From Lululemon to Tracksmith, Sportswear Brands Face an Inflection Point

For Christmas this holiday season, I bought my mom a navy blue 1980 Lake Placid Olympics sweater. It has special significance for her because, as a college student in upstate New York at the time, she got to attend the famous “Miracle on Ice” hockey game between the U.S. and Soviet Union in person. Now, almost half a century later, my mom finally has some merchandise to commemorate it.

The sweater itself isn’t vintage, but a brand-new garment that I purchased from, of all places, Abercrombie & Fitch. The fact that a retailer best known for being the “it” brand for preppy teens in the late 1990s is now selling high-quality Olympics merchandise for boomers illustrates how vast the marketplace is for sports apparel these days. Abercrombie—which also has a deal with the NFL—is getting into lifestyle sports apparel just as establishment brands Nike, Lululemon and Under Armour, best known for performance sportswear, each navigate varying stages of their own crises.