3 Lessons Gymshark Can Teach Activewear Brands
If you're in the activewear or athleticwear space, Gymshark has to be on your radar. The brand's rise is the stuff of legends - initially founded as a supplement brand by two 20-year-old friends, after a year in business Gymshark started designing and creating fitness apparel.
A short time later Gymshark's revenue was driven by apparel instead of supplements and by 2020 the brand was estimated to be worth $1.16 billion. Aside from sweat equity and luck, how did Gymshark become so popular so quickly?
Gymshark has experienced massive success for these reasons:
Embracing influencers and cultivating a following on social media
Strategically building a community people are proud to be part of
Prioritizing customer needs at every turn
It may sound simple, but between smart marketing and Gymshark’s #stayhumble manta, the company has continued to stay atop the activewear game. In this guide, we’ll deeply explore these three lessons from Gymshark and reveal other secrets to inspire your brand's next steps.
Exploring Gymshark’s Meteoric Rise to the Top
Gymshark's two founders, Lewis Morgan and Ben Francis were only university students when this juggernaut of athletic apparel launched. It was a humble beginning for certain - when the guys started making clothes, they did so in Francis' parent's garage. Francis was splitting time between school, delivering pizzas, and Gymshark. So underscore that "humble" beginnings statement above.
In what was seemingly overnight, the brand shot to fame - here are more details about how the Gymshark crew achieved this, and how you can do the same.
Gymshark Lesson 1: Embracing Influencers
Influencer culture is far more than simply the latest trendy buzzword. It’s a real phenomenon that companies have to adopt for certain generational success.
Influencer marketing, as it’s known, has made a huge splash in only a short period - just like Gymshark. Here's why you and your activewear should care about that - according to Grin, 60 percent of marketers agree that influencer posts outperform even branded marketing posts.
Aside from the big stat there, this is an eye-opener because of the source. Marketers aren't exactly the most forthcoming about influencers outperforming other marketing channels.
This is a major reason that Oberlo, a dropshipping and eComm giant, predicts that in 2022, influencer marketing hit a total value of $15 billion. Many brands and businesses that come from slow-paced verticals can be reluctant to embrace influencer marketing.
Perhaps the company isn’t sure where to start or wants to wait it out for a few more years to see if influencer marketing is just a fad.
But for activewear, a category that is inseparable from online shopping, there's no room for reluctance. That's how the minds behind Gymshark approached influencers as well.
How Gymshark Embraced Influencers
When Gymshark was established in 2012, social media was already a growing part of everyday life. It wasn’t yet as pervasive as it is today, but the major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were already well established.
Gymshark could have used its social media budget on advertising, but the company went a different route, and it majorly paid off. Ben Francis decided to reach out to influencers on YouTube and elsewhere on social media whom he personally looked up to.
These influencers received Gymshark clothing and gear free of charge and later became sponsors.
Back in the early 2010s when Francis and co. were actively engaging in influencer marketing, it wasn’t yet known as that. Francis was simply sharing a product he felt passionate about with people he thought would appreciate it.
Those people did appreciate it, and Gymshark began growing its following in kind. They didn’t need to sink tens of thousands of dollars into social media advertising, and Gymshark certainly didn’t buy its followers.
They came about organically.
As of this writing, Gymshark has 343.5k Twitter followers, 3.8 million TikTok followers, 2.02 million Facebook followers, and 5.8 million Instagram followers.
The Influencer Takeaway:
Gymshark bravely ventured into marketing territory that at the time, few companies were bothering to do. Today, influencer marketing is a widely accepted marketing tactic.
Rather than follow influencer marketing strategies to the letter for your apparel brand, consider ways to think outside of the box as Gymshark did. That is, lead with what you would want a brand to do in a category you love.
This doesn't mean you have to overspend or overcommit, as you test the waters here, see what seems to resonate with customers - you could even ask them what they like or dislike to get some inspiration.
Whatever you decide to do, don’t be afraid to take small risks like trading a piece of apparel in place of buying an advertisement - it can pay off big-time.
Gymshark Lesson 2: Strategically Building a Community
Sure, Gymshark did well building an online audience, but their success wasn't bound to a digital platform alone. The company used every avenue at its disposal to connect with its customers and generate a sense of community - and they did so in spades.
How Gymshark Built "Community"
In its early days, Gymshark was only an eCommerce brand. This was great, but it can be distant and impersonal at times. Something the brand wanted to avoid as much as possible.
This idea was inspired by the thought that building real relationships would create a community of brand evangelists.
So to link up with fans in a more meaningful way, Gymshark hosted meet-ups and expos. Okay, so maybe that's a bit underwhelming at face value, but there was some real magic to this approach. Here are a few key ways Gymshark built community:
Influencers Create FOMO: It was more than Gymshark swag being peddled at these events (although that certainly happened as well) brand ambassadors and influencers were present, driving up that sense of FOMO (aka the fear of missing out). These events grew in scope, generating more buzz (and more attendance) as they continued. That all culminated in 2016 with the Gymshark World Tour, which saw Gymshark coming to the United States and other countries.
