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.

Source: Shopify

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.”