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Chip Wilson, founder and former CEO of Lululemon smiles during an interview with The Globe and Mail at his office in Vancouver on Dec. 14, 2018.DARRYL DYCK/Globe and Mail

There is a segment from Chip Wilson’s new book rattling around in my brain as I approach his office in Vancouver’s Gastown.

“I am a technical apparel scientist,” he writes in Little Black Stretchy Pants. “I look at the body of every person I see in complete detail, and I log, extrapolate and run algorithms from the information I absorb. I have done this since I was 10 years old. I look at a body and correlate sex, age, sport, muscle, fat, height, race, passion, and colour of clothing.”

Wilson knows clothing, of course. He has made a fortune on it, as the founder of Lululemon Athletica. These days, he is still the company’s largest shareholder but is no longer in charge.

Wilson has turned his attention to several pursuits, including philanthropic ones. And there have been recent reports indicating Wilson is not done with the business of “athleisure” (a term he dislikes).

In his mountain-and oceanview office where he now runs these endeavours, there’s a large, multi-panelled whiteboard. Written in all-caps on the top right-hand side is “business purpose,” underlined. At one point during our interview, he wheels his chair from the boardroom table and reads that purpose out loud. “To elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness for 20 to 40-year olds via transformational development in technical athletic apparel.”

After everything – the birth and explosive growth of his yoga-wear company years since he dreamed it up in 1998, the billions earned, the loss of power at the company he founded following a live interview gone wrong in 2013, plus his own serious health issues – Wilson, 63, is not anywhere near ready for a career savasana.

These events and many others are recounted in Wilson’s self-published tell-all. “This book has not been authorized by the official maker of black stretchy pants, Lululemon Athletica,” the inside flap states. The cover illustration is a Lululemon-clothed butt, with the thighs nowhere near touching. The butt is Wilson’s.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Alberta, Wilson has lived in Vancouver, for the most part, since 1987. His seven-bedroom custom-built oceanfront home was last assessed at $78.8-million.

I’m no technical apparel scientist, but Wilson, sipping on a coffee, looks well in his Lululemon ABC pants and stretch shirt by Kit and Ace (the company started by his wife Shannon and oldest son J.J.). He seems calm and upbeat, particularly for someone whose career was undone by a media interview – the notorious Bloomberg appearance when he said that some women’s bodies “don’t work” for Lululemon’s pants.

He wanted to write the book yes, to set the record straight about some of the controversies, but also to provide a thorough history of the company from his perspective.

The first Lululemon store opened in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood in March, 1999. By that summer, Wilson noticed that women in Kits were wearing Lululemon out and about – and they looked good.

“I didn’t know it when I was building it at the time,” he says, “but I would say that Lululemon has provided, like, 15 per cent more sex in the world."

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'I didn’t know it when I was building it at the time,' Mr. Wilson says, 'but I would say that Lululemon has provided, like, 15 per cent more sex in the world.'DARRYL DYCK/Globe and Mail

In 2008, Christine Day, formerly a Starbucks executive, became CEO. Wilson was board chair. There was friction between them. In the book, Wilson recounts some of their clashes in cringeworthy detail. Those shopping bags with the controversial Atlas Shrugged reference “Who is John Galt?” – Wilson writes that Day knew about those, even as she told the board, and the world, that she did not, and ordered the offending bags removed.

When Lululemon issued a yoga pants recall because of see-through fabric, Day blamed it on the fabric manufacturer. “The sheerness issue was our fault, plain and simple,” Wilson writes. “I was mortified for Lululemon.”

He recounts a private conversation where he told Day she was a terrible CEO.

“She just cried and turned away – a reaction I thought was unprofessional and likely fake,” he writes.

The next day, she announced her resignation to the board.

The Globe’s requests for an interview with Day about the book, made through her current company Luvo Inc., did not receive a response. Neither did The Globe’s requests for an interview with Lululemon.

Wilson also writes about the Bloomberg interview. He was asked about quality problems with the yoga pants, which is when he said “quite frankly some women’s bodies just don’t work for it” and “it’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there.” The answer enraged many and led to Wilson’s ouster as board chair.

But in the book, he points the finger at Bloomberg.

“Shannon and I left the studio feeling good. It wasn’t until the next morning that I knew there was real trouble. Bloomberg’s editors had spliced and diced the footage into something out of reality TV. What was simple had been made fake and scandalous.”

Clips from the interview, which had originally aired live, were being replayed – not just by Bloomberg, but by other broadcasters. This is not an uncommon practice.

I ask him if he really thinks the footage was edited to make him say something he didn’t.

“One hundred per cent,” he responds. “The next morning it was all, like, sliced and diced. And only going backwards, forward, backward, forwards. There’s no context to the interview in any kind of way whatsoever. It was total sensationalism.”

Bloomberg said in a statement to The Globe, “We stand by the interview, which aired live.”

The aftermath, Wilson says, was catastrophic. “It took everything out of me and my family. Because we didn’t understand what was happening.”

At the board meeting the following month, an ominous “other business” category appeared on the agenda. Wilson was out as chairman.

“I gave them a good excuse to start moving me to the side,” he says. “Because I think our CEO started to market me behind my back as the weird uncle, as I call it. Because she was in survival mode because she was killing the company and she knew she was.”

I ask if he thinks critiquing Lululemon in such a public forum could actually help the company, because executives might follow his advice.

“One hundred per cent,” he answers. “I’m only out to help it. I’m the largest shareholder; I have billions of dollars in it. There’s no reason for me to; there’s nothing in it for me to slit my throat on it.”

Wilson said he could not comment on recent reports that he is joining a Chinese company’s bid to take over Finnish sports equipment maker Amer Sports Oyj, but it is clear from the book, the interview, the whiteboard quote, that he has no intention of retreating, even with his health issues.

At the age of 32, Wilson was diagnosed with Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). “I have no triceps or back muscles,” he says.

He is on the board of Facio Therapies, an organization working to find a cure for FSHD, and Wilson says remarkable progress is being made.

“We’re very, very far down the line of finding a cure for it,” he says. “It’ll be too late for me, but it’ll be good for other people.”

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