How Fashion Influencer Helps Gymshark Grow From 0 To $1.5 Million In 2 Years

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Fashion Influencer

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Having your fashion business grow without fashion influencers is quite difficult these days. For once, these fashion influencers help spread your brand to the world and bring valuable sales in return. You can find many success stories where fashion influencers turned familiar names into huge success stories. Gymshark is one such company that saw an incredible growth in a span of three years. The fitness and gym clothing brand are noted for its consistent, rapid growth. So much so that it stands today as the fastest growing fitness brand in the UK. Here is more on how Gymshark achieved such as phenomenal growth rate in so little time:

How did It start?

Gymshark is the brainchild of two University students, Lewis Morgan and Ben Francis. They decided to have sportswear startup focusing product quality and affordability. Having a cursory look at the numbers the company piled up in two years will make it clear as to what the company is going through. In two years’ time, the company went from zero to £ 1.5 million which is phenomenal by every standard. Though the enterprise also piled up a huge number of liabilities, it also increased its assets over time. Similarly, the company saw its net worth also skyrocketing during this time. So, the big question is, how they achieved it? The answer can be found in their business strategy.

Involving Social Fashion Influencers

Both Morgan and Francis had several unique ideas for launching the brand. For once, they were firmly focused on launching the brand through social media. Hence, it was decided that social media was to play a pivotal role in promoting Gymshark as a brand. So much so that the company will rely on fashion influencers to help promote its business to large social media communities. As with all startups, Gymshark started with a negligible collection of clothing range that grew over time. To get a better customer response, they began contacting social media experts including Facebook and Twitter experts, Pinterest, Instagrammers, and You Tubers. These fashion influencers were to wear Gymshark’s fitness clothes. In exchange for free clothing, these social media experts would become ambassadors of Gymshark clothing. They were to advertise Gymshark products on different social media channels and platforms.  As per the agreement, Gymshark ambassadors cannot become ambassadors for another brand until the contract is over.

Compared to other marketing strategies, Gymshark relied solely on social media for promoting the brand. However, Morgan and Francis had a clear plan in mind. They assembled a broad landscape of social media ambassadors to promote Gymshark brand. As a result, with so many social media ambassadors, the name ended up having its social media community. Each of these ambassadors had hundreds and thousands of followers on different social media channels. Naturally, having brand ambassadors with thousands of fans, Gymshark had assembled a decent number of followers already. Most of the brand ambassadors are still with the company.

Promotions Sales through Coupons And Discounts

Apart from utilizing the social media prowess, Gymshark also makes use of attractive schemes and incentives to attract customers. These incentives include discounts, promotions, and sales on different items. Customers who are interested in buying quality fitness clothes and sportswear by Gymshark can avail attractive discounts and coupons with up to 50% off on various deals. Likewise, clearance sale offers to include significant discount vouchers, and coupon codes are available on previous year’s available stock on ClothingRIC and other sites.

Innovative Business Strategy

One wonders as to how Gymshark achieved the success of this magnitude in a short time, but they used innovative business practices for this purpose. A closer look at Gymshark’s business strategy reveals that though the plan was simple, it makes a lot of sense. First, Gymshark contacts a social media ambassador, who then brings his followers in, and spreads the message among those supporters. An ingenious way to market your products to thousands, or millions of loyal fans of your brand ambassadors. Now, when ambassadors and fans are ready, the company launches the new product. It is advertised by all ambassadors on their channels simultaneously. The campaign continues for a few days or a week at best.

Gymshark has a sizeable presence on Instagram and Pinterest. Now, start counting Gymshark’s Instagram followers, add the following of other ambassadors, and you have decent product launch with many orders coming. Another reason why Gymshark did so well in the market is by targeting the right market. Even as a student, Ben Francis enjoyed having hundreds of social media connections and knew that he would someday put a viable tool like social media to good use. His knowledge of social media finally paid off when he started his startup. Gradually, his screen printing garage operation turned into a $1.5 million business venture that is growing at a phenomenal pace.

Today, Gymshark stands one of the biggest sportswear brands in the UK and is expanding its product portfolio. As of now, the product catalog includes layers, bottoms, shorts, tanks, t-shirts, socks, underwear, hoodies, leggings, bras, and tops to name a few. At its core, Gymshark is a brand that focuses on athletes, artists, and visionaries. Each of these brands is designed by keeping user comfort and longevity in mind. None of Gymshark products will make you feel uncomfortable during workouts or exercises. At the same time, you can wear them as casual wear at home without a problem.

Some marketers and strategists may not agree with the Gymshark strategy. After all, putting all eggs in one basket is not a wise idea. But, considering how intelligently Gymshark’s marketing team played with employing social media experts/ brand ambassadors pulled out a master stroke and achieved a desired level of success is a test case for other startups to follow.

To become successful, every entrepreneur must believe their products help clients successfully achieve their goals, Gymshark seems to have reached just that for customers.

Hassan Mansoor
Hassan Mansoor is the Founder and Director at Technical Minds Web. After completing Masters in Business Administration, he established a small digital marketing agency with the primary focus to help the small business owners to grow their online businesses. Being a small entrepreneur, he has learned from project management, and day to day staff management and staff productivity. He's a regular contributor on Business.com.

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