.
They're shopping there. They're very loyal to the, to these, retailers. And for us to get an immediate presence, foot traffic, brand association, where we sit, vis-a-vis the other brands around us, was very important, and that was a real, catalyst for us. Now, we've penetrated that, element pretty well, so now we're looking more at the street front, bigger flagship locations where we can tell, the broader, bigger brand story. But having a shop and shop, way of entering that market was a real, driver for success over the first years. And then this, I don't know, anyone recognize the guy in the far right? Nobody? Park Seo-joon.
Okay, if obviously the wrong audience, but I say this in my office in Hong Kong, 90% of people would say he's an actor in Parasite, a Korean actor, and huge social media following. So for us, again, we've got that community foundation. Now we're at the stage of how do we partner with bigger names that can tell the story? He's very active, he's very prominent in social about how his both physical and mental health is a huge element to him. So we've partnered with him over the last couple of months, and increasingly now, he's going to become the face of our next campaign. Just being able to tell that story in a bigger way than we could do it ourselves.
So those are the two maximize, Australia and South Korea. Now, if you go further, I guess, down on the curve, on the maturity curve, Japan, again, seeing a lot of success. Again, somebody was talking at lunch, has been the fastest growth market, I think, globally for us in the last twelve months. Currency does play a part in that. The yen has depreciated over the last twelve, twenty-four months, but it, it's become a huge destination for the Asian tourists. But increasingly global tourists want to go there. But we've been focused on the local. How do we win with the local? And this now, again, we're six years in market, and as a scale market, vis-à-vis Australia, Korea, we're not doing as much bespoke creation.
We don't allocate as much resources to a scale market as we do to a maximize market. So, with regards to product, it's a lot about local styling. To be clear, we're not developing unique product for Japan, but we're recognizing it's not a particularly active market. It's much more of a casual lifestyle market and building in sweat moments within the day. So what we like to do there is how we style our product, both casual and performance, and actually mix the two. So it's not a casual section, a performance section. It's actually how you blend the two, and you wear performance product within your day, and you build in mini sweats through your day, is how we're positioning for the Japanese guest. Within the market, again, Tokyo is the show in town.
There's 30 million people in Tokyo, so that's the vast majority of our focus in the initial stage, is just got to maximize or win in Tokyo before you go to the second-tier cities. And then example, as a community, this is where we can leverage the regional playbook. Together in Stride was our run campaign for the spring. It was captured in Australia and Korea, would be the biggest engagements, and we just do tear downs or takedowns of that for the smaller markets like Japan. So it's not having to create unique campaigns, but using regional campaigns and regional playbook to then be able to leverage that in these markets. And the final one, Thailand, I've mentioned it a couple of times. Again, just 12 months or 15 months we've been in that market.
So that was at, right at the beginning, and we sort of, as a team, talked about this. How do you bring a brand to a brand-new market? So we do focus on our global assortment. We're not gonna create with one store. You're not gonna... There's no efficiency in creating a bespoke product for that market, but it is a warm weather climate, recognizing how guests will likely wear our products. So the assortment is certainly curated, but it's from the global assortment. We're not creating regional product for that. Recognizing when you're first in market, this is the benefit of being a global brand now. We want to go to the main mall, on the 50-yard line of the main mall.
So that's the beauty we have now that we wouldn't have had five or ten years ago, that you show up in a place like Bangkok, and every mall wants you, every mall wants you in the prime location. So that's certainly making sure that we start with those prime, you know, triple A locations. And it does get in a place like Bangkok. It's 60% local, 40% tourists. And that tourist does help because to, you know, to afford these locations, to get the efficiencies and so forth, you need that tourist while you're still winning with the locals. Because when you first show up, there is a knowledge of us because of global brands, social, et cetera, but we're still, because of our community model, it does take time to win that local. So that's the idea.
We start now with these prime locations, use some of that tourist money to pay the bills in reality, but as you're using that to grow that local foundation and that local community, and again, anyone who knows Bangkok knows the famous river that separates sort of north and south. So our second store was IconSiam, which is right on the banks of the river. So again, just a way of us to bring local creativity to our regional or just our way of operating. We did a week-long boat that would go up and down on this river with yoga classes, just offering a unique way of experiencing yoga in Bangkok. Just a nod to local culture, but just bringing our brand with the local DNA. So again, this is... That's where we are.
This is now then looking ahead, looking forward. Again, these things have come up. These will be consistent to what you've heard from Calvin and André. So, in terms of the opportunities we have, we have ways to build bigger brand, as you've seen from Lynn and the team in Mainland China, how do we play bigger? You have omni-channel growth. I talked a lot about physical retail. I haven't really mentioned digital. That's the big opportunity for us now in APAC. Product category expansion, similar to what Elliot said, and then, similar to André in terms of new markets where we see ourselves in the future. Again, I don't need to dwell. I think this is a relatively consistent story you've seen. Once you have that community foundation, what are the elements that you build on top of that?
