It’s hard to understand how Ben Francis, then a 19 year old boy, had the time or energy to found his own sports brand, Gymshark. Many young entrepreneurs They have to find time to work on their ideas on the sidelines of an eight-hour workday, and Francis was no exception. In 2012, I was studying at university full time and at night I was delivering pizzas.
“I would wake up and go to college, finish after noon and then work at Pizza Hut from 5 in the afternoon until 10,” he recalled. “What I was doing was answering emails about my brand between home deliveries. Then I would go home and work on my site and designing new products,” he added. After two grueling years, and with a turnover of its incipient business close to US $ 320,000, Francis dropped out of college and his job as a pizza delivery boy to focus on his company. Seven years later, his sportswear brand has an estimated turnover of US $ 130 million.
Looking for a sign
Before Francis started his business in 2012, he already felt the “entrepreneur’s fever” in his guts. In his teens he had created a website to sell license plates. But his true calling was in exercise and the gym. Before Gymshark, he had created two applications for iPhones to measure levels of physical exercise. One of them had reported earnings of US $ 10,000.
What followed was the brand: a gym fan sportswear sales business. “I was going to the gym and basically I wanted to be in the fitness industry. I wanted that combined with an internet portal dedicated to selling gym products,” Francis explained.
But his brand had started on another side: with the sale of nutritional supplements for athletes. However, when he saw that their profitability was so low, he decided to redirect the course. “I remember one afternoon I was in the gym and I looked around, I felt that no one had the clothes that I wanted to wear. So I said to myself ‘I’m going to do it myself,” he noted.
Gymshark – Amplify Seamless – Fuente: YouTube
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In the garage
Then he went to work. The first thing was to search a seed capital, which was contributed by his brother and his friends. With that money, Francis bought a sewing machine and printer and began producing T-shirts in his parents’ garage. “My grandmother made curtains, so she taught me how to sew. I remember thinking about 10 orders we had and that making 12 or 15 products was going to take me all day. But it was a lot of fun,” she said.
Seven years into his adventure, Francis admits that, after Gymshark’s first push into sportswear, the company didn’t have a big expansion plan. “The only certainty is that I wanted to wear those clothes to go to the gym,” said the young man, who is now 26 years old.
Then it was time to choose the strategies. And one of them was to start producing sleeveless shirts, called “skeletons,” for skinny teens with no muscles to show. Most of the ones on the market were for adults who already had good bicep development. In setting the price, Francis agrees that no in-depth market research was done. “It was literally saying ‘how much would you pay for this?'”, I note. “And we said ‘we would pay $ 25’.”
Increase
Gymshark now has about 1.2 million customers and 215 employees at their offices in central UK. But, how has it managed to grow so fast? To make the story short, the matter goes by use social media at its best. More specifically, Gymshark began sending free clothes to key users on the networks: prominent bodybuilders and other exercise gurus, such as Lex Griffin and Nikki Blackketter.
The idea is that these social media stars will speak well of their products and, in that way, their followers on YouTube and Instagram will start buying them. The idea worked better than Francis thought: sales skyrocketed. At the same time, it was proposed that their own social networks be interesting and visually pleasing. Today he has about 2.4 million followers on Instagram and 1.5 million on Facebook.
Hold a giant
But his strategy has spread: the brand has organized events around the world, inviting his followers to meet his “stars”. Hundreds of people attend these presentations.
Another key in Gymshark’s growth process has been that Francis has surrounded himself with experienced people in the business. For example, Steve Hewitt, who had worked for other sports brands, became the manager of the company. For market analysts, like journalist Emily Sutherland, Gymshark’s success lies in the brand’s use of social media.
“Influencers give customers a reason to buy Francis’ products over other brands, because somehow they feel a personal connection,” he explained. And for Sutherland, there is the key: Gymshark is only available on the Internet. “You can react quickly to changes in the market and you don’t have to carry the burden of having warehouses for stock,” he said.
Now, the next step is to become a truly international brand. About 40% of its sales come from the United States and it expects to reach 25 countries with its products. Right now they are only at 11. “I don’t go shopping a lot, but I’m thinking about the best way to find a permanent place. I don’t think we need a very large space. I just want it to be fun,” concluded the young entrepreneur.
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