Gymshark: Ben Francis. From pizza delivery to billion-dollar fitness brand.

0:01 So you get to this conference, this body power conference, uh how or what happened there? I mean, was there Were people curious, like what is this gym shark? Like what How do people respond?

0:21 Well that that was probably the most surreal weekend of my life because Prior to the event we were selling around two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds a day in revenue. But I just remember spending the whole time just grabbing product, selling product and we in the event we we completely sold out of everything that we took. Wow. And

0:38 after the event, I remember we were so tired we just we all just lay down on the floor in the stand. and there was a guy who had worked at a different stand, and he walked over to us and he said How did you do that? And I remember looking at him and saying I've got no idea.

0:54 Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today. How an online shop selling t-shirts took Ben Francis from college dropout?

1:19 to being the youngest billionaire in the UK. There's a moment in the early 2010s when something subtle starts to shift in fitness. People start filming their workouts and posting their progress. and crafting a bodybuilding identity online. Workouts effectively become public.

1:47 And right in the middle of that shift. was a teenager named Ben Francis. Now at the time. Ben wasn't a founder. He was still in college. He was delivering pizzas at night.

1:58 Going to the gym in the afternoon, and tinkering on websites in his bedroom. But Ben saw what was changing. He saw that gym culture was becoming a community you could join from anywhere. And he wanted to build a uniform for that community. So he and a few friends started making clothing specifically for weightlifters.

2:19 They didn't know apparel, but they knew how the clothes should feel. How they should move, how they should make you look when you loaded the bar and stepped up to lift. And then there was the second insight, maybe the bigger one. If you want to build a brand Don't buy ads, build relationships.

2:38 Ben reached out directly to the powerlifters and bodybuilders who were shaping this new online culture on YouTube. Not celebrities, not athletes with agents, real people with small audiences who trusted them. And when those lifters started wearing Ben's new brand, Gymshark? It didn't grow. It exploded.

2:58 But here's what's unusual. As the company scaled, Ben didn't pretend to know everything. He learned leadership from the more experienced people he hired. He effectively built an apprenticeship inside his own company.

3:12 He studied logistics, design, marketing, the supply chain, tech. Until he could eventually step into the role of CEO with total confidence. Today, Gymshark is one of the most influential fitness brands in the world, with nearly a billion dollars in revenue. and a global community of fans, lifters, and creators. But to understand how Ben built all of this,

3:35 You have to go back to where it started. He grew up in the 1990s and early two thousands near Birmingham in England's Midlands. As a teenager, there were two things he loved. Going to the gym? And at school

3:48 Studying IT It changed my life to be frank, because It's where I learnt how to learn. We were so fortunate. The school that I went to was

3:59 For whatever reason they'd obviously accelerated Tech. Um'cause I had access to the creative suite. So I had I remember Dreamweaver Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop. Can't remember what else was in there. But then

4:12 Being eighteen. knowing how to use that software, it was like It was like l you know, knowing how to use magic. Yeah, it's like a language. And and when you're that young, like your brain is just absorbing all this stuff and If you love it.

4:28 you can figure it out. So you were being t trained to do this Meantime getting ready for university. Um And by the time you got to university, you went to s to a school called Aston University, you learned these skills at school and I read that

4:42 Uh okay, building a website, I can you know, I can understand that. And and you started to build um sort of small businesses, right? Like if I read for example that you tried building a website that um Like Sold personalized. Car license plates.

4:57 Yes. Yeah, so that was the first thing. That was actually when I was at school. Uh so I would have been I don't know, seventeen maybe the oldest. By the way, how did you how do you'cause the personalized license plates in the UK are I think are Very expensive. It's not like in the US where you just g go to the D M V and register. Like it's Some sometimes people pay like

5:16 hundreds of thousands of dollars for for personalized license. How are you able to sell those on a website at seventeen? Oh, well we s we just sold cheap ones. But um oh you buy you would buy existing. So it wasn't particularly sophisticated. We would literally they they would come through and you could buy them for three hundred pounds or something can but you could sell them for two or three thousand. Um so what we do is we'd sort of see what was coming up for release, buy the ones that look like they could be valuable, put them on the website and then and then sell them. So you'd have to sort of hold stock or inventory, I guess. So like a flip'em, basically. Basically, yeah, yeah. And it's just sort of that early days sort of thing. And so that was the first thing. And then My first iPhone I think I got when I was about

5:56 It must have been eighteen,'cause I remember I was at school when I first got it at university sort of time. And it it was having that or seeing that first iPhone that then made me really interested in the idea of not just web development, but app development. I remember having that first iPhone and thinking, I would love to learn how to do this. So the leap from building websites to to developing apps, like it wasn't like it wasn't an insurmountable leap. You could basically buy the off the shelf.

6:20 software you needed to start building the apps and you could figure out how to build An app on your own? Yeah, yeah, just through YouTube. And for me those apps were were were in fitness, so it was I don't know how to get in shape and You know, it was like different areas where you'd look at different exercises, learn how to do them. It would all just be text imagery and and video.

6:39 Okay, right. And they were fitness apps, so let's let's dive dive into that for a moment. I mean, you got in to to go into the gym at what age? About sixteen, seventeen. And yeah. And that The gym was really important to me because it was that first time in my life where I realised that I'll get out of it what I put in.

6:57 Yeah. So if I go to the gym five days a week for a year. I will be in a better position at the end of that year than I was at the start of it. And that that was a fundamental and really important lesson for me. You could literally see the changes. Exactly. Yeah. And so how did you when you start to go to the gym, I mean, going at sixteen, you know

7:15 You're younger than most people in there and can be intimidating and you know, like did you how did you just like get into the habit of going every day? Um you find the local gym, you sort of go with friends. I think at that age when you're a teenager, go after school, you sort of travel in a pack of of of lads basically. We all do the same work out, chess Monday. Back Tuesday, shoulders Wednesday, legs Thursday, arms Friday sort of thing.

7:40 But you're right, it was'cause I would go into the gym and and you you'd see all these Big does it. Yeah. Yeah, especially when you're a young teenager and you're very thin. Uh, you'd assume that they all you think that they're all looking at you, you think you're doing everything wrong. I in in reality they're probably more interested in themselves than they are you and you know, no one really cares that much about what other people are doing, but It was intimidating. So I'd I'd just go with friends and we'd lift weights and we'd have fun and we'd we'd go after school. All right, so that's a that that's becoming a an um increasingly important part of your life. But also on the on the side, like you're

8:14 trying out these businesses and websites. And did you ever make any money doing these businesses? Like personalized car license plays or no? No. They all failed miserably. They all failed miserably. None of them made any money. Most of the apps were free. The ones that weren't you know, the downloads were so tiny, it was like a few quid. So it was nothing made any money at that point. But it seems like already you you were I mean You were generating these ideas in your head about

8:41 businesses, like things you could do and and ways you could make money You know, digitally. Is that right? I mean w was your sort of head moving in that direction already at that at that age. Yeah, the the the thing for me Was

8:55 When things quote failed. It never felt like a failure. So when I was when I was about fourteen, I everyone here does work experience. So you you go away, you do work experience for a little bit and you know, you find out what it's like to actually go into an office or a factory or something like that. So when I was fourteen, I went and did work experience with with my granddad. He basically had his own business. No, he has his own business. So he'd line furnaces. So we'd go into factories around the Midlands and we'd literally go into the furnaces and the job would be you either line them with brick or or ceramic fiber. So it's basically like an insulation around the inside.

9:29 And Th w the there's a lot of things I learned there. So one, I learnt hard work. But the thing that that really stuck with me was he told me about all the risks he had to take when he started his business. He had two kids, he had a mortgage, he had a wife, and when he was building his business, he had to take massive financial risks that risked the house and you know, the the the the roof over the the head of his kids. So

9:54 Fast forward four years later, I'm seventeen, eighteen, and I'm s trying to start my own business. I genuinely felt like I had no risk. I was at the time I was working at Pizza Hurt, I was on earning Four pound, five pound an hour. You know, f I could buy domain names for three pound fifty at the time.