These are the pieces. It's just taking these events, making them elevated in terms of scale, and the overall guest experience they have on those. These ambassadors that we have, how do we get bigger, more influential ambassadors like Park Seo-joon or others? Then how do we tell that story? Ultimately, it comes with media amplification to be able to tell that story to a broader guest base. We're playing, I'd say, at that level now in Australia and South Korea. Continue to do so there, and Japan is likely to be the third maximized market in the coming years and start playing at that level for all three of those markets.... Omnichannel growth, again, it came up in the China presentation. We have a mix of markets.
A market like Australia would be similar to North America in terms of the Googles, the Metas, in terms of how you get guests, how they want to shop online. You go to Korea, you go to Japan, it's very, very different. That's where the opportunity for us is. We've got a e-commerce experience, but our share in those Asian markets certainly under-penetrates our global share, under-penetrates the average for the market, and it's in reality, it's because we haven't done the work yet. If you think of local ecosystem, San Yan was sharing WeChat. I don't know what percent, 90-plus% of people in China are on WeChat. Nobody uses WhatsApp, no, you know, nobody uses iMessage. In Korea, same, nobody uses any of those, they use Kakao. 99% of people will use Kakao as their daily messaging.
If you're not on Kakao, you don't have much relevance, so we now are on Kakao. The version in Japan is Line, and a lot of Southeast Asia markets, it's the same. So it's just a different ecosystem. You need to plug into this ecosystem, both through our site and then also through local marketplaces. So which marketplaces you work on, work with as partners? We're just at the beginning of that journey. So this, to me, is... In some ways, it's frustrating because you say, "Well, we could have been further ahead," but this is where the growth is. You know, we are under-penetrated in e-com share as total, but that to me, is pure upside for us. We have this, great runway of what we can do digitally across all of these Asia markets. Same product category expansion.
Again, I'd be remiss to say we don't have opportunity in women's. It's still probably the biggest individual opportunity we have because we're still so small in penetration in terms of brand share or brand awareness in these markets. So women still represent probably the lion's share in terms of a financial number. But in terms of distortion, I would say men's, like others, Australia is the place we under-penetrate. Within Asia markets, we actually over-penetrate the global average, but within Australia, for example, we under-penetrate from a men's share, so that's a big opportunity for us in Australia. I'd say going to the other end, outerwear. Elliot spoke about it for mainland China, Lynn spoke about it, Korea, Japan, Northern Asian markets. If you look at outerwear brands, outdoor brands, North Face, Patagonia, huge outerwear businesses in those markets.
For us, Korea, Japan represents a huge outerwear opportunity. And then bags, I think we've just found this great niche between this sort of luxury and sort of premium accessible, this sort of premium bags offer. Same for us, EBB, Everywhere Belt Bag, is not a big item. It's really a spread across backpacks to clutch, to you know, the whole gamut of bags, and how we can then start to truly stand for bags and how we show those or sort those in a store is just upside for, I'd say, all of our markets. And then the final piece is if we talk seed, scale, maximize. These are the pre-seed. These are places we're not even in yet. These are four markets that we're actively looking at right now.
We don't have a time that we specifically have chosen to enter these. We're just at the investigation stage and also with how we enter these markets, whether we'll go owned or whether we'll go franchise or partner model. I mean, India needs no introduction, the biggest population in the world, more than 1.4 billion people. At some point, this will be a huge market for us. It's just at what point that will be and how we get from here to there. And India, Indonesia, these are, again, I assume you guys don't need to know this, or already know this, these are two of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The double-digit GDP growth, growth of that middle, upper wealth layers are growing faster, and that's often 15%-20% growth.
So not huge today, but relatively quickly becoming big, big opportunities for us. So as I say, those, probably from left to right, those are in order of priority. Those are the, the big markets that we still have yet to enter. So that's it. I'm gonna finish it there. Hand to Meghan. This is just a cap shot of Park Seo-joon, so you will now know him. Look out for him, Amotti, who won the Netflix Physical: 100. So these are our, Korean ambassadors that will be in our event, which is on Friday for World Mental Health Day. Okay, thank you. Over to Meghan.
Thank you. Okay. Well, the moment you've all been waiting for. Thank you so much for joining us here this week. We're really excited to host you all, and spend some time with some familiar faces and meet some new ones. I always come away from my visits in China with a lot of jet lag, and then also a lot of excitement about the opportunity and the market, how we're showing up, and energy from the teams, and I hope you all felt that. Before I invite the team to come up here, to answer Q&A, I did want to spend a few minutes talking about our segment operating margins. Hold on.
