BRAND OF BROTHERS
Rangers the perfect fit for Castore chiefs Tom and Phil as they target bold new dawn with Ibrox kit deal
TOM BEAHON swears there was no Eureka moment. The idea of creating a British luxury sportswear brand was more of an organic process motivated by the dread of mediocrity.
When it came to playing football and cricket, he and his brother Phil came to a blunt conclusion. Neither was quite good enough to cut it at the elite level.
After signing a professional contract with Tranmere Rovers at the age of 17, the co-founder of Castore — the ambitious sportswear brand teaming up with Rangers — moved to Spain to join the Glenn Hoddle Academy within three years.
Playing against the best youth players from Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid for lower league Jerez felt a like a splash of cold water to the face. Life as a footballer was proving to be a good deal harder than he expected.
‘I was a very, very mediocre football player,’ he tells
Sportsmail with a laugh. ‘I played with Tranmere and I was probably good enough to make a living out of football. But I was definitely not good enough to get right to the very top level.
‘My brother Phil had a not dissimilar story, albeit that his sport was cricket. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying he was equally mediocre in his chosen field to how I was in mine.
‘So we made a collective decision to go off and do something where we at least had a chance to be very good at something rather than accept mediocrity as athletes.’
Phil gave up on his cricket ambitions to study at Newcastle University and, after graduating in 2014, joined Deloitte’s corporate finance team in London
After snapping his groin at the age of 24, Tom was forced to make an equally difficult decision. The siblings turned their thoughts to utilising their sporting experiences in other areas, launching their business in August 2016 with a £25,000 loan from the remortgaged homes of their parents.
Four years later, the two brothers from the Wirral now have a flagship store on London’s fashionable King’s Road, tennis superstar Andy Murray wears their kit and a £25million deal to produce kits for Rangers marks a flag in the ground for their football ambitions.
Within 12 months, they plan to add teams from the English Premier League, La Liga and Serie A to their stable and provide a luxury British alternative to the likes of adidas and Nike.
‘We started Castore four years ago and, when we started the business, to us it was very clear that there was a gap in the global sportswear market for a challenger brand,’ he continues.
‘Strip it down and you either have the German brands or the US brands.
‘We couldn’t see any reason at all why a British brand couldn’t go and challenge those big companies at the highest level of the sportswear market. Although
I spent some time over in Spain, my brother and I have always been close.
‘We’ve always lived together and it was just something we used to speak about all the time.
‘I think we always knew that we wanted to start a business together. We are pretty competitive and driven by nature.
‘It was just a case of finding the right opportunity and we both came from sporting backgrounds and grew up in a sports-mad city in Liverpool.
‘So where we saw the biggest opportunity was in creating higher quality sports products.’
Convinced that established kit manufacturers have become ‘standardised’ and ‘slightly lazy’, Castore plan to shake up the old order in football kits through innovation.
Products will be sourced and produced in Europe rather than the Far East. Primarily a digital sale firm, supporters will be able to order kits direct online or at Rangers retail outlets wrestled back from Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct.
‘We made a decision 12 months ago to enter the football market,’ says Beahon. ‘And we were very clear that we had no desire to work our way up when it came to football by partnering with some lower-level clubs.
‘We wanted to start right at the very top. And there is nobody quite like Rangers in terms of the sheer size, passion and global recognition the brand has and, most excitingly for us, the ambition that the club has to bring trophies back to Ibrox again.’
For two boys from Merseyside, there was an obvious appeal in teaming up with the club who gave Steven Gerrard his start in football management. Resisting the easy PR line, however, Beahon claims that was always a secondary factor.
‘We didn’t know Steven at all,’ he says. ‘His involvement was obviously huge for us. But the driver for us wanting to work with Rangers came from the size of the fanbase and the passion we saw there.
‘It’s a cliché rolled out for so many clubs, but it’s completely true to say that Rangers fans have stuck with the club through far more than most clubs have been through in recent years.
‘And, secondly, the fact the club has strong ambitions at every level to win trophies.
‘The fact Steven Gerrard, probably the most famous sporting icon to come out of our city, is currently manager is just the icing on the cake for us.
‘We went up to Ibrox and met Steven, Gary McAllister, the wider coaching staff, MD Stewart Robertson and James Bisgrove the commercial director.
‘That gave me an opportunity to explain to those guys who Castore are and what our ambitions are as a business.’
Iconic Scottish sporting brands have become Castore’s calling card. Two-time Wimbledon champion Murray has been a shareholder and boardroom advisor for the last 12 months.
‘Fundamentally, you need worldclass athletes wearing your products on a global stage,’ continues Beahon.
‘That naturally led us to think that we need world-class teams as well.
‘I don’t think there was a better athlete anywhere in the world who better represented what we’re about.
‘He took us to the next level on our journey in terms of becoming a global brand. Rangers are the next step for our ambitions.’