Gymshark is currently valued at over £1bn and shows no signs of stopping.
But what made this start up from Birmingham so successful?
Well, it’s a truly inspirational story for any budding entrepreneurs out there.
It all started in late 2011 to early 2012 when Ben Francis and Lewis Morgan set up
the Gymshark website whilst studying an ICT course together at college.
Surprisingly, the website didn’t feature any clothing and was originally designed to
dropship fitness supplements, allowing the pair to get a feel for business
and selling products without taking on the financial risk of buying the stock upfront.
Infact, Ben contributes much of his success from starting a variety of businesses at a young age
which ultimately didn't succeed but provided him with the opportunity to learn from the
experience and failures that they presented. Now, it’s important to note that at this time
Ben and Lewis were both students who progressed to university after college and also worked part
time jobs whilst growing the Gymshark brand. With Lewis being a pot washer and working at
Burton’s whilst Ben delivered Pizzas for Pizza Hut, even continuing to work there
when GymShark started turning over hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Essentially, working extremely hard and utilising every spare minute they
had around work and study commitments to fulfil orders for the Gymshark business.
It was this secure income which Ben refers to as a superpower that allowed him to take risks
with Gymshark and other business ventures as he had enough money to survive but at
the same time he was able to reinvest all of the profits to grow the business further.
Anyway, back to the early days of the Gymshark website.
After dropshipping supplements for a short while, Ben and Lewis recognised
that there was a gap in the market for gym wear for young people just like themselves that was
both functional but also looked very good on people who weren’t professional bodybuilders.
They were frustrated, they knew the style they wanted but couldn’t purchase it in the
sizes which would fit them in the UK or for an affordable price, especially stringer style vests.
So, in true entrepreneurial spirit they decided to try and make it themselves.
However, there was an issue, they didn’t know how to sow or print designs onto clothing.
But this didn’t stop the pair, Ben’s mum taught them how to sow
and they learnt how to screenprint the graphics for the gymwear from someone they knew locally.
After investing their savings to buy equipment and materials, Ben and Lewis started producing
the first range of Gymshark clothing in the garage at Ben’s parent’s house.
They utilised Lewis’ strong following on Facebook which was around 50k at the time
alongside their knowledge of Google Search to drive traffic to the Gymshark website and
generate sales in the early days. Then in 2014, all of a sudden the
business started to take off after Ben and Lewis took their Gymshark clothing to the Bodypower
Expo in Birmingham with the aim of promoting the brand to people directly in their target market.
But they didn’t go to the event alone, they took a couple of famous fitness stars from YouTube
and this attracted a lot of attention to the Gymshark stand.
and it was marketing strategies just like this that have led many to believe that Gymshark were
one of the early pioneers of influencer marketing as they effectively engaged their core demographic
of 16 to 25 year olds through YouTubers including Lex Griffin
and Nikki Blackketter amongst many others. Gymshark clearly know and understand the
wants and needs of their core demographic and have succeeded in reaching them by not only developing
products to meet their wants and needs but by also using extremely effective promotional methods
via their social media platforms. In addition to this, Gymshark has
used the behaviour of their target market to their advantage through the use of sales.
The business typically runs two major sales each year and the black Friday
one is arguably their most effective and attractive to their customer base.
A great example of this, was through a marketing campaign named ‘blackout’ which utilised their
target markets fear of missing out by running a weeklong sale starting on Monday at 3pm
until the end of a week but they cleverly used a countdown timer showing how long
the sale had left, which influenced buyer behaviour and increased impulse purchases.
These types of sales have led to Gymshark selling 90% of their products in just one day in the past.
Going back to the BodyPower Expo in Birmingham, not long after this event, Ben and Lewis decided
to take the life changing decision that many entrepreneurs face at some point by dropping
out of the course they were studying and quitting their part time jobs to pursue Gymshark full time.