But first, you've seen this slide before, and I know you're all familiar with these targets, so just a grounding. Revenue CAGR, our five-year plan, Power of Three times Two calls for 15% revenue CAGR, doubling men's, doubling digital, quadrupling international, and then also calling for modest operating margin expansion annually. So if we turn to our segments, as you know, we did change our segments at the beginning of this year from channels to region. So our reporting segments now are the Americas, China Mainland, and then Rest of World, which, as you heard, is made up of APAC and EMEA. So when we look at these segments on an annual basis, Americas is the most profitable, followed by China Mainland, and then followed by Rest of World.
We do have opportunities within all three for expansion, and then this is all consistent and embedded in our Power of Three x2 growth plan that we just talked about. Looking at, you can see on the slide the segment operating margins. So in 2023, annual basis, 38.5% for the Americas, 35% for China Mainland, and then 19.7% for the rest of world. In 2024, we are course-correcting on some of the opportunities in our US business, but we would expect on a normalized revenue basis that that relationship would hold true. So America is the highest margin, China Mainland, followed by rest of world for the next several years.
So if we take a closer look at China Mainland, and then rest of world, we do have opportunity across both of these. Over the longer term, I would say we could see China Mainland reaching Americas' level, but our near-term priority there would be really maximizing our revenue opportunity and some of the incredible opportunities you heard about, yesterday and today. So relative to the Americas, we see higher product margin with a pricing premium in China, scale opportunities with a large consumer base across one single country. We also do have a similar distribution cost structure, relative to the Americas, and then our store occupancy costs are higher here, but that is partially offset by some other lower costs, including labor. If we look at rest of world, we do see opportunity also here.
However, I'd say this is unlikely to reach America's level in this five-year growth trajectory or beyond, just given there's more complexity and more fragmentation in this segment. So we've got multiple countries, we've got multiple currencies, cultures, regulatory environments. So those all lead us to increased costs, I would say, relative to the Americas. We do also tend to see both distribution costs and then occupancy costs both higher in this region as well. So clearly, lots of room for expansion, but again, just not up to America's level. So we do get quite a bit of questions, I would say, about our segment operating margins, so hopefully, it's provided a little bit more color in how we see these over this five-year plan and then beyond.
And then as we wrap up, I did wanna just hit a few of the highlights that you heard about yesterday and today. So the team has shared a lot of detail around international, how we're going after our growth from 2021 to 2026 and the current five-year plan, and then how we're setting ourselves up for the next leg of growth. So you heard, number one, about brand awareness. I'm just flipping this up here again. While it's growing in all of our regions, it does remain low, particularly in our international markets, which really points to a lot of opportunity.
You heard from Lynn and saw the World Mental Health Day activation yesterday, which points to, you know, the unique ways we're engaging with our guests to drive into that market opportunity, grow our brand awareness, get new guests into the brand. And then you also heard about our competitive advantages. So product, community, omni-operating model, and culture. I think you've heard a lot about those, so I won't go into them in any more detail. And then I hope your main key takeaway is that we are just getting started. So today we've got 26 markets outside of North America. We've got five new markets in 2025 on the horizon, and then longer term potential beyond that. So I'll leave you with that and invite the team up here to join me, and we'll take some Q&A.
Okay, let's see. We've got about 30 minutes for Q&A. If you just raise your hand, I'll call on you. I'm not calling on you. Sorry, and but if you could just do me a favor, so we're recording this. So if we'll have a mic come over to you, if you could just say your name, your firm, and then ask your questions. Okay, Lorraine. Yeah, sorry.
Hi, Lorraine Hutchinson from Bank of America. Calvin, I wanted to ask about product. You know, we saw a lot of the stores in China. You talked about 90% overlap with product, but China's been growing really well, and you've been struggling in North America. Can you help us understand, maybe what's gone right, what you can learn from China? And are there different competitive dynamics in the U.S. that are hurting you more than they're hurting you here, or is there another cause for the differential in the performance of the two regions?
I think there's a variety of factors because of where we are in mainland China with our growth that the opportunity in the US just isn't manifesting itself into the same performance challenges here. So I'll start with you know sort of reiterating sort of the US opportunities and as to why I don't think they're having the same impact here. So really North America Canada growth is strong across both men's and women's. US men's growth strong it's women's. And as I've shared really it's two primary factors. One overall less newness was created heading into the year and really we sequentially got stronger through the end of the year. But it will be Q1 2025 when we're back at historical levels.
So less newness overall in the global range. And the North American team curated a tighter assortment within that.
So those two, the combination of those two led to less newness across core, through seasonal, and other, newness that was created to how it showed up for the guest. And we've seen that through conversion, in terms of missed opportunities. That's being course-corrected, sequentially getting stronger, and back to historical levels Q1 of next year, both at the global, line, as well as, the work that Liz has done. Liz, our Chief Merchandising Officer, working at that curation and the choices that were made to curate, to ensure that we have, depth and breadth within the newness that was designed and created. One of the other benefits with Jonathan reporting to me, is that conversation that's now happening, where before, under a CPO structure, I don't think the right conversations and challenging, conversations were happening.