10:11 Yeah, I it my risk was zero and I'd always been brought up to know that there was genuine risk in starting a business. And then that allowed me to recognize that at the time I I didn't really have Any risk compared to what he had? So all right, so you Get to university.

10:26 And You're working at Pizza Hut, as you mentioned. And when you got to university, um, had you already started to think about A new business idea? So it wasn't actually an idea

10:39 necessarily for a business. Going back to the whole idea the whole thing was I loved doing new things and I loved learning new things. At that point The aim was l simply to sell one thing online. And I remember we sort of opened up Shopify website, it was all there, you know, we bought the domain name. And then it was a bit like Okay, no.

10:56 Now we're at this point we hadn't thought to sell apparel. At this point we really wanted to sell supplements'cause we'd, you know, get into the gym, taking your protein shakes and all that sort of stuff. And um There was a friend of mine who worked at a local supplement shop. And I remember calling him up, his name was Dan, and I said, Listen, Dan, I've got this website, I wanna sell supplements online, can you do me a deal? I wanna buy some supplements off you and I'll I'll sell them And he went, Yeah, yeah, I can I can do you a deal, I'll I'll do you a deal And um he came back to me the next day and he said, Right

11:25 I've you know, I've got rid of all of our minimum order quantities, but the lowest I can go is uh I think it was ten thousand pounds. Now, at this point I've never heard of ten thousand pound, let alone seen ten thousand pound. That would have been years worth of Income for me a pizza. Right. So that was obviously a door closed, there was no you wouldn't be able to to buy stock. You wouldn't be able to buy a bunch of supplements and hold them.

11:45 No, exactly. So at that point it was almost like a a good problem because then we started thinking, Well how can we 'Cause remember, the aim was literally to sell something. And that's when we found out about drop shipping, where we could literally Load at the website with

12:00 Hundreds of supplements. have them slightly more expensive than what the dropshipper would obviously sell them to us for. And then when people order them, it would then ship through the dropshipper to the customer. And you called it You called it Gymshark from the beginning? Yeah. Yeah, it was run on Gymshark.co.uk. And Gymshark was a name that you came up with. I mean, you got the domain, but it was tell me about that name.

12:22 Yeah, I to want to say Yeah. Because I'd never thought it would be anything big, it was a real arbitrary. To the point where I can I can hardly remember. why we called it Gymshark. I know the domain was cheap. I know it was about three pound fifty. I know it was available Um

12:40 So no, I don't it was just It just was just like I guess an instinctive decision at the time. Got it. Can I can I rewind for a sec, just because I wanna go uh slightly back a little bit, which is First of all you're you you're talking about we and I wanna I wanna kinda dig into this,'cause I guess at university you met a a guy named Louis Morgan.

12:59 Yeah. And he work with you on Gymshark. Who who is Lewis? How did you meet him? What

13:07 What's the story? I knew Lewis from school. We weren't friends, but we knew of each other. We we became friends through the gym. So and it was a case of like, I think we were racing who could have the biggest arms the quickest or something like that. And then it was through the gym that we were then be bouncing all these ideas off each other. So That's obviously where then we found Shopify and drop shipping and and built from there. All right, there's one other bit of context that I wanna uh I'm curious about, which is

13:31 Birmingham, I think, and maybe I'm wrong about this, is sort of is sort of like the center of bodybuilding culture in the UK a little bit. Like I guess There are like bodybuilding conferences and conventions in Birmingham. Is that is that right? Yeah, so there's a couple of things. So one, Dorian Yates, one of the best bodybuilders. of all time is from Birmingham.

13:52 The biggest and the best bodybuilding and lifting event, as far as I was aware. Certainly in the UK, possibly Europe, was actually run out of Birmingham. And it was called the Body Power Ven. And we'd all go there just as as fans, and it was It was really cool because

14:07 all of the biggest and the best bodybuilders were always from the US. So to be able to go and see them, see the brands, see the big bodybuilders in Birmingham was just an amazing thing as a sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old. And when you when you first decided to start this sort of drop ship Shopify website Um it was it was you

14:26 And and Lewis or Or a Lewis for At least eighteen months. Probably even the first two years. Right. Okay. So y you launch a site and

14:39 How did it do? Well, we had the Shopify website. It looked amazing. It was full of supplements. It looked incredibly professional. We sent it live. And Absolutely nothing happened for weeks. Nothing.

14:52 Like I I sort of didn't realise that Because the website was like I assume that people would just come across it and find it. No one found the website. We completely had to try and work out how to get traffic there and it was actually Facebook. We started Facebook pages, obviously there was a Gymshark Facebook page and lifting pages. And this is just pages that you were starting that you would you w you didn't have cash to No, we had we we had no money, no ads, no nothing. It was literally just organic Facebook pages with pictures of lifters and bodybuilding news and things like that. And

15:23 I think it probably took it probably took a couple of months. And eventually we had our first sale. It was fifty two pounds. The cost to us was fifty to the drop shipper, so we had a two pound profit. It took us about I don't know, call it two months, so we were earning a profit of a pound a month. But it i it it didn't matter that the'cause r if you think about that two months prior, the whole ambition was just to sell something online and that feeling of selling something online

15:49 was just absolutely brilliant. And I was I honestly I was just absolutely blown away. I was dancing around my bedroom at like nineteen years old, whatever it was, eighteen, nineteen years old, just so pleased that we'd sold something. So I mean getting an order is exciting. But I mean you mentioned your margins were were like maybe like one to two pounds per

16:11 Yeah. Order. Yeah. So how long did you keep it as a supplement business before you started thinking maybe Maybe we should look around for a different product. Yeah. It would be somewhere between

16:23 six to twelve months, maybe something like that. And and we did sell and we managed to build up maybe we're getting a sale or two a week, but the because the the the the margin was so low. there was a point where we were genuinely debating as to whether or not this is even worth carrying on. And then my so my Nan had done a curtain making course. Your gr there's your grandma. Yeah, yeah, she um

16:43 And she had a sewing machine on the on the dining table in a in her house. And it sort of made me think, well, I wonder if we could actually make our own clothing at this point. And um Now at that point we then bought a sewing machine, we brought a screen printer, we'd save the money for it, and

17:00 We started to basically to To try to hand make, hand print our own clothing, basically. And that that that was where it all really started to kick off. But again, this was like Let's just try selling clothing on this site. Yeah. Exactly that and it was

17:14 There was a definitely a thing of No one made clothing specific to bodybuilders and lifters. And it's less even it was more around the branding. No one sold product that was dedicated to that sort of that group that we we w were very much a part of. So We ended up at that point, we sort of bought a load of blanks and and again it's it's a fairly standard thing that I guess a lot of people do today. We started screen printing and in some alim some areas as well, sewing our own product.

17:42 All right, so let's kinda break this down. You buy a sewing machine and a screen printer, and what uh and how how much does that stuff cost? Uh the screen printer was about a thousand pounds, sew machine would have been a few hundred quid. So at that point it would have been All in. Just over a thousand pounds. But we can make lots of different product, different logos.

18:01 All on the same blanks. And blanks are Just blank T shirts. Yeah, blank T shirts, blank tanks, hoodies. And you get them in white, black, grey. Almost like a a similar sort of thing to like a fruit of the loom standard T shirt with logos on it. And it was all made to order. Like if somebody ordered a shirt, then you would

18:16 Uh You would Screen printed, basically. Yeah, literally. It literally we wake up, we'd see if there was an order, screen print it, take it to the post office. Send it and

18:26 And then that was it. And this I'm presumably this didn't really cost you that much money'cause you could just go to like a I mean, were you literally like just going to we would call like Ross or you know, or T J Max type stores and Just buying bulk t shirts. No, we bought them from a UK wholesaler. So you could buy again the minimums were low, like the minimums might have been ten per size or something. So and then going back to the s the versus the supplement, because we still had supplements on the website at this point as well. We could sell

18:54 I make fifty pounds worth of supplements make two pounds in in margin. Or we could sell. thirty pounds worth of clothing and make fifteen pounds. So it was That that to us completely changed the game'cause all of a sudden we were sort of starting to build a model where we could reinvest in our own business and and that's when we could really start to grow it.

