LULU

Lululemon Athletica Inc.

A maker of technical athletic apparel, footwear, and accessories known for yoga pants and its Align and Wunder Under leggings, lululemon sells through hundreds of company-run stores across dozens of countries plus its website. Chip Wilson founded the company in 1998 in Vancouver, and picked the name because the letter "L" doesn't exist in Japanese, making it sound exotic there. He famously joked he added three L's just to see if he could get Westerners to mispronounce it.