Today, you have Jonathan, who's representing the design, the intent of the assortment, as a peer to the merchant, who's making the merchandising, curating decisions, and there's good, positive friction conversation that's happening in that. So I think there's a lot of structural process changes, and definitely getting at where we see the opportunity, and feel very good about Q1 being at the historical level. So those are the challenges and opportunities that we see in North America. Different in international, Mainland China, really a couple. One, the global line, that is the global line, so that applied to all. But Elliot and the team and the curation, they didn't make the same curated choices that were made in North America. So they...
Even though they had more newness, as a representation, I'm sure many of you saw that when you're in the stores, and I heard you say, "Wait a minute, I didn't see that in North America." It wasn't locally designed, just wasn't locally curated and assorted for North America or bought with the same depth. So that's one. The curation wasn't as tight within the global line. Two, newer on awareness and growth cycle and where we are in the life cycle of each of our franchises and the need and the opportunity of seasonal newness on top of core and core colors. We're just at a different process and journey with that with our guests.
So even though North America's continuing to acquire new guests, we have a high-value guest who is looking to lululemon, who's coming in and wants the newness, wants the more to add to her wardrobe, where, as a percentage of, it's just lower in these markets. So a lot of our core and core colors are just able to work harder for us longer. So I think those are the big distinct differences. Elliot talked about some of the locally designed, that's sort of just the sprinkling and rounding out the assortment. They also had that lever to sort of to lean in where they might have seen some missed opportunities in the global line, that North America doesn't have that lever.
Jonathan, in fact, is over in market this week, in Hong Kong, meeting that team, because we see it as a muscle that we can use, not just broader in region, but to potentially learn for the world as well by having a locally, empowered design team that's learning and testing, for us, across the globe in multiple markets. So more to come on that. He's just here meeting the team, but I think those are some of the agility levers that they had.
Do you think competition is different here than it is in the U.S.? Like, was that a factor?
I don't think competition is different. I know there's two competitors we like to talk about in North America, but I can replace those with, and San Yan can, you know, go into greater detail. I mean, the reality is, even in North America, the majority of the share are the large incumbent, players, the Nike, the Adidas, the Under Armour. You go down the list to the next tier, there are a lot of share, 85% share, resides in these. And there's a lot of share for us to continue to grow, continue to take, and, and that's obviously where we've seen our growth and will continue to see our growth come from.
The smaller players that are new in North America, some of them are in some of these international markets to a smaller scale than North America, and there are other local players that equally fill that space. The difference still, for me, is when we line up what differentiates lululemon from them, the premium positioning, the uniqueness of the product, the quality, the performance, authenticity, and performance with casual and lounge opportunities across wear occasions, and our price positioning. Similar here as in North America, I think there's very few that play that role. The opportunity in North America was really decisions we made versus a competitive decision, because we've always played in a competitive marketplace, and we'll plan to continue to do so.
Thanks, Howard. Brian Nagel, Oppenheimer. Thanks for the meeting, it was great. So two questions, I'll merge them together, distinct questions. But first off, with respect to North America, should we expect, and we're talking about this more newness coming first quarter of 2025. But should we expect, you know, especially following the, you know, the operating margin comments, is there some type of reinvestment or enhanced investment that's also gonna take place to drive, you know, drive better sales growth there? And then, well, I'll let you answer that question first.
Yeah, I mean, I would say the team is focused on how we can activate... They're excited about the product, the newness that we've got on hand for Q1 and into, the summer season. They are working, on how they activate the product and lining up marketing programs, out- as we always do, but I would say with an enhanced focus on that. Anything you'd add?
The only thing I'd add is, our new guest acquisition through North America has remained very strong through this year. Our opportunity is in conversion in our mid to high-value guest that has lululemon in her wardrobe and has always looked to the seasonal newness in the core and others to add to. That is proportionately where we fell short, and as a result, she's spending, she's just not spending as much as she did. We have a lot of levers to get to her through membership and other means that we communicate already that don't necessarily fully require top-of-funnel investment. If it was a new guest acquisition challenge, I think it would be different in terms of the spend profile. The teams are focused on creating the demand.
We're coming into the new year with an exciting activation, aligned to Back to Gym, that I think is gonna be very strong into a run, supported by innovation and product, and an ability and levers to get at high-value guests through, and presenting that newness, and that's very much what they're focused on.
That's helpful. Then my second question, with respect to the international market. So a lot of talk about efforts on the part of the Chinese government to stimulate the economy, recognizing it's new. You know, your business has held up, as we've talked about the last few days, extraordinarily well. But would you expect, or from a planning perspective, as the Chinese economy gets stimulated, so to say, would you expect your business to strengthen from here?