19:14 But initially it was it was just T shirts, tanks. And uh Uh hoodies. And hoodies, okay. And I mean was there

19:23 In your mind at least. Like a big Vision at that point or was it just Let's just do this and See what happens.

19:31 No, it was really gradual. So the first moment was let's make a website that sells something online. Then it was we got the first sail, then it was almost let's get our second sail, then it was let's try and get a sail a week and then a sail a month, and then The the bar was always inc incredibly low. There wasn't it wasn't for many, many years until we really started to think ahead. You almost just think about the next thing and dedicate we found ourselves dedicating ourselves wholeheartedly to just what that next thing was. So Again, like

20:00 With the supplements you were thinking maybe people would f would stumble on it and order supplements. Like I can't imagine all of a sudden the floodgates open and people are like, Oh, they have T shirts and hoodies now. I mean w was it still was it still like cricket? No, it was it exactly exactly that and we it was all done through Facebook pages, but the big moment for us was then the next year when we went to that body power event and we We visited as customers, as we always did. And we went up to the show office where you can book for the next year. They would generally book a year in advance. And we went up there and um

20:33 I remember saying them to to them, please can we have a stand? We want to book a stand for next year. And I I I can't remember, I think it was a minimum of three thousand pounds. So again, it was a lot of money to us. But at that point we'd sort of started to sell enough to give us the confidence that between the sales on the website plus the jobs that we had, we could probably Within twelve months we could get the money to make you can make three three thousand pounds. Yeah. Yeah. And and you decide that you're gonna go to this This конference

21:00 And what were you gonna do there? I mean how How were T uh just T shirts and hoodies and tank top's gonna be enough to generate excitement.

21:12 So we Book the space the year before. And then that whole year, it it it sort of gave us something really big to work towards. We were then like, right, let's build our business to this event. So it was for it the the event was in May. And we at the time All of our fitness information, going back to sort of that web development era, all of the information that we learnt was through YouTube. So it was just through watching YouTubers and all our favorite fitness people were on YouTube. So

21:37 we ended up just sort of building relationships with a handful of YouTubers and I actually remember Matt Ogis and Chris Lovado that They lived in California at the time. Remember jumping on Skype to them and just talking about the products that we were making. They gave us feedback. We'd send them the product. They would put them in their YouTube videos. And what was the product? It was it was something beyond T shirts. No, no, it was just the T shirts and tankers.

22:00 And ha and and because this is kind of early ish YouTube, it wasn't that hard to just connect with them and say, Hey, I watch your YouTube videos, can I send you some stuff? Yeah, and they were really just excited they I I don't think they'd probably spoke to anyone from the UK before, and we through that year we then not only built enough sales to cover the£3,000 for the stand I think we actually upgraded the size of the stand. I think it probably cost us another three thousand. But we even had enough money by the the following May before the event to fly those YouTubers.

22:31 out to the UK to come to the event. And we Well I remember we called them and we asked them if they wanted to come and they were just over the moon. They w obviously they just immediately said yes. So They flew out to the event and that that was a

22:44 We didn't even realise it at the time. That was a game changer for us. And the idea was like what did you propose to them? Just wear Gym Shark stuff and And be at our booth? Yeah, literally come to the event, we'll fly you out, obviously put put you up in a hotel, come to the booth, we'll go to the gym, we'll we'll just

23:01 I guess chill together and Have a good time at the event. Alright, so you so You're getting close to this. Conference and

23:08 Tell me a little bit about how you start to think about what you were gonna feature there. Uh Honestly, we didn't beyond the having the U like being there with the YouTubers and having the product, we didn't think too much about it. We The the big thing for us it was the launch of our first ever track suit. So we had the event, our first ever track suit, which we'd we built up to on on our Facebook page at the time, and and obviously the YouTube uh YouTubers were there as well. That was everything, and we'd we were just sort of going

23:35 Excited to be there. Alright, let's talk about the track suit. How did you design it. You obviously knew how to design a website. And uh but did you

23:45 Know how to design clothing? Oh no, no. We we We just had to learn as we went, really. We we f we was just searching around online, we found manufacturers. It wasn't a particularly sophisticated process, but it was just us trying to build the tracksuit that essenti at the time no one else was making and and that we really wanted. to China, right?'Cause that's where all the manufacturing happened and still happens to some extent.

24:09 Yeah, yeah, so the first track suit was made in China and I can't remember how we found the manufactur. It would have been on you know, on Alibar or something like that, I think it was. I think that's where we found them. And it was all around the f the fit. It was very tapered at the waist, the the the trousers were tapered. It w it was very much around That tapered fit at the time. And the taper fit, presumably. You you know, you look better in it, right? If especially if you're'cause it it shows off your

24:35 muscles or whatever. I mean e even even for sort of skinnier guys, right, if it's more fitted. you can it can sort of enhanced your The way your body looks. Yeah. And that that's where it was really born. And that that's what we try to do right today, right? We try and build some really physique accentuating clothing.

24:52 Um That's where that all that began through that first track suit and through that that that early product. Even before that, just buying all the inventory, how how much do you estimate you had to spend just to just to Order the inventory to hold it. It would have been

25:08 Less than ten thousand pounds. But it would have been in the thousands. And how did you have that That cash. That was through a combination of Pizza H

25:17 building the business and just basically reinvesting every single penny that we had. And'cause we had no cost, every single penny pa pound of profit. Would literally just go into that order. All right, so you get to this conference, this body power conference, and you have like A bunch of

25:31 Big guys at the booth. And uh And b what I mean, you've got a tracksuit there. Yeah. Um, and I'm trying to imagine like what

25:41 I mean w how or w what happened there? I mean, was there W were people curious, like what is this Gymshark thing? Like what How do people respond? Well, that that was probably the most surreal weekend of my life because We we hadn't even finished setting up the stand. I remember I was still running from the the van to bring the product in.

26:01 in the days before this that the you know all the YouTubers have been posted on Facebook, on YouTube, letting everyone know that they would be there. And we didn't really know how I guess how big or how famous they were, but They they'd let everyone know that they would be in there. And As soon as they opened the doors to that event.

26:17 It just felt like people flooded to the stand and people were there to see You know, they're heroes, basically, they'cause they'd never seen them before. So it this it's interesting because most of these guys would walk down the streets of Birmingham or wherever, and nobody would have any idea who they were. But at that conference these guys were rock stars. In in the world of lifting. They were huge. The younger sort of t late teens, early twenties audience knew them.

26:41 But then the older people maybe at the time in their thirties or their forties just had no idea because YouTube was very much a It was just so new at the time. But then the people that visited our stand also ended up buying product and from whenever it opened on that Saturday morning all the way through to close on Sunday night, I just remembered spending the whole time just grabbing product, selling product and we in the event we we completely sold out of everything that we took.

27:04 And I'm trying to figure out why. Like again E e as you describe it, it's a really basic tracks you, right? It's not um I mean it's tapered, so it's it's probably differentiated. But

27:18 Um Gymshark is was an unknown brand. Mm-hmm. But there was excitement. People were like kinda coming to your booth and checking it out. What do you think explains it? Do you think it was the fit? Yeah, I think the the fit of the tracksuit was definitely a fairly unique design, but to your point it wasn't Revolutionary.

