Fitness duo overcome challenges to launch new lifestyle venture
An athletics star and retail expert have combined to enter the lifestyle coaching race, writes Donal Lynch
THERE is, it is fair to say, no shortage of fitness and lifestyle advice for Irish people. Even as we get more sedentary and larger — 62pc of us are now overweight — a plethora of apps, websites and health gurus crowd the ever-growing market in lifestyle coaching, now thought to be worth more than €13bn worldwide.
It takes something special to create a message that rises above this self-improving noise, but star athlete Derval O’Rourke and Greg O’Gorman, former scion to the Kilkenny retail dynasty, feel that is what their new website offers.
Digital Health Resource (digitalhealthresource.com) provides nutritional, health and motivational programmes on a subscription model basis, at €7 per month.
They have brought in some of the biggest names in international athletics — including Asafa Powell, Lolo Jones and Alysha Newman — to promote the service and tailor the programmes.
So far, they have just over 3,000 subscribers, which have come through O’Rourke’s website, derval.ie, and an app is in development.
The genesis of the business came as both O’Gorman and O’Rourke were at something of a crossroads.
Having hung up her running spikes in 2014, O’Rourke, a former world indoor champion and European silver medallist, was still trying to find her feet in business.
She had written a best-selling cookbook and had established her media career. But she also had two failed attempts at establishing a health and lifestyle website behind her, and was searching for someone who could bring some business nous to her practical knowledge of health, motivation and nutrition.
“I always had an exit strategy for my track career,” she explains. “I didn’t think it would last forever. While I was competing, I did a masters in Smurfit. I always had track goals that were quite lofty and off-track goals, that weren’t as public. Moving into business was one of them, but I needed the right partner.”
O’Gorman, meanwhile, was embroiled in one of the highest profile family feuds in Irish business history. For 13 years, he was marketing director of the Kilkenny Group, a chain which sells luxury goods. Having been sacked by his mother Marian O’Gorman in 2016, he instigated legal proceedings, alleging that she had breached an agreement which would have given him ownership of 25pc of the business.
The case dragged on for two years, but it was announced last year that it had been “resolved to the satisfaction of all parties”.
While this dispute was ongoing, O’Gorman was out of work, had signed on the dole, and decided to offer his marketing skills free of charge to budding entrepreneurs in Cork.
“A gentleman called Brian Carroll from CIT (Cork Institute of Technology) mentioned a number of new startups, including Derval’s,” O’Gorman recalls. “We met and I realised that there was a great opportunity. I’d done a bit of an overhaul in my own lifestyle, in terms of health and nutrition, and I wanted to bring that into the wider community.
“Derval asked me to help her bring this to market and I jumped at the opportunity.”
They entered into a business partnership, with O’Rourke applying the lessons learned from her recently completed entrepreneurship programme and O’Gorman bringing his Kilkenny pedigree.
“As an elite athlete, you have access to the best fitness people, the best psychologists, the best nutritionists. I’ve worked with those people for years and this was my opportunity to bring the benefit of that expertise to the market,” O’Rourke explains.
“It’s a recurring subscription model, and food, fitness and mindset are the three areas. There are 12-week fitness plans and we have different experts. As regards the partners, we pay for everything but we own the IP (intellectual property) and we own the business.
“The stars (Powell, Jones and others) get paid a revenue percentage based on the subscriptions we get. There is a pregnancy section on the website, which was really important to me because I’ve just had a baby.”
The pair decided not to accept investment funding. “We were approached by several people looking to invest but we didn’t accept any of them.
“We did, however, apply for a priming grant from the local Enterprise Ireland office and we were successful in getting that. That got us to a point of trading live with derval.ie that facilitated us recruiting.”
The site was developed “on a shoestring budget”, O’Rourke recalls, “but it took a huge investment in terms of our time”.
She adds: “Greg probably knows more about my baby’s sleeping habits than he cares to know!”
The next stage for the business is expanding the user base and developing an app. “The minute you stand still is the minute you’re reversing,” O’Gorman explains.
“This week, we have gift cards going live on the derval.ie platform. We are one of the first health websites in the world to offer these.
“The app will go live in 2020. So there is a lot coming up and we are really excited for the future of the business.”
‘The minute you stand still is the minute when you are reversing’