I mean, I would say we have been really pleased with our performance, despite what we've been hearing as macro pressures. So, I mean, I think one could say we could have further opportunity, if not for the macro pressures we're currently experiencing, and definitely focused on the long-term opportunity you heard about today. I think we'll share more as we get into 2025 and how we're seeing that play out.
Thank you. Laurent Vasilescu from BNP Paribas. Thank you very much for two great days together. I just wanted to ask about a comment in the beginning. I think you mentioned that maybe China could be bigger in terms of number of stores than North America. Can you maybe give us some kind of timeframe for that? Do you plan to add, like, 30 stores per year? And then maybe potentially quantify what the rest of Asia could be. Could it be also bigger than North America over time?
Yeah. Do you-
No, go ahead.
Yeah. From a store count, we've shared 200-220 in the current Power of Three x2. So, we haven't put a number in that would say they'd have more physical stores than North America. From a size of market, it will overtake Canada, and be our second largest market. I'm sure this team dreams of the day they can be the number one market and bigger than the U.S., and I'm all in for a good fight and challenge internally, so let's go for it, but I think we see it well positioned in number two, and it is around 30, plus or minus, stores a year.
That will get us to our Power of Three x2, 200-220, and then we'll reset for our next horizon of growth. The key is always quality of assets, as you saw, and also we're in an opportunity to go back and optimize the stores that we have opened, which is a big part of our continuing growth across all markets. We've done it in Australia, as Gareth shared, seeing a lot of success here and in North America, actually. In terms of overall markets, I think North America is still gonna be our largest. Mainland China will continue its sort of position.
I think APAC is today, you know, larger than EMEA for us, and I think there's a lot of growth and exciting opportunities within us, although we don't break it out, and I'm probably on slippery ground. I'm okay? No, I'm not okay.
You haven't gone over yet.
Anyway, we haven't broken out rest of world, but we love APAC, we love EMEA, but we see a lot of opportunity in APAC as well. But I think Mainland China and North America are definitely one, too.
Thanks.
Yeah. No, sorry. I'd just add, you know, we are focused on executing on this current Power of Three x2 plan and the China opportunity within it, and I think as we set the stage for our next leg of growth, we'll communicate more on how we see China unfolding.
Thank you. Anisha Sherman from Bernstein. Meghan, you showed us those awareness stats across markets. What are you doing differently in the APAC region versus how you grew in EMEA, say, ten years ago, to get the faster ramp in awareness and also a faster ramp in margins?
Do you want to take the awareness, please?
Me? Yep, can do. Didn't know who you were looking at. Yeah, I worked in EMEA and APAC. I think there's a few structural differences. EMEA is a more traditional, older market. We're penetrating places like Germany and France. There's a lot of entrenched brands there. It's harder to acquire new guests. We've seen in places like Korea and a lot of the Asian markets. There is just a natural thirst for new brands, so I think there is sort of a macro, just, fundamental difference in those markets, and then I'd say secondly, just once you see that initial, our model is, as Calvin's mentioned, a grassroots community, sort of proven success, and it begets more success, so that's how we operate, through that Seed, Scale, Maximize.
Once you see initial success, that creates more resources to then build on top of that. So I think it was the initial burst we saw from a number of these Asian markets, and then we've just been able to put more resources into those markets. As Calvin mentioned, it's APAC is bigger than EMEA. But yeah, it's. I'd say there's a natural foundational difference in access to new brands, and then how we've been able to resource into those, the pace that we've added resources in, into these Asian markets.
Yeah, and I'd say in terms of your operating margin question, it would be primarily scale. It's primarily scale in these markets. I mean, obviously, looking at efficiencies and tweaking as we go, but that would be the lion's share of the near-term opportunity.
Uh, Michael?
Thanks for everything. Michael Binetti with Evercore. Thanks for everything the last few days. Wonderful meetings. Calvin, moving away from the CPO structure, you mentioned it earlier, maybe just give us some of the benefits that that structure change will bring, that we'll see as customers and as shareholders faster and some of the longer-term benefits that you see that cause you to make some of those changes. And then I think you mentioned, it's interesting that US new customer acquisitions remained so strong this year, given, you know, the merchandise isn't exactly where I think you wanted it in the US.
What do you know about the new cohort of customers that came in this year that's different, that kept them coming in, even though the product isn't as strong as recent years? And what do you need to think about that's important to retain that customer after this year?
Great. So, in terms of the structure, I would say based on the size of our business today and our aspirations, Power of Three, and obviously as we'll share in continuing to grow, it's probably more common to have design and merchandising separate versus under one CPO, and I think we were just at that journey of growth. If you think of the capacity and the depth of that individual and the opportunities we wanted to get at, and the talent you want to bring in and the level of that talent, it was the right time and the right evolution of the structure.