27:36 Their their heroes on YouTube were wearing it. So this was uh most of the people at the stand were young kids. It was all it was a it was us basically, it was teenage guys. And what was the retail price of the I think we had to do everything cash that weekend. So we literally just had sort of bags around our waist and we were literally just just selling everything. I think it was round numbers. I think we it was£30 and we were just selling it all for cash. And After the event, I remember we were so tired we just we all just lay down on the floor in the stand.

28:03 And there was a guy who had worked at a stand a different stand, and he walked over to us. He was a bit older and he hadn't even heard of And I remember looking at him and saying I've got no idea. What we come back in just a moment.

28:22 Gymshark breaks into the US market and Ben lands in Ohio. In December Without checking the weather first. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raj, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz.

28:52 So it's 2013, and with the help of some YouTube influencers, Gymshark sells a ton of tracksuits and t-shirts. at the annual body power expo. Prior to the event, we were selling around£200 to£250 a day in revenue. That's how small the business was, going back to it being a project. And we The following week when we turned the website back on and we posted online that we were back live, we did£30,000 in revenue in 30 minutes.

29:25 Sold out of everything. And that weekend was really important because it was the weekend I both quit university and Pizza Hurt. To pursue Gym Shark. So I tell you, I was so happy because going into it, I was so nervous because I mean, I was the first person in my family to go to university and I remember calling my mum and dad and saying I'm gonna drop out.

29:45 'Cause they were so proud of the fact that I'd work s I've worked so hard to get into university. That was not a given for me whatsoever. Um And I called them and I said, I'm I'm gonna leave university. And I you know when you sort of expect you like a kid, you sort of expect to get told off Um And they were so supportive.

30:02 They just said, Listen, if this is what you want to do then Go for it. So now you've got a real business and And these influencers at that time were they getting paid? Or were they just happy to get free stuff and to be No.

30:15 This is before that that era where you have to pay like a million dollars for a post whatever. Yeah. Exactly. But also the advantage back then was w if you had twenty thousand followers in two thousand thirteen The algorithm was different. Like those twenty thousand followers would literally watch the videos. Well, today if you have two million.

30:32 maybe only one percent of those people are even gonna be aware that you have a new video out. Yeah. Yeah. I w I wish I could say it was some wonderful strategy that we built. It w it literally wasn't we made a website'cause it felt c it was interesting. We made the product that we wanted to wear. We went to the event we wanted to uh go to and we sent clothes to the people that we love to follow. It was It was literally, to your point, a really natural

30:57 process and there was in no way a strategy. We didn't think too far ahead. We just did what felt right and instinctive. But you knew that once that w you sold thirty th thousand dollars and a half hour of tr of track suits on your website, you knew that this was d you had something here. That this could actually Have Legs. Yeah, I remember being sat there

31:18 It was the middle of the night. In my mom and dad's house. the website, I had to literally go through every single uh'cause all the stock was set to im i like infinite inventory. So you would just there was so there was no stock levels, but I knew we'd sold out, so I had to go through every product and zero the the inventory so everything was sold out. sort of clawing a l across my laptop to get it all sorted. And sat there when once that was done, just thinking, wow, we we've got something special here. And that's again, that's just where it all it all began. And at that point

31:47 We were signing up to the next event, the next body power, we were signing up to another event. We obviously just bought more inventory and when we doubled down on everything that had worked for us, particularly in that sort of couple of months we we just double down on it. And you were living with your mom and dad. Mm-hmm.

32:03 You were twenty, twenty one, or whatever. Yeah, I mean you're a young guy, so And And the inventory, where were you keeping it? So at the time it was just in my mum and dad's basically like in their house and they were it was just too much to keep in there.

32:15 But in the run up to the event we we thought we have to find a unit. So we found uh it was a local unit in the in the countryside. It was a place a place called Droitwich, which you won't have heard of, and it was an old shed on a canal and it was made out of asbestos and it cost us three hundred pounds a month. But it was our space and that's where we stored everything. And but still in those first like twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, it was still

32:40 track suits and T shirts, tanks. sweatshirts. That that was it. That was what you were selling. Yeah, and it was in that period then. So the following year we then started to do the events. We did our first event abroad in Germany. That's when we brought brought in our first essentially the first Gymshark staff. So the f the the first person that joined uh was actually my brother, and he joined to package the orders whilst we were away at the event.

33:06 So that's when But it was literally like an order would come in. He would package it up. Walk to the post office.

33:16 with a bunch of boxes and mail them out or or or D H L or U U P S or whatever you were you were using. Yeah, exactly that. And then at the end of the day, the last thing we would always do is sit on our laptops and we would go through all of the customer queries and we wouldn't leave until Everything was sent out, every query was responded to, and then obviously we go to the gym. Alright, so I read that in twenty fourteen you you're you in the end of that year with about two hundred fifty thousand pounds in sales. So

33:43 Great. um amazing, but still tiny, right? And and and around this time Um I I guess you meet two guys, two businessmen, who who will eventually play a pivotal role in helping Gym Shark grow. One is a a guy named Steve Hewitt, who I I guess had some experience in the apparel industry. Um and the other was a guy named Paul, uh Paul Richardson

34:05 So h how did these guys start to help you, uh, and and by the way, how did you meet them? So We'd go to the gym and y there'd be local, you know, business people that would run businesses and you sort of knew who they were. Because when you go to the gym all the time you sort of end up knowing who's who and chatting to people. So again, we sort of befriended Paul. Paul gave us some advice on a few I guess a few bits and uh Paul then connected us with Steve and it and I think at that point that's when we sort of arranged the meeting and I remember we sat down with Steve

34:35 And Paul was there. And we just said, Listen, we want to make Uh we I think it was at the time we actually wanted to make some T shirts. Um And we didn't know any European suppliers, and Steve did know European s suppliers. So that was then I guess that was the the relationship was we went we worked through the business that Steve worked for to get some product made in in Europe.

34:58 And then because Steve in his previous job before that he'd actually worked for Reebok. And again, he would just talk in a language we didn't understand, like margin for us. We just bought stuff and then we sold stuff and that was it. We didn't know what what what a margin was. And I mean, being honest, we didn't we I mean I think they put us in touch with with an accountant because we didn't know really about how to file accounts, bookkeeping tax rates, all of these different things. We no one teaches you any of this. We sort we were just sort of picking it up as we went. So I'm sure every entrepreneur has had this, but I remember the day before the close of our financial year or when the accounts were due.

35:34 the accountant emailed a list and they were like, right, we need all of these things. I mean we had none of them. So we had a an old table tennis table with all of our receipts for the year and we're trying to organise everything. It it was every again, you you just don't you're not taught these things. So for us working with those two and their experience was incredibly helpful. It I imagine that they would they were looking at you and like how old was Paul and and Steve w at that time? How old were those guys? Paul probably would have been in his late fifties, Steve would have been in his forties.

36:04 Okay, so these guys way older than you could be older old enough to be your parents. I'm thinking they probably looked at you guys, at at you and Louis, as like Oh, these are really cool young guys. I'm I I wanna help'em out. Like This is a cool little business that they're starting. I I I have to imagine that they never imagined it could be something huge. They they were probably just wanting to be Helpful'cause you guys were young and and enthusiastic. Yeah, yeah, and at the time they were doing their own things. But there was a point where

36:33 I remember Steve Talking to Steve. And the thing is that that that Steve was really good at that we had no experience of. He was very good with people. So he understood how to run businesses. He he understood about how to structure businesses. And he he came in and w he did I think he did a day a month. And again, I'd never known about this. We were paying him a day, right? Again, you don't know how these things are.

36:57 We hired him as a consultant, he did one day a month for us. And I think we upped it to a day a week. And then there was a point where I remember saying to him. I asked him to come on as like an M D, so not quite a CEO, but just someone to could support the day to day running of the business. Managing director. Yeah.

