Yoga wear giant lululemon coming to Fresno

Popular workout wear brand lululemon athletica is opening a full-size store in Fresno's Fig Garden Village.

The store, whose $98 yoga pants and other clothing have a loyal following, will open next summer. Work has already started, with the previous building knocked down and surrounded by barricades. The lululemon store is being built between women's clothiers J. Jill and White House Black Market in the front section of the shopping center near Starbucks.

The Fresno area already has a mini lululemon store, which the company calls a "showroom," in Old Town Clovis that opened last year. The store is open four days a week with limited hours and a limited selection of yoga pants, sports bras and other yoga and running clothing. That store will close when the new one opens, said lululemon regional manager Jill Spratt.

The mini stores are lululemon's way of testing out a market. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company also received lots of requests for a full-sized store in Fresno, she said.

"There's been so much demand," she said. "People have been asking for it."

The new store is will be the only lululemon between Santa Barbara and Gilroy and is expected to draw customers from around the Valley. It will be the same size as a typical lululemon store and about two or three times the size of the existing showroom in Clovis, Spratt said. The extra space will allow it to hire more employees and carry many more items and styles. It will also carry more men's clothing.

"Pretty much everything you would see in our online shops you'll see in the store -- more jackets, more pullovers and more vests," she said.

The lululemon store will take over the space once occupied by children's retailer Ga Ga CHIC and high-end clothing store Posh Fresno. Ga Ga CHIC moved to the Park Place shopping center at Palm and Nees avenues last month. Posh has moved to the Pavilion West at West and Bullard avenues.

This story was originally published December 13, 2014 at 2:05 PM with the headline "Yoga wear giant lululemon coming to Fresno."