Gym Shark
Gymshark is a company based in the United Kingdom that focuses on fitness apparel and accessories. Gymshark started in 2013 with a small amount of items available on they’re website. Their clothes are made of high-quality material and they are designed to make you look stylish in and out of the gym. The founder of Gymshark’s founder Ben Francis kickstarted his company by using social media in order to raise awareness and target consumers. He thought of a strategy that turned influencers into ambassadors, which he then named “Gymshark athletes”. Gymshark has done nothing but always do things right by exploring many ways to grow in the online and offline world. One way they did that is by having Gymshark meetups and expos, where their fans and followers can meet any of their favourite fitness influencers. This idea has evolved into a “Gymshark World Tour”, having events in Germany, Australia and all of America which has been vlogged and posted on their Youtube channel racking about 250k subscribers.
Gymshark provides animal welfare for their wellbeing and they also use recycled packaging which is good for our environment. Another unique and awesome thing Gymshark has done is reposting their followers videos on their socials to create awareness and motivation. They have created an online community with people sharing their stories of hard work and motivation that anyone can achieve anything. Gymshark really understands the effective use of social media because they do such things as always asking feedback from its community which gives makes the consumers feel like they are involved and have a voice. On the negative side there are also some downsides to this company where they have improvements to make. Most of its materials are not eco-friendly, meaning that much of their waste ends up going to landfills. They also don’t seem to show their attempt to reduce gas emissions, which is supposed to be the number one goal for every company in the world because of our climate change issue. As Gymshark has created a brand around fitness and being healthy, I believe they should care just the same about Earth’s health and sustainability. Another questionable and poor side to them is their labour conditions. Obviously the brand has a Code of Conduct, it shows no proof that their workers has any empowerment to make any initiative or complaint towards them. This is very wrong in this day because everyone should be free to speak towards anything and anyone expressing their opinions and thoughts. If we compare Gymshark to other fitness related companies that have been around far longer they have closed down a very large gap in little time. Companies such as Adidas, Nike, New Balance, ASRV and many more. Most companies that have been already established over a long period of time, sales grow about 6% to 8% on average like Nike and Adidas with net worth’s of over 20 billion dollars. Gymshark compared to that is growing exponentially with 193% compounded growth from 2013 to 2016. In conclusion we can see that Gymshark is no joke and they are taking over the fitness world little by little.
Citations:
Gilliland, Nikki. “Five Marketing Lessons from the Success of Gymshark.” Econsultancy, 20 Aug. 2020, econsultancy.com/five-retail-lessons-sportswear-brand-gymshark/#:~:text=Starting with a small number,raise awareness and target consumers.&text=This strategy eventually turned many,genuine affinity for the clothes.
Lavendaire, et al. “How Gymshark Grew by 200%+ Year on Year and Hit £41M in Sales (Updated 2019).” Beeketing Blog, 10 Dec. 2019, beeketing.com/blog/gymshark-growth-story/.
Unsplash. Beautiful Free Images & Pictures. unsplash.com?%2Futm_source=medium.
Verghese, Sonali. “How Gymshark Leveraged Influencer Marketing to Become a $500m Business.” Medium, The Startup, 22 Feb. 2020, medium.com/swlh/how-gymshark-leveraged-influencer-marketing-to-become-a-500m-business-7ae2432f2f31.