37:14 That's when he then came on full time. And what we essentially did was He ran what we called the back end of the business, so operations, logistics what you know, the c all basically everything that wasn't brand or product to marketing. I'm curi I mean, I'd have to ask Steve this question, I guess, but from your perspective What would make a guy in his

37:34 Late forties or maybe early fifties, I don't how ever old he was at the time. Um stop doing what he was doing and f join you guys full time. I mean that's kind of risky, right? I mean it it it he must have seen potential for this to be bigger, right? How did you make it Interesting for him. Like he he

37:54 Of course. He was gonna get equity in the business. And how did you figure out How to make that work. And what did you even know about like equity splits at the and by the way

38:06 I'm asking you all this not to say, Oh my gosh, how you know, you were so Naive, uh it's more like I I The people listening to this episode 'Cause a lot of'em are in their twenties.

38:18 in early thirties, maybe even teenagers listening right now. They're asking this question like wow, how did he know what to do at that time'cause I don't know what to do. Yeah, I think we were we were definitely lucky. So at that point when Steve came on full time, we did we did give him equity. So I think that that was important to him and I think that probably gave him that that level of comfort that you wouldn't get If you didn't have

38:39 e any equity whatsoever. Um the day rate would have been whatever whatever it was, but then obviously he moved on to a salary. I remember the I won't share what the salary was, but I remember he was by far the most well paid person, not only in the business, but I'd ever heard of. Um because it's not. Yeah. I I'd never heard of people that were earning that sort of money, but he he you know, he deserved it, right? That the the the value he brought to our business was absolutely worth it. So

39:05 It was funny for me to go from this perspective of Oh wow, I didn't realise people earned that mon uh that much money to Oh well. he can earn that much money because he's gonna really help grow our business. in a way that is far more valuable than than than the cost that he will incur.

39:20 And you were this still the CEO. Basically. Yeah, I so I was the CEO, but then at that point it was very much just me and Louis doing Everything felt yeah, it so it I wouldn't really call it a CEO job. It was just We were just running the business, basically.

39:36 But it sounds like I mean it sounds like by hiring Steve. You essentially hiring a mentor. It's it's almost like You hi you ca you kinda hired your own boss. You hired your boss. You basically said okay, I'm it's my business, but I wanna hire

39:51 I need somebody to kind of showing the ropes here. I need you to Help me. Figure this out.

39:57 Mm-hmm. А змучес і тот. I think he showed us so much more. Because I found that it's one thing having someone sit down and go, Ben, you need to think about this like this. Watching someone

40:10 work for me is really it's even to this day it's really valuable. I genuinely think I learn more from watching that I do from people tell him because It was the way he interacted with people, the way that he thought about things and And that as a You know, young twenty something with zero experience was was huge for us.

40:29 what were what were some of the first things that Steve did when he joined? I mean Uh'cause at this point you still have a very limited line of of Products. Given that he had come from Reebok in apparel, was he saying, Okay, guys, we have to hire now, we have to hire a designer? And we have to think about

40:46 A whole line of of apparel we want to sell. Yeah, so exactly that. So the first thing that we did was we split the business straight down the middle and we had front end and back end. So it was Random market on the one end and then call it Like a

41:02 Very early. build of a product or a supply chain team, maybe. Now This was the period where we we double down on events even more. So we then we traveled a lot. We did events in Ohio, California, Cologne, Melbourne, the UK. At that point we probably had at least probably like ten employees. So there was a group of us that would go and just basically sell

41:25 the product in person to in the same way that we did at that first body power event. You know, when Steve joined, I would think given his experience. I would think one of the things he would have said is Alright guys, let's get serious now. Let's go and just Go and

41:41 Just raise a bunch of money and just scale quickly. Mm-hmm. What happens is A business does very well, but they can't keep up with orders and they can't scale because they don't have the cash. And

41:55 That's a huge problem. When you don't have the cash, when you've got lots of orders. You can also you can also tank a business. So How did it How did it happen that you didn't actually need outside cash?

42:08 Um well I guess because we well we were But we we were and we are a cash generative business. We we sell product at uh a high margin and we have the cash come in before we we distribute it, and we certainly did then. So We didn't need the cash. And being honest, again, I didn't know that raising money was a thing. I'd never heard or known anyone that had raised money until probably my Well into my early, if not mid twenties.

42:33 very industrial part of the West Midlands. It's not London or New York. We'd never we just didn't know that that was a thing beyond I don't even think we had an overdraft on the bank, maybe in for many years into building the business. The Now, obviously no, I now know that There are many incredibly smart people that can build businesses in different ways, but that that was the only way that we knew how at the time. You gotta make a profit from the start.

42:55 Mm-hmm. Basically. And reinvest everything, don't take any money out and just really focus on growing the business. And again, just I guess to show our naivety. We'd the first trip we ever did to the US um with Jim Sharp. We flew to the Arnold event in Columbus, Ohio. I think it was December We I'd never been to, you know, Columbus, Ohio before, let alone in the winter. We didn't even check the weather, so I just went with a T shirt and tracksuit sort of thing. I remember landing, looking out the window, and seeing all the snow. And I remember they said on the the plane that the the the on the tunnel with the temperature and I remember but I just

43:30 I had no idea what that was in Celsius, but I knew it was freezing. We didn't have any clothes that were good enough for a an Ohio winter. Um but we just had a great time selling the product and and being with The community, being with the going into the gyms, um We were just having the time of our life. So when you started to go to these trade shows in the US, for example

43:52 Um, I mean you were small. Potatoes getting tiny compared to to to the brands that were probably at some of these shows, but Um was it how did people respond? I mean, were people like, Oh, you're from the UK? Like what are you? Or because these YouTubers already had let's say a global appeal.

44:12 Or w do w w did people know who you were? When do you go to the shows? That was the most surprising thing. We we landed in Oh Ohio and again you think no one would know. But aga I think the thing to remember is these trade shows are and were filled with real fans of the industry. So it wasn't like we were landing it's like people who go to a Star Trek convention. Yeah. Sorry. So we we landed into Ohio and you you sort of would anyone know? And and you're right, I think it was the It was a combination of because we were big on social media at that point through the YouTubers and the YouTubers were there with us. And then again, three of the I think three of the five were from the States anyway. They had big Americ or bigger US following.

44:52 It gave us a a legitimacy very, very quickly, which I think was great. And again, because no one else at that point was doing what we were doing. Albeit it wasn't massively technically advanced, but we were speaking to an audience that no one else was speaking to. I think we then had that legitimacy. quite quickly in the US. So all right, let's talk about

45:12 About Products because You know, one of the things i and and you may you may be familiar with the story, but years ago we had Chip Wilson who started Lul Lul Lemon on the show and He really He kind of was a pioneer of this

45:25 fabric that they would end up using. This like stretchy fabric that Yeah, works really well. Many women Felt. Like it made them look more flattering. Um at that point, you know, you were still it was like mainly cottons that you were using and

45:40 Uh you know. Just the the tracksuits and the T shirts. Let's think about like performance material and and let's think about You know, sort of doing something a little bit more innovative.

45:56 I think one of the things that I really admire about what Chip did at Lulu. Was I think you I could probably close my eyes and you could hand me a product and I could tell you that it was a product of theirs. I think that's so impressive and inspiring. Yeah. Yeah.

46:13 Um I would say the first piece of sort of performance apparel that we made would have been our first seamless product and we we were trying to work out how could we make the best physique accentuating t-shirt. So it was all about making your shoulders look bigger and your waist look narrower. And seamless means it's it's made with Synthetic mainly synthetic materials. Yeah, yeah, so uh but it and then it's it's knitted in a tube. So rather than having flat

46:37 I guess flat fabric that you then sew together, it's knitted into a tube as well. So it it it creates a really f I guess physique hooking fit, but you can also knit designs into the product itself and That was a big moment for us when we found out about that because we could knit in uh almost like a darker colour over the chest, over the shoulders for a man, and then we've realized that it makes essentially it makes your shoulders look wider and your waist look narrower. And that's I think that's where some of the early

47:05 product principles for Gymshark really were born about building the best gym wear that we can, but ultimately a really physique accentuating fit. And did you have I mean At that point. An and on staff in like a a staff position who somebody who was a designer.