This decision coincided with the pair committing to long term contracts for warehouse units to
store their stock, which in the space of months went from one unit to three due to
huge consumer demand for Gymshark products. Looking back, it’s clear that this was the
right decision and the risk paid off. Fast forward a few years and Gymshark
had diversified its product portfolio and introduced a range of women’s
active wear and experienced rapid growth. But, as with any entrepreneurial journey, it’s
not been all plain sailing and there have been bumps in the road and major decisions to make.
For example, the pair decided it would be a good business move
to only use Gymshark.com moving forward. However, they then found out that they would
need to purchase this domain which would cost them thousands of pounds at the time.
And as with all partnerships,
there comes a time when people don't fully agree and this was one of them.
The pair did not fully agree on the decision to invest thousands of pounds
into the Gymshark.com domain at first. But, Ben managed to convince Lewis about
the benefits of doing so and the pair made the investment.
Then Ben and Lewis found out that one of the suppliers they
had previously used had actually registered the Gymshark trademark behind their back.
The pair were obviously not happy about this but had no option other than to bite the bullet
and pay to purchase the Gymshark trademark back from the supplier.
Around 2015, Ben and Lewis faced another tough business decision
as the pair realised that the original logo which was predominantly a bodybuilding shark tensing
would make it difficult to enter new markets, attract a wider audience, and compete with
the likes of Adidas and Nike in the future. Knowing they needed to change it to a more sleek,
commercial, and mainstream logo to grow the brand but also understanding the risk of changing a logo
which the brand was so well known and recognised for carried a huge risk.
So, they initially had a few designs made to test the waters and eventually took the
decision to change the logo, but to limit the risk, they ran with both logos for a while until
their core audience and current consumers were used to the design of the new logo.
Gymshark as a business was then faced with major change in the years which followed.
Firstly, in 2016, co-founder Lewis Morgan announced that he was officially leaving the
business in a working capacity but he decided to remain as a shareholder for several years after.
Then, in 2017, Ben Francis took the huge decision to step down as Gymshark’s CEO to
allow Steve Hewitt to take over the reins as Ben believed Steve was the best person
to take the brand forward and provide the foundations for the business to grow even quicker.
Since then, the business has gone from strength to strength and went on to experience rapid
international expansion, with the business now operating in 131 countries worldwide.
This resulted in Gymshark’s profits rocketing from £1.1 million in 2016 to £18.6 million in 2019
with around half of Gymshark’s revenue being generated in America.
Fast forward to 2020 and General Atlantic approached Gymshark which resulted in
them purchasing a 21% stake in the business, valuing it at more than £1billion at the time.
So, to put this into context, Gymshark has gone from a couple of classmates who started
drop shipping fitness supplements online to a business which is classified as a unicorn
in less than a decade, turning over £400 million in the 2021 financial year alone.
Now, back in the hotspot as CEO, Ben is determined to keep growing Gymshark with his sights set on
the business becoming a global powerhouse challenging the likes of Adidas and Nike
with their clothing being worn across the world. But, he aims to do this in the most sustainable
way having committed to use 100% recyclable packaging, removing all hang tags from
Gymshark products and using 100% recyclable polyester by 2025 in all clothing products.
Following his return to the CEO hotspot, Ben Francis made a major announcement towards the
end of 2021, letting the world know that Gymshark would open its first
permanent bricks and mortar store on London’s famous Regent Street in the summer of 2022.
This news comes as thousands of retail stores are being shut across the UK as customers shop online
more for convenience and other external factors such as the Covid-19 pandemic reduced sales for
many high street retailers, but Gymshark sees this as an opportunity to explore the benefits
of multichannel shopping for themselves. So that’s it, the story of Gymshark so far
and how it has risen from a small startup by classmates in college
to a global brand valued at more than £1 billion. Who knows what the future holds for this unicorn
brand, but one thing is for sure, it will be an exciting journey which will inspire lots of
people in their business ventures. If you’ve found the video useful,
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