You won’t find any Gymshark seamless leggings, sports bras, or men’s sleeveless tees at the mall – it’s all about gym culture online fuelled by millennials posting selfies on social media. Fitness influencers have emerged en masse in the growing category – set to top $US208 billion, according to Statista.
Gymshark sales are estimated to jump by about £150 million in the 2021 financial year to around £410 million selling through one channel – the company’s website. The UK company has not sacrificed profitability for top-line growth, and it continues to extend its reach after opening a new distribution centre in Melbourne in mid-April.
Gymshark uses social media Australian athletes, Nathan McCallum and Morgan Rose Moroney, who have a combined 1.69 million Instagram followers to promote its products. Supplied
It opened a new fulfilment centre in Toronto last year and a North American headquarters in Denver, and plans to open a US fulfillment site next year.
The Melbourne warehouse will cut delivery times to just a few days from more than a week.
“Australia, it’s a country full of people that are massively into sports and fitness,” Francis tells the AFR Weekend.
“Online and social media, there is a big influencer network. It’s a huge opportunity for us, it’s massively growing from an e-commerce perspective.”
Gymshark has a suite of social media athletes it partners with, such as Australian fitness bloggers Nathan McCallum (826,000 Instagram followers) and Morgan Rose Moroney (867,000 Instagram followers).
YouTube heroes
Francis – who has family living on the Gold Coast – has been visiting Australia since the early days of Gymshark.
At 19, Francis was attending university and hitting the gym in his free time. In 2012, he managed to save up for a screen printer and sewing machine by working as a deliverer for Pizza Hut. He and a friend, Lewis Morgan, started Gymshark because they felt there was a gap in the market for fitness clothes that fit properly.
Francis says his heroes were YouTubers, and so he sent them products. Gymshark was one of the first brands to promote up and coming athletes and influencers.
Francis and Morgan attended a bodybuilding expo in the Midlands selling supplements, T-shirts and singlets in 2014. They jumped from selling £300 a day of gym gear to £30,000 after the expo.
“That was a moment where we were like, wow, okay, right, we have something special,” Francis says.
The pair headed Down Under in 2015 to attend the Arnold Classic Australia bodybuilding event, where they had a successful stall. That year, Francis was astute enough, at 21, to see he did not have all the skills needed to run the company.
Former Reebok executive Steve Hewitt was hired as CEO and former co-owner of fashion retailer AllSaints, Paul Richardson, joined as executive chairman. Francis says he met both of them through his local West Midlands gym.
“I’m always, always asking questions – I struggled with how to do things because I’ve never done it before. And just kept asking Paul questions at the gym, and then we ended up working together,” he says.
Morgan left the business in 2015, and sold his 20 per cent Gymshark stake for an estimated £100 million when the General Atlantic deal was sealed. Francis upped his controlling interest to around 70 per cent, now worth an estimated $1.3 billion.
Personal trainers out of work
Francis’ brother, Joe, holds 1 per cent, while Hewitt and Richardson and other managers hold the balance.
Despite the success, Francis admits COVID-19 was extremely difficult last year, with staff suddenly having to work from home for prolonged periods as the pandemic struck hard in the UK. Personal trainers were suddenly out of work.
Gymshark pivoted to cover the hourly rates of its personal trainers around the world for a period so they could continue their workouts to their online communities.
But Gymshark has also gained from more people participating in home workouts, running and cycling, he says.
Gymshark wants to bring together the conditioning community around the world, which includes CrossFitters to bodybuilders and powerlifters. It still has some way to go to catch giants Nike and Adidas, which had 2021 sales of $US37.4 billion and €19.8 billion ($31 billion), respectively.
But Francis is not deterred: he has lofty aspirations that Gymshark can one day be the UK’s global sporting brand.
“In the UK, there’s only two fitness brands that get more online searches and that is Nike and Adidas,” Francis says. “This is about building a global community. Ultimately we want to be the global fitness brand.”