47:22 Or not not yet. Were you still mainly basically working with the designers that the manufacturers had on their staff? No, not really. The the the point where we mate, we brought in a design team. Oh it was it's actually quite funny. It's it looked bad on me, but we the point though we we built a design team was it was a few it was a few years in we We we d we thought we wanted to sell we wanted to expand and we wanted to sell women's product as well as men's because again the the The company in the early days

47:49 was literally built in our image. It was lifting wear for young men To make the physique look better, basically. And we wanted to make women's wear. And I thought I'll give it a go. How hard can it be?

48:02 We did our first women range women's range and it was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. No one wanted it. It looked terrible. It fitted terrible. it just didn't work. And it was at that point where we realised that if we're gonna build if we're gonna do this properly We need a design team and we need genuine designers who will you know think about how a women's range should look. So by the end of twenty sixteen you guys had done uh almost thirteen million dollars in sales. You've got uh a little over fifty employees. You're a real

48:32 now, you know, still a small business, right? But still like You're starting to get attention. At that point. Like there's media tension There's interest like h what is this UK brand that

48:44 you know, s started in Birmingham. Who who who is this kid? Who started it. Tell me a little bit about like the attention that you started to get around this'cause you know, all of a sudden one day you're a student at Aston University And then, you know, a year later there's like an article on in the Sunday Times about you.

49:02 Gym Shark had a lot of attention because of it being a very Public. Brand. I personally didn't really get too much attention, which was really helpful to me because it meant I could literally focus my all my energy on on on running the business. That that only really changed probably five years ago.

49:18 Um That year. A couple things happened. Um Lewis left, your co founder, he left and went and started his own clothing company.

49:27 And and was that uh was he just burned out? Was there uh a split? Was there D tension or friction, or was he just kinda like I did this, I'm done, I wanna go do my own thing? Yeah, so so Lewis actually left the business in terms of his active involvement in the business. It was around twenty fifteen. We were doing a it was somewhere between ten and twenty million in revenue. So Lewis actually left the day to day of the business then and

49:50 Yeah, I must admit that I found that really hard, and I know he found it hard too, but that that was tough because It felt like at that point we were what four call it four, five years in. And really taking off. Yeah, yeah, and we'd travel the world, we'd work together every minute of every day. So that that was tough for me. But what was the reason he gave you? I mean, did you say, Hey, why are you

50:11 While you're leaving. Oh yeah, I mean we had plenty of conversations around it. Um Essentially I think we just had different visions for where the business the way that we were running the business and we had a disagreement and again it was a t I think it was a tough period for both of us. I was really disappointed. And the I think the thing that a lot of people forget about is when things like this happen

50:32 The business still has to carry on. So you're sort of you're going through this difficult period, but you still have to run the business. You still have to s at that point we again, well Probably had twenty or thirty staff. You have to look after them, you have to do what's right for the business and That was a really tough time for I think for both of us. Um and again at that point the business we were growing during that period. So we were having to It's hard enough to run a business that's growing that quickly.

50:55 But to have that going on at the same time is Again, he's really tough. When we come back in just a moment. Haben becomes a better leader by building his own apprenticeship program. But while he still earns the nickname.

51:09 Hurricane Ben. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2015, and even though Gymshark is now a multi-million dollar business, there's trouble at the top. Ben and his partner Lewis are not getting along. Yeah, there's definitely tension. Absolutely. And

51:50 At that point then the yeah, I guess the only thing for us to do was go our separate ways. I mean, the only thing I could liken it to would probably be some sort of it's like a business divorce, isn't it? And it went on for a while. It took a long time for us to sort of iron out all the details and work out what it looks like in this sort of new chapter. Yeah, and uh obviously Lewis is not here with th this is not a documentary show, it's a one person interview and it's not I in in no way does this is this meant to reflect badly on him or on you. I'm sure both of you guys have perspectives on what happened, but I'm just curious

52:20 Can you kinda give me a basic outline of which direction you kinda wanted head in and which direction he wanted to head in,'cause again Probably both. equally valid, right? Mm-hmm. So What was the the differences, the broad differences in vision? There was there was definitely a point of I think

52:38 And you're right that I don't think one was necessarily right or one was necessarily wrong. I think they were just different. There was my perspective was very much like I was really happy to roll the dice time and time again and just keep growing and growing and growing the business and to bring in more people more management types at the time and build the business from that perspective. Whereas I think Lewis was a lot more he really wanted it to be centered around us and act and the business act in a slightly different way. And then I think that that was the the ear tension. And then again, without going too much into the detail, then there was a s a series of disagreements between us and

53:12 There was one of us that I think had to to move on in order to put the business first, and I think we We then had to do that. Did your But I mean, do you guys aren't are are you in touch today or d was that sort of also the end of your Personal

53:26 Relationship. No, no, that that that was the end of our personal relationship there. Which Which I think is a shame, but It it is what it is ultimately. So all right, so now

53:36 You'd mentioned earlier, like When you feel Lulemon or Yeah, other brands. You you Co could just know what they are without even opening your eyes.

53:46 Did you start to think about, Hey, I want This is what I want Gymshark to be. I want us to be that too. Uh We didn't consciously think about it, but I think it it naturally started to build and I think the Again, for us

54:01 what we've done is we've really tried to focus on building the best gym wear in the world. It's all around gym wear. So we're not trying to make product for again at this point for basketball or running or it was all around the gym'cause that that was and is our passion. So And we'd always found that the the product that performed the best was that physique accentuating product, both for men's and women's at this point. And that's that was our real sort of bullseye, and that's what we just continue to double down on. Right. I guess

54:30 Like if you went to the gym in the US, right, I'm thinking Most guys would be wearing Nike or Adidas, right? Mm-hmm. Maybe underarmor but but also like People playing basketball or You know, or tennis. Or running.

54:45 What also were those. we could you're thinking like we're the brand for the gym. Like if people want to run and wear it, great. But like Like Lululemon became a yoga brand, or Aloe. We wanna be the

55:00 Jim Brand. Exactly that. We want to be the brand that people wear when they're in the gym. And this is like in direct consumer, I mean you are you just like hit that wave, right? Because direct to consumer is a was a model that all of a sudden, you know, in around two thousand twelve

55:17 Just begins to explode at least in the US. and then probably in the UK to some extent as well, The advantage is the m if if you have h high volume, your profit margins are h much higher than if you've got a bunch of brick and mortar stores because you don't have those

55:34 Those expenses. Yeah. And we could take that profit and reinvest it heavily both into the product but also into into brand and marketing as well. So you go from like twelve and a half million, thirteen million dollars in s uh pounds in sales In twenty sixteen to a hundred million. in twenty eighteen. And Which is

55:53 A an amazing leap, right? I mean the the year over year growth is just uh it's meteoric. And Steve by this point Steve Hewitt is ful the CEO. Yeah. But I'm curious how did you were and I think still are the majority shareholder, majority owner. So all those young people who started with you, they knew that

56:14 You had started the company. But there was a CEO. And so how did that work? I mean, did people come to you with questions and things that they wanted to do or would everybody go to s t to Steve and say hey This is what we want to do and what do you think?