So on the design side, and then I'll go into our unique, brand and product activation, which, again, isn't uncommon, to have those two teams together, where I see the real unlock. But from a design perspective, we have with Jonathan and across his leadership team, a fully staffed, highly engaged, design team that I think is the best that we've ever had in the history of this organization. You know, it's a combination of tenured designers, but also on Jonathan's team, some new lead design talent, and others that have been with us for a period of time. Dennis, for instance, in accessories, who's doing an incredible job innovating across and building credibility across, accessories.
I think having that team and reporting into myself is unlocking resources, needs, and action, as well as setting them up, as I said, a peer to merchandising for a couple of key critical gates along the process when we go to market. One of them is the buy decision, which I've talked to a few about. That's when merchants come back and present based on, you know, the global line and that review process, what their intent is for the upcoming season. In the previous conversation, there was really no design point of view at the table challenging back based on the intent of the design. Today, those are peers between Liz and Jonathan sitting and challenging and hearing.
I would just say it's resulting in curious conversations and a better outcome by just, you know, disagreeing, challenging, aligning, and moving forward with a stronger, sharper point of view. Because it's very easy to deteriorate an intent of a design into what was actually curated if you don't have gates along that step. I would say we're falling into that opportunity more than we would like, and that this structure will challenge that in a very positive way. Then within the new brand and product activation, our opportunity. We are good storytellers. Our opportunity is to become great storytellers.
And storytelling can't happen after you've individually designed the teams, being the product, you've made the buy, and then you get to the end, you're like: Okay, what story are we gonna bring to life? How are we going to present it to the guest? How are we gonna activate it? And how are we gonna merchandise the store? And we were probably, under the old structure, very sequential in that process, because it was fragmented. It wasn't an integrated team. Again, good, want to get to great. And I think the structure and the partnership, we begin very early on before the design. What's our intent? What's the story gonna be? How are we gonna design into it? Therefore, let's get behind the buy. What's the global, regional brand and activation? And then into the execution and the campaign to the consumer.
So it's just a much tighter team focused on, I would say, a more aligned objective and intent, that again, we were doing, but not as well as we could before. In this new structure, under Nikki's leadership, with Liz being the merchant, and Nikki bringing the brand side into that and working with the regional teams, working with the general managers across, we're just seeing already the benefit of it in Q1 as we are sitting around collectively as a team, week by week, and looking at what that opportunity is. And it's only gonna get sharper, stronger as we get into the buys.
And the last, in terms of the new guest, our core has always been the driver of new guest acquisition, and therefore, it continues to work for us, which is a healthy indication of all the items that are the core franchise drivers in the U.S. and internationally. Those are still working; they're still driving. And therefore, that's why we still see healthy new guest acquisition. The opportunity or the risk would be if we weren't course-correcting newness, as we're seeing, I would say, with our high-value guests: they come in, they buy their pair of Align, then they come back, they buy their next pair of Align. Maybe they buy an Align bra, they move into the Fast and Free or the Swiftly. They move up, and they keep coming back because of all the attributes of the product.
But, you know, newness in core and other is what continues to drive that matriculation and spend. If we don't course correct, at some point, you would see the risk of the new guest spending less. But there's nothing fundamentally different with the cohort. It's our core items that are still working for us. That, to me, is a healthy indication of the brand, and our opportunity is in this area that I mentioned, that's really catering more to our mid to high-value guests because they have Align. They have the other colors, and they're looking for the newness. They're coming into the store online, hence traffic. They're just not converting to the same amount that they used to because we have less of it.
John?
John Kernan, TD Cowen, and thanks for having us in Shanghai. I think everybody that made the trip here is really happy they came. Meghan, question for you. I think the valuation of the company right now, like, implies some skepticism about the long-term margin structure, as US is in a bit of slower growth period.
Mm-hmm.
Rest of World, APAC scaling, but still lower margin. What gives you confidence in the margin profile within APAC and Rest of World? You pointed product margin and scale opportunity, but what gives you that confidence as you look at the segment model?
Yeah. I would say, I mean, the fundamentals of our business haven't changed. We have still have a very high full-price sales penetration, strong product margin structure. That has not changed. We've got some short-term hurdles with product assortment opportunities that the team's correcting on. So our view on our long-term outlook in terms of our revenue CAGR and our expectations on our healthy margin structure haven't changed. When we built this five-year plan, we had some puts and takes in terms of operating margin. International has a lower operating margin, and as it over-penetrates, that's a bit of a headwind. But we have scale opportunities with the business as it grows with the North America targets we have over the long term.
So as you know, the North America business in flux, we see puts and takes and still remain committed to that modest operating margin expansion target.
Got it. Don't mean to ask a political question, but... And you're obviously a proud Canadian company, but a Western company. There's a lot going on back and forth between Beijing and Washington right now. How do you navigate that? There's been a lot in the press that we see, tit for tat almost at times, so election coming. How do you navigate that world?
