How Gymshark Leveraged Influencer Marketing to Become a $500m Business
Ben Francis was 19 years old when he founded Gymshark out of his mom’s garage.
Many of the world’s most successful startups had their origins in someone’s garage or basement: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in Jobs’ parents’ garage. Amazon was born in Jeff Bezos’ garage. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, leased Susan Wojcicki’s garage for $1700 per month.
Like them, Ben Francis launched Gymshark — a popular, global e-commerce fitness and apparel brand — in 2012, out of his mother’s garage. He was 19 years old, attended Aston University and worked part-time as a pizza delivery boy. As a precocious young teenager, Francis built two iPhone fitness tracking apps — one of which he’d earned over £8000 from — and also set up a website to sell license plates online.
Wanting to make a name for himself in the $100 billion fitness industry, he launched a health supplement drop-shipping business. In an interview with the BBC, Francis recalled, “I was going to the gym and basically was interested in, and wanted to be involved in, the fitness industry. I wanted to combine that with making a transactional website.”
