How did Ben Francis make his first million?
Early Career
In the early 2010s, Ben was juggling attending lectures at Aston University, delivering pizza across Birmingham, and lifting late night at the gym. Ben was immensely passionate about the fitness industry and wanted to do something in the space. He made a few attempts at workout apps with moderate success, gaining a few thousand followers.
Starting Gymshark
Ben started Gymshark by buying a website domain and putting a lot of performance supplements without actually stocking a single one. When a customer placed an order, the order went to a third party retailer to drop ship the order and that’s how Gym shark started.
Incorporated in 2012, Gymshark began as a website domain and little more than that. Just an empty website with almighty potential.
It took them two months to finally gain the first order.
They added clothing to the supplement in the drop shipping list.
Now the clothing was a problem as they were doing everything by themselves: a sewing machine and screen printer. Ben was sewing, screen-printing and delivering all Gymshark products himself. By hand.
Marketing Strategy: sending product to athlete heroes
Today, we call them athletes, family. In 2012, Lex Griffin. Matt Ogus. Chris Lavado were some of biggest names in the lifting community. Ben called them their heroes. So Ben sent gyshark product to these heroes as fanamail. Turn out they liked Gymshark so much that they shared it in their communities and that’s how Gymshark signed it first athlete.
All the right ingredients for a great business
By May 2013. Gymshark had hand-crafted the clothing, signed the athletes and built a small community. They had all the right ingredients.
First Big Product
Development of Gymshark’s first truly game-changing product began in late 2012. They designed their highest quality offering: Luxe Tracksuit, a fitted hoodie-and-joggers combo that was durable yet athletic and functional yet aesthetic. When . The Luxe Tracksuit was outsourced and the minimum order quantity took every penny Gymshark had made..
Luxe finally debuted at BodyPower 2013, repped by athletes and sold in small quantities to our community. But when it reached dusk as BodyPower, in 30 minutes, gymshark.com sold more in half-an-hour than they had in total till now, from £300 per day to £30,000 in 30 minutes.
First Million
Ben likely made his first million shortly after Gymshark’s explosive growth following the BodyPower Expo. By 2014, Gymshark was making millions in revenue, thanks to its smart use of social media marketing, influencer partnerships, and direct-to-consumer e-commerce model.
Gymshark Women
Till now Gymshark hasn’t be able to capture women’s attention that much. Then they created a pop color waistband. It was loved by women so much.
The Gymshark family grew too, as they brough heroes from the women’s fitness world, Nikki Blackketter, Robin Gallantt, Jazmine Garcia amongst others.
Today Gymshark and seamless leggings are hugely popular.
Image Attribute: Ben Francis, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