I think I've mentioned this before, and you would have seen it in the stores. I think one of the strengths and what differentiates our entry into a market is we don't come in celebrating overtly the Canadian heritage. We don't come in celebrating a Western point of view of a lifestyle that, you know, we're trying to sell as an aspirational, you know, push for any of the communities we enter. We enter in as lululemon, focused very much on building authentic relationships locally through ambassador studios, through events and activations. And I've always said, to me, if we're in twenty-six markets, if twenty-six markets thinks lululemon's a local brand, if surveyed, then that's actually success for me.
Now, that doesn't eliminate the risk entirely, but from a consumer lens, that to me, has always been important, and that's why this global brand, but local relevance and empowerment is so important across all our markets that we do that. And then on the other, no different, you know, you know, you try to maintain good relationships with local government. And, I think this team here is doing a very good job with that. You know, here we can align ourselves to Healthy China, and we're in partnership on wanting to have the same impact around well-being, movement, which is encouraging. Yesterday, we... Was it yesterday?
No, two days ago, when we kicked off, you know, our World Mental Health Day activation, we had the Vice Mayor, Yu, at our opening. It wouldn't have been possible without their support to allow us to, you know, do that activation on the West Bund. So I think relationships matter, relationship with guests and relationships locally with other stakeholders and, and being here in an authentic way and aligning what their goals are with ours is sort of our approach, and recognizing, you know, there's that-- that's our-- we're in control of that execution.
Thank you.
Alex Straton at Morgan Stanley. I have a quick question for Calvin on a younger consumer acquisition. It seems like you've been very successful acquiring this younger person. Do you think that's contributed at all to some of the volatility in the North America business, and have you learned anything about that consumer that that's different? Has it changed the total profile? And then one bigger one, I'm not sure the best person to answer it, but just on the Chinese consumer, it sounds like seeing broader headwinds, but you guys are a bit more insulated. Is that the right message to hear, or how should I think about that? Thank you.
Okay, I'll take the first. You wanna take... Who. You wanna take the second, or Lynn? But you go. You, yeah.
Yeah.
I'll let you guys figure out. I'll take the first. I don't believe it has a direct correlation to the missed opportunity right now in the U.S. And the reason for that is, one, we look at our guest base through the lens of age, of where our growth has come, and new guest acquisition, we continue to see growth across all of the different age demographics. It's one of the things we talk about being a differentiator of the brand is being ageless. We've definitely, in the last few years, seen through some key items, the Everywhere Belt Bag being one, an acceleration of growth with the younger consumer. We're also seeing through some of our strategic sales partnerships and campuses incredible strength behind the brand.
Where, you know, we enter into a campus, and work with them and co-brand some of our, you know, famous lounge gear, and, you know, you have students lining up, you know, hundreds in line for the opening of a 100 sq ft pad on campus. Those to me are all good indications of the health. And although they've grown, and they've grown as a percentage, I think it was natural because of the opportunity, hasn't come at the failure or the loss of a more mature. I do think we have some assortment opportunities to continue to sort of balance that right. You know, I think we have a lot of crop tops, and there's an opportunity to have longer, you know, silhouettes in our assortment.
You know, again, the data around the high-value guest, which is typically our more, you know, sort of 35 to 50-plus age, you know, consumer, we're linking it back to sort of just that newness issue versus a traffic issue.
I think, you know, in China, data is everywhere. And social especially, we keep a close monitor on social chatter. We are a community-based brand, as we spoke about a lot today. And that authenticity, I think, helps us, you know, and the fact that we talk a lot and pay a lot of attention, and get information from our stores, which are directly managed, you know, keep us, you know, on the ground. We also use ambassadors that are normal folks, which again, helps us to stay authentic to who we are. So, with regards to, like, the younger guests, we're just starting to talk to them in China.
So, I mean, the insulation of it, I think for us, we focus on doing what we do best. We focus on listening to the guest, and then I think that keeps us honest in how we market and how we connect with them.
I'd just add, you know, we are really early in our growth trajectory relative to others. So I think to some extent, that does insulate us to the point we were talking about earlier, from some of the macroeconomic pressures today.
Thank you. Kind of related to both of those points, as you're going through the puts and takes of the margin structures, particularly between China and North America, curious how customer acquisition costs play into that? And it seems understandably like you're doing a lot of top-of-funnel in this market in particular, and yet there's a lot of powerful lower funnel tools at your disposal. So what scale do you kind of think about leveraging those, particularly as those markets reach parity from a margin standpoint?
Do you wanna talk to the lower funnel strategies?
Again, you know, we're a directly managed model, and that gives us a lot of guest data, and we're just at the starting point of building out CRM. What is unique about our market? I think I noticed that actually a lot of you didn't watch the digital video that was playing, but actually, there's actually a lot of information in that video that tells you about, you know, WeChat, WeCom, that allows us to connect to the guest just naturally. I mean, people are spending all of their time on WeChat, and what we have built there with the mini program and WeCom, allows us like, almost like a holistic kind of guest journey that allows us to talk about content. We sell on the WeChat mini program, but it's also where our guests register to come to our events.
