different colours rises and leg openings wholesale buyers unhappy about having to carry so much inventory and explain the myriad choices to customers began dropping curve id jeans the bigger problem with the line was that levis misread stretchy pants as a trend when they were more like a clothing revolution yoga pants rise is nearly synonymous with that of lululemon a vancouver company that got its start in 1998 and whose market capitalisation is now 9 billion women have long since worn yoga pants out of the vinyasa studio finding them perfectly suited for a run to the grocery store hanging out at the parkand attending a lecture yoga pants arent merely soft or tight in the right places they feature advanced materials that boost womens figures they last a long time and they manage to be both stylish and casual levis missed the appeal as we saw casualization continue even further the customer basically told us that they had enough denim until something really unique and innovative came along says marshal cohen an analyst at npd we really saw the denim industry and denim retailers basically turn their nose up on the customer and say we dont care what you really want were going to tell you what you want athleisure in late 2013 when bergh was two years into his turnaround effort levis sales started to feel the impact of athleisure were scrambling bergh told analysts in february 2014 with a bluntness rarely heard from a ceo i mean there is a big difference between the product that weve got on the floor today and what the consumer is looking for and we just flat out missed it the companys sales of womens jeans fell by at least 10 at major us retailers in the second quarter of the year he said at the time by the summer of 2014 with sales of athletic pants rising 62 from 2010and athleisure apparel looking less like a fad and more like a permanent addition to womens closets retail journalists began writing obituaries for womens denim eva mendes the actress and style icon spoke for many women this spring when she told a fashion blog that if she was seen wearing jeans it could only mean that her softer pants were dirty shoppers such as kate slattery 25 a data scientist in san francisco one of dozens of women interviewed for this story says she hasnt bought a new pair of jeans in more than a year but did splurge on a pair of lululemons she loves their clever pockets asked for her take on levis slattery draws a blank my view of levis is probably 15 years old she says because i just havent even considered shopping there since my mom shopped with me around the world in 2012 bergh made a trip to corlu turkey a textile town about 70 miles west of istanbul where levi strauss opened a research and development lab in 2009 at an old