Free Product, Before It Had a Name

Ben Francis was screen printing gym wear in a garage in Birmingham and delivering pizza at night. He sent his stock to people with cameras before anyone called it influencer marketing.

The Gymshark story is usually told as a story about a teenager who got lucky with timing. The timing was genuinely good. The decision underneath it was better, and it is the part that still works today in categories nowhere near fitness.

Francis was nineteen, sewing and printing in a garage, funding stock with a pizza delivery job. He had no advertising budget at all. What he had was an accurate read on where his customers actually were, which was not where the industry was spending.