It's also where we can send them, you know, a message about, "Hey, you know, I think this is what you will like." So I think from a lower funnel initiative perspective, we are more in control of that guest relationship, and we're just at the beginning of it. I hope that answers your question.
We can take one more. There's if there's one left. Oh, yes.
Hi, Peter McGoldrick with Stifel. I wanted to click down on the digital aspect of the China sales. Could you talk about the split between live streaming platforms, Douyin, the digital titans and WeCom, and how we might expect to see that evolve over time?
I think just directionally, it's okay. Yeah.
Yeah, as you know, we talked about how we're testing all this new channel, but what I can say that our marketplace continue to grow, which is our Tmall as well as JD.com. WeCom, with the amplification with the stores, has also seen significant high double-digit growth. And as I say, for social commerce, is what we test only early this year. And that potential, I think, is something that the market has not seen, and we felt that that will grow significantly, at least this year and going forward. But we don't have exact number to share at this point.
Okay. Thank you, guys. I think Calvin just has some words to wrap it up, and then we'll adjourn after that.
And then they get out of here?
Mm-hmm.
All right. Unless you wanna go for a run on the West Bund – anybody who's sticking around. Well, one, again, thank you for... I know it's a long way, and I hope you found it helpful, informative. I do think seeing China and seeing our team, meeting the team and seeing the stores, is a big part of the optimism we have in the market. And not just mainland China, but internationally, in terms of the growth potential. 'Cause it does, you know, it's definitely early innings, not just internationally, but you know, still in North America for us. When we look across product, a lot of talk around women's, sorry, men's accessories, and outerwear.
But, you know, women's growth and the innovation that we have there, and that what the teams are, you know, continuing to work on, through fabric. We spent a lot of time. I've chatted with a few of you around fabric innovation, and the potential is still there, what's happening in and around, you know, changes in environmental, sustainability, not to mention, as we think, and continue to look for unmet need solutions in lounge as well as in casual. But through category and activity expansion, really excited about where we are when we see what we can keep creating and innovating and bringing to market and the way the guests are responding to it.
We talked a lot about brand and the power of being locally empowered with incredible talent to go and drive that authenticity in the community aspect of the brand as a big driver, and then in market. So yes, markets we can expand into, but of the twenty-six markets we're in, the depth of growth we have is significant in every single one of them. So we're gonna continue to make sure as we drop seeds into new markets, that we're going deeper in the markets where we have single-digit awareness, where we have the momentum, where we put in the time to establish the foundation and really start to continue to grow and build on that in terms of the community activations, with Mainland China being, you know, sort of, you know, one of the big drivers of that.
But we could, you know, get on a, on a jet and go to multiple markets, and you'd get a similar energy and feel to see, wow, they're just scratching the surface of what's possible here. Equally, though, new store expansion in those markets, back into North America, the same, and optimization across all of our markets. I think I mentioned Australia, not that... You know, you mentioned five years we've been through with 75% optimized. Five years ago, the average store size in Australia, smallest in the world, I think it was around 2,500 sq ft. Total store, 20% back of house. We're talking 1,200 sq ft just five years ago, and that was 20 years. So fifteen years, that was the way the brand showed up.
Men's was very low because it had about 100 sq ft in a store. So it's just to say, when you look at these markets, even though some we've been in longer than others, the early inning of growth potential through optimizations, incremental stores, and incremental markets is significant. And in North America, where that portfolio of stores is going through its own optimization potential, where the average, you know, size is in the 4,000 range, and we see opportunity again in the Power of Three x2. But as we continue to move forward, how we see opportunity to optimize. So markets are big. And then lastly, I would just say we're a young company. It may not feel like that at times, especially when terms get thrown around, like you've hit, you know, maturity in a market.
It's like, mature, really? We're young, but what that means is, you know, we're gonna hit speed bumps. We're growing quickly, and, you know, we are learning, we're adjusting processes, we're adjusting organizational structures to ensure that we continue to empower the regions, that we continue to unlock those potentials, bring in the right talent, put in the right, you know, gates while maintaining agility, nimbleness, and empowerment, and learn quickly. I've shared, you know, with women's in the U.S., the opportunity through 2024 and how we'll get stronger. But that doesn't change how we feel in terms of the optimism, the opportunity of growth. Power of three times two will be at the third year, at the end of this year, and have guided to be ahead.
And that's what the team's focused on, continuing to build and drive those pillars while seed as we think forward. So with that, once again, thank you. And what do you have planned now, Howard?
I think we have some refreshments outside, so anyone doesn't have to run out right now. Just you can grab something, and we can go hang out on the terrace for, you know, fifteen, twenty minutes, and then, and then that's it. Thank you for coming.
Thank you, everyone.