Gymshark Hits The Floor With London Flagship Debut

So the time has nearly arrived. Online athleisure and fitness brand Gymshark will become an omni-channel retailer Saturday, when it officially opens the doors to its first bricks-and-mortar store on Regent Street, London.

It’s a bold move by a company just a decade old, founded by British entrepreneur Ben Francis from the bedroom of his parent’s home.

The company is now valued at over $1.3 billion following stellar sales, highly successful trading and brand enhancement during the pandemic, and the acquisition of around a fifth of the business by General Atlantic.

Last year the Solihull, West Midlands-based company launched a U.S. office in Denver, Co. and though Francis has held talks with financiers, he once again played down any prospects of an IPO at the store preview.

“I feel like I’ve got the best job in the world. I absolutely love what I do. And in many respects, money can’t buy that,” says Francis. “So, in terms of an IPO, we’re not looking at that anytime soon. We need to get this store launched, we need to smash the U.S. market, we need to manage through the next 12 to 18 months. An IPO just isn’t currently on our agenda.”

The first of those challenges is opening Gymshark’s first physical store, spread over two large floors and 18,000 sq. ft. flagship at 165 Regent Street, formerly home to J. Crew and rented on a 10-year lease from the street’s landlord The Crown Estate.

Obviously it’s a brand showcase for the world, given its location, but Francis insists the store has been conceived with a community focus, which dovetails with the retail experience and a desire to make gym-based exercise accessible, whether as a starter or an experienced athlete.

Those goals tally with Francis’ own experiences as a self-confessed ‘skinny kid’ who went to the gym and felt intimated by the macho etiquette. From there an idea was born, as he ventured out as a 19-year-old making hoodies from his parents’ garage, while working shifts at Pizza Hut and creating the first Gymshark website.

“It changed my life and it’s something I am passionate about,” Francis says, speaking from The Steam Room weights area at the back of the ground floor. “We want this to be a place where people come not just for the product but to join classes, to learn about nutrition and also technical stuff like lifting techniques and recovery.”

Free classes will take place at street level on a full gym floor, where merchandise on rollers can be wheeled away and other products hoisted up on an overhead gantry to create a clear workout space within 15 minutes. Shelving at the back is the same width as squat racks and can also be converted quickly.

Of course the key question is not whether you build it, but will it work?

Francis acknowledges that it’s a gamble and says the company’s ethos is to “test and learn”, so his view is that if things need to change, so be it.

“If you come back to this store in 12, 18 months and it’s the same then either we’ve knocked it out the park or, more likely, we’ve adapted as we find out what our customers and visitors want from us. If we haven’t changed, then we haven’t listened,” he says.

Gymshark Opens Saturday

Francis and the team will start to find that out Saturday, as the store flings open its doors and lets people see what Gymshark looks like in real life. The retailer has run multiple events, meet-ups and pop-ups over the years, so Francis stresses that the store is also an amalgamation of the ideas tested out multiple times.

He is also keen to emphasize that fitness is a “personal journey” and that is why the store and the brand can appeal to both the novice and the seasoned gym goer, because everyone has their own goals.

The area is also becoming something of a beacon for fitness brands, with Lululemon a few doors up, NikeTown close by, as is cycling community brand Rapha, while Adidas and other sportswear brands have flagships in the West End.

Chief brand officer Noel Mack points out that most of those have their heritage in specific sports and Gymshark is the first to start from the gym, rather than running, yoga or cycling, for example. That, along with its British heritage, are brand values it wants to take out to the world.

So when will the next store open? Unsurprisingly, Francis isn’t ready to contemplate that, given that the London store is only just coming to fruition, although he has stressed his desire to see the brand make an impact in the U.S. and last year bolstered the board with U.S. entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk to advise on marketing and brand development.

“What I will say is that we are not opening this store to do the same things as everyone else,” he says. “In the middle of the pandemic, when everyone predicted that everything would move online, we saw a different future and signed a ten-year deal in Central London. We want this store to be unique and special.”