56:30 Yeah, well well, they do both, and I think that was the point where it was really clear to me how important mine and Steve's relationship was and how aligned we were.'Cause if people didn't get the answer they wanted from Steve, then they would come to me. Or the opposite way around. So they'd sort of try and play Almost like mum off dad sort of thing. Yeah. So our relationship was really important. Obviously we'd speak every day and I When Steve was CEO it was a great

56:53 period for me because I had that period, I think he was he was there for Probably about five years, maybe even longer. And I had a period of Accelerated learning. in departments in our business, knowing that I could basically fail and I'd had a team around me that could help clean up after me and

57:11 It sort of felt like Being able to do an exam. not get the result that you wanted and then just do the exam again. Because I could literally just try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, knowing that this team I'd built this team around me to to support me. So interesting. I mean when Steve becomes when you hire Steve and he kind of eventually runs the business, you become

57:31 Head of brand. You do that for a while and then there's somebody Who's better at it. And so you Bring that person on to run it and then you jump into what's what's the next thing you jump into? I think I did product.

57:44 So it was all product design, development, all that sort of stuff. market inside of things. Um all that sort of stuff. So more the quantifiable side of marketing for a bit. And then then after that it was uh in sort of tech. Development website.

57:59 So you you really kinda built your own apprenticeship model. Like you would you would jump from one thing to the next and and stay there for a year or six months or nine months. And kinda learn on the job how to do all those different jobs. Yeah. And it was amazing because I would you know, I'd be in factories with the development of the product, then I'd be designing with the design or spending time with the designers. I'd be obviously at every event still

58:26 working with uh developers on how to, you know, improve our website and email partners for CRM and things like that. And I I just had, yeah, exactly that, an apprenti like a turbocharged apprenticeship at a high level in the business. Again, you you I mean you still are super young and and now you're very experienced, which is Awesome. But

58:48 But as you're Sort of. Building the brand, right? And building the company just Inadvertently by accident, you have to also become a leader.

59:02 qualities g as a kid, or is it something you had to learn how to develop as you got older? No, no, for me I definitely had to learn. Um As a kid, always very shy, very introverted. I learnt a lot of that through watching Steve and and to be honest, through through feedback, through feedback through the business. I've had to completely change the way I work now from ten years ago when I was in my, you know, early twenties. I've had to completely change.

59:30 I remember we did. I'd never heard of it before. We'd we'd moved into our third uh our first proper office. We'd built a team at this point. We probably had I don't know. Call it thirty, maybe, maybe forty. People working out of the office.

59:43 And we did a three sixty feedback, which uh I mean, I'm sure you you know what it is, but for those that don't, it's basically where you have feedback from a group of people that you work closely with. Yeah. And I have this feedback. And I read it and I Could not believe how bad it was.

1:00:00 The the the the bottom line, I think someone described me as Hurricane Ben because it was I would come in, I'd see a design, I wouldn't like it. And then um I basically just say, That's terrible, start again sort of thing. And people b you know, I it basically I I could be rude to people, I I was very abrupt and just frankly not not very good at working in in groups. that had a real big impact on me. Now I didn't actually I would've been about twenty four, twenty five. So this is I guess a good five or six years into the business. Um

1:00:31 And that was a big moment for me'cause I realised that I really had to change if I was gonna work well in in in Gymshark. How did you cope with Being So Young.

1:00:41 and meeting with older people and Did you ever feel intimidated or have a sense of like imposter syndrome? I I don't think I ever did. That's not to say that I wasn't nervous, but I never had a feeling of imposter syndrome because I mean, there was a point where I'd basically done every job, whether it's packing orders or customer support or product design or

1:01:01 I I d sort of done everything. So I think when I was working with other people I always felt really comfortable, not necessarily because I you know, they knew more than I did. They were more experienced off and smarter in many ways, but I am I always just saw it as an opportunity to learn. So

1:01:18 Alright, you guys Or you know, he hit a I think like hundred and seventy million. pounds in sales by Yeah, twenty nineteen.

1:01:28 And twenty twenty, we get to the pandemic and we'll talk about what happens during the pandemic because uh in in virtually every case that we've studied the apparel brands did really well. Right, people were at home, they were They weren't wearing um office clothing. They were wearing, you know What is known as athleisure where

1:01:48 Mm-hmm. Um That year you also Had uh private equity firm.

1:01:55 acquire a uh twenty one percent stake in the brand. General Atlantic. the deal valued the brand at this point. At one point three billion dollars.

1:02:05 And I I imagine It it was payday basically for shareholders, people who had shared in the company. could liquidate at that point and make some money. Make significant money. Yeah. And for me it was that closing of a chapter from being a From almost like that that starter period.

1:02:22 And then really now how do we become a true serious Business at that point. And you retained Or I I guess you even increased your shares at that point, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that that was my point for

1:02:35 really, I guess, commit into our business. You didn't take anything off the table for you at that point? No, so my I can't remember the exact numbers, but I increased my shareholding through that uh event. All my focus was on how can I work, I guess with General Atlantic as our new partner, as you know, in terms of building Gym Shark into a really globally iconic brand. And that I think Everything up until that point for me was very

1:03:00 instinctive and opportunistic and it was just living almost each week and each Months. As it came. That was the moment where I genuinely thought, Right, I really want to build this into something Big.

1:03:13 And I mean, they're obviously it's a they're a huge private equity firm, massive And they b bring experience and did you have a board at that point, by the way? No, no, so the board we s we actually agree to build a board After that deal. So before that we hadn't had a board. It was just

1:03:31 Essentially me, Paul, Steve. running the business together. Um you Come back to be come the CEO in twenty twenty one. I say come back because you had done it when you were a much smaller business, right? Steve transitions to executive chair.

1:03:47 At that point. Um and Twenty twenty one now, you know, you are you know, nine years into this business basically. I mean this really kinda started in twenty twelve as a supplement site. So

1:04:00 You had the experience, you were ready to go. I mean, did is that how you felt like okay, I can do this now? No. No, so th I didn't Really feel ready. When Steve came on Steve always said to me that it wasn't it w we always knew it wasn't a forever thing for Steve. We were actually working in Hong Kong at the time. And we'd sort of come to the end of the trip and he sort of turned to me and he said, Listen, Ben, I um

1:04:21 I think I've taken this as as far as I can. And um you know, I I'm I'm sort of ready to step down. He then went on and he said. I think we need a new CEO. And I remember thinking, Oh God, this is This is gonna be hard work. I don't know who I'm gonna find. I I need to obviously find someone that I trust. I don't even know how to do this.

1:04:40 Um And then he went on and he said, Uh and I think the next CEO should be you. And I to be honest, I didn't say anything at that point. I actually didn't really I just said Well I I just said well I'm I'll think about it and I'll You didn't you didn't want this, you weren't trying to pursue this?

1:04:55 No, not at that point. Absolutely not. It wasn't important to you. H just wasn't something that I was thinking about at all. I I mean I thought about it the whole flight home.

1:05:06 But it wasn't immediate. It certainly wasn't the second he told me I grabbed it and thought this is for me. I I took a while to really get comfortable with it. Then there was you know, a transition sort of handover period of Probably the best part of six months. Something else happens, which is in the pandemic, right, everyone was assuming that that brick and mortar retailer retail was really gonna be dead.

1:05:28 And that e commerce was gonna be the only channel. Of course that's not what happened. And you also or you guys also thought, hey We we actually

1:05:39 'Cause you would only done direct to consumer at that point. You should get into retail, you should uh you should be in retail shops, you should you know, own your own stores and then do wholesale as well. I mean the biggest Your your biggest sales channel was the direct to consumer channel. Still I still is today, I think, right? Yeah.

1:05:55 Absolutely. By far, yeah. But how many brick and mortar stores do you have today? Today we have we got three in a num Manchester I think we're at five. So we've got Amsterdam, three in London and one in Manchester. And we'd we're we're just in the process of opening Two in New York, so

1:06:13 We' we we're growing a uh considered right in terms of stores. What I don't want to do is I don't just want to open thousands overnight. I wanna do it in a really thoughtful way. Well here's here's what's interesting to me. I mean r the there there has been A little bit of a correction. in direct to consumer, right? In in in recent years because what people assumed was the own the future

1:06:33 has become much, much harder, right? The the Just getting people's attention is harder. Like when you started out with YouTubers in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, it was like it's like shooting fish in a barrel, right? It was like all of it. Um, it was an amazing time period to capture People's attention today. There are

1:06:53 that tens, hundreds of thousands of influencers, micro influencers It's really challenging to get Eyeballs, right? And so It's hard. You've gotta keep it fresh and keep it keep it active. How do you guys maintain That's it.

