The Gym-fluencer
Let Nike fork over billions for superstars to rock the swoosh. GYMSHARK has become a billion-dollar sportswear company by paying relative pennies to social-media fitness fanatics to live its brand.
Let Nike fork over billions for superstars to rock the swoosh. Gymshark has boosted its business by paying relative pennies to social-media fitness fanatics.
EEven in the slightly unhinged world of internet influencers, Devon Lévesque is one of the most intense—hands down. Recently the 28-year-old fitness pro bear-crawled 26.2 miles around New York City to raise awareness of veterans’ mental health. To the delight of his nearly 500,000 Instagram fans, on October 30 Lévesque, who can hit 12 miles per hour on all fours, crawled across the Brooklyn Bridge, then shot through the East Village and up to Harlem before finishing strong at Central Park’s Overlook Rock. And he did it all decked out in gear from British fitness startup Gymshark. Never heard of it? Spend more time on TikTok.
In the crowded and well-capitalized sportswear market, Gymshark has become a $1.4 billion–plus (valuation) brand by paying 80 ripped fitness influencers like Lévesque anywhere from $6,000 to more than $100,000 per year to live—and sell—the Gymshark lifestyle on social media. Founder Ben Francis, 28, has one rule for his athletes: Do you, but do it in Gymshark. “Young people only want to buy community-led brands
Gymshark founder Ben Francis: “I saved enough money through Pizza Hut to buy a screen printer and sewing machine; I started making products I wanted to wear to the gym.”
that align with their values,” Francis says. “We are a community that also happens to sell things.”
By marrying influencer marketing with highquality $25 athletic shorts, Francis has built the Nike of Gen Z—without spending billions on Jordan-style endorsements or glitzy storefronts. Over the last year, Gymshark’s revenue soared 40%, to $330 million. In August, private equity firm General Atlantic bought 21% of the brand for nearly $300 million. The deal has given Francis, a former pizza delivery guy from a small English town, some serious dough—Forbes estimates his remaining Gymshark stake is worth more than $900 million.
“There’s always that one person at the gym who looks like they know what they’re doing,” says Gabriel Caillaux, co-president of General Atlantic. “They might not be stars, but they’re the people who set the tone—those are the kind of influencers Gymshark wants to work with.”
Sports apparel is big business. Sales of sweats, spandex and sneakers topped $176 billion globally in 2019—led by Nike, with sales of $39 billion, and Adidas, with $23 billion in revenue. But athletic clothes are also largely a commodity; marketing is everything in this game. Nike takes the big-guns approach, paying $1 billion to LeBron James over his lifetime and $10 million– plus per year to tennis star Naomi Osaka to don its products in lavishly produced TV ads.
With a tiny budget by comparison, Francis has made a virtue of the guerrilla approach, paying influencers as little as $500 a month to flaunt his threads on phone screens. Sure, Nike and Adidas have more followers on Instagram. But Gymshark is hunting younger shoppers, leveraging human-scale heroes to attract more than 2 million TikTok followers, compared to Nike’s 1.3 million and Adidas’ zero.
The pandemic has made a good business even better. With more eyeballs than ever glued to smartphones and quarantine fashion favoring fitness chic over business casual, Gymshark’s sales have doubled in the last quarter. All this gain comes without any real estate pain. With just one physical store, in London’s Covent Garden, Gymshark sidestepped the Covid-19 retail apocalypse that turned Niketown into a ghost town.
“Sportswear has become even more popular with people working from home and investing in health and fitness,” says Emily Salter, a retail analyst at London-based analytics firm GlobalData. “Gymshark has massively benefited from that trend, and their very strong and loyal community has obviously boosted their success significantly.”
Despite his English roots, Francis’ style is more
Muscle Beach than Alexander McQueen. As a kid in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, Francis obsessed over YouTube weightlifting clips of icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger. At 18, he enrolled at nearby Aston University, delivered for Pizza Hut at night and spent his free time at the gym. As he built muscle, he couldn’t find a shirt that would properly show off his guns. With his university mate Lewis Morgan, he began ripping T-shirts into Schwarzeneggerstyle stringy tanks and decking them out with a logo depicting a great white shark lifting a barbell. They sold them online through gymshark.co.uk.
“Bodybuilding wear just wasn’t available here. All my heroes were YouTubers, so I’d send them products,” Francis says. Having fitness YouTubers wearing his tank tops was cool, but after renting a booth at Europe’s largest bodybuilding expo, BodyPower, in 2013, he realized this strategy could launch a brand. “We were inundated with people who wanted to meet the athletes, wanted to see the product—and [we] sold out at the event.”
Soon Francis went from selling $450 worth of merchandise a day to $45,000 by giving free Gymshark gear to weightlifting social-media stars. He and Morgan dropped out of college to focus full-time on the brand. While Gymshark still offers muscle tanks, the company has evolved into a Lululemon for 18-year-olds that offers men’s casual wear, spandex sets for women, running clothing and accessories such as foam rollers, resistance bands and beach towels.
Armed with General Atlantic’s millions and hoping to expand rapidly in America, Francis had aimed to move the headquarters of his 500person company from Solihull, England, to the fitness mecca of Denver until Covid-19 delayed that plan. His focus now is strengthening shipping and logistics. With U.S. shoppers accustomed to Amazon’s speedy deliveries, Francis is opening two fulfillment centers, in California and Ohio. They should be up and running by summer 2021. He’s also building a U.S. team, hiring 35 people this year with plans to add 15 more. Four of the employees will act exclusively as scouts to find and manage emerging American star influencers.
“When Apple started, it was adopted by architects, creatives and other sorts of cool kids,” Francis says. “Our fans count their macros and know how to do a proper deadlift.”
FINAL THOUGHT “THE DEADLIFT SERVES AS A WAY TO TRAIN THE MIND TO DO THINGS THAT ARE HARD.” —Mark Rippetoe