Case 04 — Lululemon · Chip Wilson · 1998
You have one store, no ad budget, and a pair of yoga pants that costs four times what anyone pays today. How do you price it?
You have taken a design class in yoga pants because the cotton ones everyone wears go see-through when they stretch. You have made a technical fabric that does not. You have one small store in Vancouver that doubles as a design studio, no advertising budget, and no retail experience. A comparable pair of leggings at a department store sells for around $20.
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§01 — What this is
An exploration of the strategies of the greats — and the decisions they turned on.
The real lessons of how great companies were built sit inside expensive books, business schools, and rooms most students never enter. The insight exists. The access does not.
It started as a podcast. The Strat takes one company an episode — Hermès, Nike, a plush rabbit, a water bottle — and asks what it decided, when it could have decided otherwise. 51 episodes in, the same moves keep turning up, whether the company is a couture house or a blind-box toy.
This site is where I show the work. Every episode gets a page of notes: the strategy in one line, what to listen for, and the mechanism it demonstrates. 46 companies get the full teardown, with the numbers. Every case is free. There is no account to make and nothing to buy.
§02 — The Strat
51 episodes on how the greats actually did it, with a page of notes on each.
The show moves in runs, and each run argues something. The founding stories of the giants. The mall as a strategy lab. How an ordinary object becomes a craze. What makes one lipstick worth more than another. Listen in order within a run — the episodes answer one another.
- Run 01The Rise OfHow twenty-four of the world's most valuable brands were actually built.24 ep · 4h 22m
- Run 02The Mall, ReconsideredWho owns Gen Z's wardrobe, and how they took it — or took it back.10 ep · 1h 43m
- Run 03Objects of DesireHow an ordinary object becomes a craze, and what the company does when the craze ends.9 ep · 1h 25m
- Run 04The Beauty CounterEight beauty houses, from a 150-year-old Japanese empire to a founder brand that sold for a billion dollars in three years.8 ep · 1h 2m
Latest — 51 · Fenty Beauty
Serve the customer everyone else agreed to ignore, and let the industry re-price itself around you.
Recent
- 50Rare BeautyMake the cause the product, and give one percent of every sale to prove you mean it.8 min
- 49RhodeSell three products, name an aesthetic, and be acquired for a billion dollars before your third birthday.7 min
- 48GlossierRecruit the readers first, then sell them the product they told you to make.7 min
- 47ShiseidoSit between two cultures and sell each one the other's idea of beauty.8 min
- 46M.A.C.Give the artists the product, take a stand the industry would not, and let both do the selling.7 min
§03 — From the notebook
The notes are the point. The episode tells the story; the page names the move.
Fenty Beauty
Serve the customer everyone else agreed to ignore, and let the industry re-price itself around you.
Fenty launched in September 2017 with forty foundation shades when the norm was closer to twenty, and the deepest shades sold out first.
Read the notesRare Beauty
Make the cause the product, and give one percent of every sale to prove you mean it.
Selena Gomez launched Rare Beauty in September 2020, straight into a pandemic and straight into Sephora as an exclusive.
Read the notesRhode
Sell three products, name an aesthetic, and be acquired for a billion dollars before your third birthday.
Rhode launched in June 2022 with three skincare products and a phrase — glazed donut skin — that did more work than any campaign. Listen for how deliberately small the range was kept, and for the lip-case phone accessory, which turned the customer's own hand into the advertising.
Read the notesEvery written-up episode has one: the strategy in a line, two paragraphs on what to listen for, and the mechanisms tagged in the same vocabulary as the cases, so the pattern engine can read the show.
§04 — The library
46 brands, taken apart the same way.
All casesNike
Wide moat · Watch it
Amazon
Wide moat · Own it
Apple
Wide moat · Watch it
Lululemon
Contested moat · Watch it
Pop Mart
Contested moat · Watch it
Brandy Melville
Eroding moat · Pass
Abercrombie & Fitch
Narrow moat · Watch it
Gap Inc.
Contested moat · Own it
One template for every brand — so the comparison is honest rather than convenient. The founding run, the runs since, and the giants the show has not reached yet.
§05 — What's inside
51 episodes, annotated
The Strat
The podcast the whole site grows out of. One company an episode, told for the decision it turned on — and on this site, every episode carries a page of notes naming the strategy underneath the story.
46 cases
The case library
One template for every brand. The founder, the bet, the inflection point, the lesson — structured so any two cases can be laid side by side.
30 forks
Decision tutorials
The fork the founder faced, posed before the answer. You commit, then find out what they did and the number that proved it.
Cross-case
The pattern engine
What shows up across dozens of founders that no single biography reveals — with the counterexample that keeps each pattern honest.
56 founders
The founder index
The people who had to decide without knowing. Each carries the one lesson that survives outside their industry.
8 frameworks
Company analysis
The part that separates this from a reading club. Business model, moat, three statements, valuation, and a written verdict on every company.
Interactive
Valuation playground
Move the growth rate, watch the implied value move. A discounted cash flow you can feel instead of a spreadsheet you have to trust.
Grounded chat
Ask the Notes
A question answered from this library and the show alone — how founders handled a first competitor, say — with citations back to what it drew from.
Anyone can admire a company. The work is taking it apart and saying what you would have done.