Make Attendance Possible For All: Those who couldn’t attend or who did attend at one location and wanted to follow the rest of the Gymshark World Tour had a very easy outlet for doing so, YouTube.
Get People Amped: For each destination, Gymshark would put together a hype video showcasing what went on at the event. This was designed to whet the appetite of those who were thinking about attending the next stop on the tour.
People who attended Gymshark events felt bonded by their common connection. Many attendees have said they felt a sense of family, so even those attendees who went to Gymshark events by themselves didn’t feel alone.
The Community Takeaway:
For both short-term and long-term success, customer trust and loyalty are everything. Your brand can cultivate trust with an audience in many ways, but the beauty of Gymshark's approach is how it bridged the gap between digital and physical.
That is, creating in-person events for a traditional eCommerce business to connect customers and create what has since been coined the Gymshark Family.
When people feel loyal to a brand to the point it's considered family, that’s an unshakable bond that usually persists for years if not decades, sometimes even for life.
It’s from this base of passionate, united customers that Gymshark continued its historic ascent to the top, as 2016 was midway through its eight-year rise to become a billion-dollar company.
Finding ways for your athleticwear brand to build community with your target audience early on can make a major difference in hockey stick growth. That creates the same sense of unity that Gymshark currently enjoys.
Gymshark Lesson 3: Prioritizing Customer Needs
Long before Gymshark was kicking off world tours like rock stars, they were treating customers like family. The brand always puts its customers’ best interests at the forefront, a major key to its success.
Putting the customer first isn't a new concept - Nordstrom got famous for it a century ago, and Amazon became a behemoth of late because of prioritizing a customer above all else. And Gymshark is no different.
While all of these brands headed in a similar direction, each of them took a different path there. Here's how Gymshark did it.
How Gymshark Prioritized Customers
Know Your Customer: Gymshark knows its target audience inside and out. The primary buyers of Gymshark athleticwear are between 18 and 25 years old. They’re very involved in fitness but also have a love for music and fashion. Keeping all this in mind, Gymshark produces targeted, tailored products that appeal to its various audience segments.
Discount Without Cheapening Brand: When Gymshark goods go on sale, it happens in a strategic yet purposeful fashion. Rather than push a new deal or promotion anytime for seemingly any reason at all, Gymshark offers discounts primarily twice per year. The first is during Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping periods of the year, and the other is for Gymshark’s birthday.
Create Value Perception: In between the two discount sales, Gymshark’s prices are largely agreed upon to be affordable for its target audience.
Since Gymshark doesn’t do sales all that often when it does, the sales go huge. For instance, in 2021, Gymshark made a video promoting its Black Friday sale with a series of rappers.
In the past, the Gymshark website has crashed due to how many people tried to access it on a major shopping holiday and sales day like Black Friday.
When the site went down on Black Friday 2015, Gymshark’s team sat down to hand-address and write letters of apology to all 2,500 people affected by the site outage. They were also given discounts. And that's perhaps the best way to show how customer-centric Gymshark is.
The Customer Takeaway:
Every brand says it’s customer-centric, but only some are willing to go above and beyond and prove it. Gymshark is undoubtedly one of those brands.
Customers feel acknowledged, as Gymshark products are affordable and tailored to them. Sales are very few and far between and treated like banner events when they happen.
Small things like handwritten apology notes for a site outage go a long way toward proving the company truly cares.
Adopt this practice, and you'll cultivate a sense of loyalty with your customers. You’ll earn their repeat business and generate new business as your reputation precedes you.
You don’t necessarily have to copy Gymshark’s tactics, but rather, be the most authentic version of your activewear brand that you can be.
What Manufacturer Does Gymshark Use?
One of the biggest questions that activewear startups ask about Gymshark is “what manufacturer does Gymshark use?” So for this section and the next few, let’s peel back the curtain to better understand some of the inner workings of Gymshark.
Firstly, what manufacturer does Gymshark currently use?
According to Gymshark’s website, the company itself both manufactures and retails its athletic apparel in the UK. The brand is also responsible for the design stage of the process, which primarily leaves outsourcing of pre-production and raw materials outside of Gymshark's responsibility.
Who Is Gymshark’s Fabric Supplier?
Gymshark works with a huge list of fabric suppliers - so if you're interested in seeing who, you'll find this fabric supplier list particularly valuable. Gymshark’s supply chain is divided into two tiers, Tier 1, and Tier 2.
Tier 1 includes accessories and garments such as sports bras and leggings. Tier 2 is fabric, accessories, and trim. The following companies are known as Gymshark fabric suppliers on the Tier 2 list.