1:07:09 energy when there's so much Competition so much more competition. out there. Yeah, so the the way that the certainty that we see it is What we don't want to do is we don't want to become overly broad and then essentially almost uh

1:07:25 bland in a way. It's really important to me that we retain a really narrow focus. So The easiest thing for us to do would be to double or triple the size of our range and start selling basketball wear and fashionware and Soccer and everything. that that's not interesting to us. What we want to do is retain a really considered position in the gym.

1:07:48 Like great brands are built around great products and a great product positioning. So that that's what we're we're really focused on. So build it the best gym wear in the world. And and then By doing that, it allows us to work with the best lifters, whether it's Samson, I mean Chris Bumstead. Ryan Terry, all the best lifters. we're Gymshark and that's that's really, really important to me.

1:08:09 And it's really funny, I was um I was working in Denver. About twelve months ago. And I sort of finished work, I just went to a local gym. Uh, I think it was an any time fitness and

1:08:20 I went I went to the back, I went I went, you know, w by the dumbbells. And there was there were three girls that were in in the squat rack and they were all like hats on, headphones on, they had notepads, they were writing down their I think they were deadlifting, they were writing down their lifts and they were the people in the gym that knew what they were doing. And every single one of them was in Gym Shark. You know I mean it is amazing, right?'Cause you think about starting out in twenty twelve selling dropship supplements and then

1:08:48 you know, by twenty fifteen hitting twelve million sales and today, you know, m you know, it's exceeding six hundred and fifty million, seven hundred million sales. And And most of your sales today come from still come from the UK? I know the US. So the US is now the US is now the majority of the business.

1:09:07 And also where the m most growth potential is. Oh absolutely, yeah. And here I mean, here you are now. you know, overseeing a a multi billion dollar brand. And I think you've got over nine hundred employees now.

1:09:22 Um and you're I I are you thirty two now? Thirty three. Thirty three. Although I feel a bit older given how the last ten years have been. Well no, I mean for sure, you've Tons of experience, right? So you have the experience of people twenty years older than you just'cause you started so young and and didn't know what you were doing and and learned it.

1:09:42 And so I imagine you're in in this For a long time? I mean, do you imagine running this business in ten years, in twenty years from now? I feel like I got the best job in the world.

1:09:54 I absolutely love what I do. I love the job. And um all the brands I admire have really stood stood the test of time. They're they're not five years old, they're fifty years old, or they're seventy years old, and So for me the focus is on Essentially running the business as long as it makes sense for me to do so.

1:10:13 When you think about everything that's happened to you. I mean you you did in in the over the course of this conversation mention Locke that you know you it was Steve and Paul who you met at the gym and that they actually We're the right people at the right time, the right place. How much of of where you got to, how much of this business, how much of Everything that's happened do you do you do you attribute to just luck and chance and fortune good you know, good fortune and how much do you think had to do with

1:10:40 The grind. That you put into it. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of its look and a lot of its timing. So like we said, social media, Shopify, fitness uptrend, bodybuilding uptrending, more people going to the gym than than ever. So There was an element of time in there. With that said, as we've built the business, lots of other people have recognized the same opportunities and maybe not had immediately the same outcome. So I think there's also an element of

1:11:07 We took the risk. we took lots of risk to this day. We still take risks. And I think the the commitment to the long term of our business and the ability and appetite to make those decisions has made a big difference as well. So I mean I wouldn't want to put uh percentage on it, but it would be

1:11:24 There would definitely be a a good chunk of luck and time in. But then with that I think you have to Take advantage of that as well. That's Ben Francis, co founder. Of Gymshark. Is your grandfather still around the grandfather started the furnace business?

1:11:40 Yes, he is. He is. Uh, and he's still working. Funnily enough, he's still he was literally working last week and he sent me a picture of a furnace that we actually worked on together when I was Well, twenty years ago when I was Fourteen. What does he think about? This. I mean he's he was an entrepreneur. He is.

1:11:56 And here you are and Like, you know. He loves it. He absolutely loves it. I mean we like I say I still see him a fair bit We'll go out on bikes together. Um we'll go to

1:12:08 car shows once a year and things like that. So no he he Absolutely loves it, he's blown away. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And please sign up for my newsletter at guyroz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramtina Oblui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Alex Chung. Our audio engineers are Patrick Murray and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Catherine Seifer, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Chris Massini, Carrie Thompson, Andrea Bruce, Ramel Wood, and Elaine Coates.

1:12:48 I'm Guy Roz, and you've been listening to how I built this, and don't stop the podcast just yet. Пика з район You're about to hear an amazing small business story that you don't want to miss. This segment is presented by American Express.

1:13:03 With a business platinum membership? The best just got even better. And this week's story begins in 2015, when Lauren Dudley Stevens and her sister join their parents for a freezing cold adventure. Our parents had just picked up the hobby of boating and they would go out on Long Island Sound and it was always cold no matter what time of year out on the water.

1:13:27 Back then, Lauren worked in fashion PR. She flew around the world and dressed celebrities in red carpet looks from luxury designers like Gucci. but she dreamed of going into business for herself. Ideally with her mom and her sister, Khaki. They just hadn't landed on the right idea yet, until that day on the boat.

1:13:47 when her mom happened to think out loud. My mom said, you know, I just wish that I could have a cute fleece that I could wear out on the boat and then go to dinner in. And that moment for all of us was Oh, wait. That is a good idea. How many women would actually love this product?

1:14:05 They knew that young moms would. At the time, Lauren was expecting her first baby. and Kaki had just had one of her own. It bothered them how hard it was to find washable, durable clothes fit into their full lives. I just want to feel put together every day, even though I also want to be comfortable in my my momhood, but also

1:14:28 going to work every day. Loren started to take the idea seriously. She looked into sourcing material and found a company that makes fleece from plastic bottles that wash onto beaches. When we knew we could get a recycled fabric and make it stylish, we just thought, okay, this has to happen. So Lauren and her sister drew up a business plan for a direct-to-consumer fleece clothing line called Dudley Stevens.

1:14:52 a combination of Lauren's maiden name and her married name. and they pitched it to a successful businessman, someone they knew and admired. their dad. We did not go to large investors and have millions of dollars invested. It was a very small family investment at the outset. We put a number together and he agreed and then we just dove in full steam ahead. They chose a manufacturer in Green Point, Brooklyn. built a website, and launch the business out of Lauren's basement.

1:15:21 It turned out to be a pretty good bet. Within six months they made their initial investment back. Not that success came easy. In the early years, Lauren and Kaki did everything themselves. printing the shipping labels, running the website, answering emails, all while juggling childcare.

1:15:40 I'm not sure how we did all that. I think Has any mom listening would relate to the There's nothing like having a child that makes you efficient. The turning point came when the company brought in a hundred thousand dollars in a single day.

1:15:55 And it was actually on my birthday. So I met my husband for dinner and I just was on a total cloud nine. Like So excited, scared because we had to figure out how to fulfill all of those orders. It was like, oh, we're a legit company now. Today, Dudley Stevens is closing in on$50 million in sales. They just celebrated 10 years in business. and they're close to another milestone they're proud of. recycling their 10 millionth plastic bottle.

1:16:22 It's funny that we're like nearing in on 10 million plastic water bottles and we're turning 10 years old. I was like, can we hit it by the end of the year? I don't know if we will, but we're close to it. And that's our small business spotlight. Presented by American Express To build a business like no other? You need a card like no other.

1:16:39 There's nothing like business platinum.

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