Behind The 4 Billion 400 Million Valuation Of Gymshark, The Net Economics Of Fitness Clothing Brands

The rise of Internet and social media, the hot popularity of net marketing, makes some seemingly small brands have the opportunity to expand the market.

GymShark (muscle shark) is one of them. The fitness clothing brand was founded in 2012 by Ben Francis, a 19 year old student at Aston University in Bermingham, England. In April of this year, GymShark announced that its operating profit in 2018 increased by 152% to 18 million 100 thousand pounds, and its total sales amounted to 103 million 600 thousand pounds (918 million yuan).

At present, GymShark has 3 million fans on Instagram, and more than 5 million fans of social media such as Youtube and Facebook. This is a typical success story in the era of attention economy. According to the British website this is money reported in April 27th, GymShark is ready to announce a round of financing, then the valuation will exceed 500 million pounds (about 4 billion 400 million yuan).

Francis, founder of GymShark Ben (Francis Francis), has grown up with her own ideas since childhood. She has been developing websites and developing application programs in her youth. He is also a fitness enthusiast and focuses on social networking in fitness. Because they like fitness, but can not buy their own fitness clothes - they are either too bright, or are relatively muscular, designed for professional muscle men. He begins to consider himself as a fitness clothing brand for ordinary people who are relatively thin.

In 2012, Francis bought sewing machines and presses. In his garage at Bermingham's parents' house, he studied sewing skills with his grandmother, and designed and produced the first batch of GymShark's clothing by hand. At first, he made ten clothes every day, and he also went to school and sent pizza.

At that time, Francis had a very tight schedule every day. He once recalled this experience in BBC interview: he got up early in the morning to go to school, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. in pizza hut, sent pizza everywhere, he would reply to the GymShark business email in the delivery space. After returning home at night, he would continue to update the official website and design new products.

After two years of insisting on this, GymShark's annual revenue reached 250 thousand pounds (about 2 million 200 thousand yuan). Francis also dropped out of college and focused on fitness clothes.

Compared with the fitness clothes at that time, GymShark is more flexible, better fitting and longer. It is not too abrupt to wear friends, go to school or even work. Francis's definition is: "hand-made, fit clothes, young people can also wear to the gym." At the same time, its price is reasonable, an ordinary T-shirt at 20 pounds (about 176 yuan), for young people, the burden will not be great. This has accumulated some initial users for GymShark.

In 2016, GmyShark became the No. 1 star startups in the The Sunday Times (FastTrack Sunday) list on Sunday, and got the evaluation that "the core value of GmyShark's success lies in its dedication to producing innovative and efficient performance clothing, and thus bringing about an unlimited expansion of social influence". Francis also summed up his secret of success: using the social media influential people with a large number of followers to wear the brand and disseminated effectively on the Internet.

Since its inception, GmyShark has set up its own official website and social media network. It has gone through the electricity supplier channel and does not open traditional physical stores. It has only opened a short flash shop in Bermingham and London, Losangeles and Melbourne, Australia.

Today, social media is a shortcut for consumers to reach the millennial generation (born in -2000 1982). So GmyShark values big social platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Through these platforms, it communicates directly with consumers and turns them into lifelong fans of brands. Up to now, social media is still a very effective selling channel for GmyShark.

At the time of running GymShark, Francis found some influential fitness enthusiasts to do brand communication. At that time, there was no concept of "net red economy". Francis could think of such a way of spanmission, just because he was a fitness enthusiast himself, and liked to catch up with the video and movement of these fitness red people in social media such as Youtube.

"At that time, there were no other brands to do so, but it was natural for us because we were fans, and we hope they can wear GymShark to show you." He said this is the coolest thing we have ever done.

Later, GymShark expanded this successful experience to the world, and found 18 global top Youtube users, Instagram users and bloggers. The total number of fans reached 20 million. While working with these opinion leaders to display products online, GymShark also takes online participation in the world's major fitness industry fairs, trade shows, and contacts with front-line consumers. This move has made GymShark enter the mature American market and other overseas markets in the fitness industry, which has made huge profits. Now, sales in the US market account for 40% of GymShark.

The key to GymShark's far away from competitors is to integrate their customers and spokesmen to give full play to the role of the community. As a result, GymShark is not only a fashionable fitness brand, but also an influential community. It can spread brand values and establish closer communication with consumers in this group.

In recent years, GymShark has been in rapid growth. According to its published data, 2017/2018 sales increased by 300% in the fiscal year of August 1, 2017 (July 31st -2018) in July 31st, reaching 40 million 500 thousand pounds, and the pre tax profit increased from 1 million to 8 million pounds. The company expects sales in the 2018/2019 fiscal year to reach 100 million by July 31, 2019, and sales in the 2019/2020 fiscal year will reach 140 million pounds (about 1 billion 240 million yuan).

According to the report of Global Industry Analysts, the fitness apparel market has always been a blue ocean worthy of attention. By the year 2024, the global sports and fitness apparel market will reach nearly 300 billion dollars. GymShark plans to further expand its overseas market and expand the online shopping platform to 25 countries by 2020. At present, GymShark has set up online shopping service platform in 11 countries, and its products are sold to 131 countries. Author: Nan Qiong