Thread by @jspujji

At 19, this mediocre student and pizza delivery boy dropped out and launched 6 exercise-related apps.

All of them failed.

The crazy part?

On the 7th try, he bootstrapped a $1,000,000,000+ DTC brand 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

1/ Ben Francis was born in 1992 in the West Midlands, UK.

He loved soccer (football) but wasn’t that great at it.

At 14, he spent the summer working in his grandfather’s business. It was a simple but back breaking business…

2/ They lined furnaces with brick and cement for ~12 hours per day.

Ben felt a deep appreciation for his grandfather and was inspired by his entrepreneurial example

BUT

He did not want to do that kind of work for a living. He started searching for something new…

3/ 3 years later, he took a coding class in high school and was smitten.

He loved the creativity, the ability to build, learn and iterate. This was his calling!

But the more he got into tech, the worse he performed in school...

4/ His grades dropped from Bs/Cs to Ds and Fs. He just wasn’t interested or motivated in class anymore.

What saved his grades was something very unusual…

5/ He started going to the gym.

He took the structure, iteration, and motivation from lifting weights and started applying it to his classes.

His grades went up.

When he enrolled in college, things got very interesting…

6/ He combined his new passions of Gym and Tech and started launching apps.

4 of them never even got published. Then he launched…

iPhysique - auto-populated calendar with basic workouts and tips

Fat Loss Abs Guide - self explanatory

Both topped the charts, at first…

7/ But like many apps, they quickly fell to earth and more importantly, he had no way of making money from them.

He wanted to sell something to gym lovers like himself.

What would he sell though?

Obvious choice: supplements.

Only one issue: he had no money for inventory…

8/ He found someone who would let him dropship despite the thin margins.

What to name the business? Ben searched for URLs related to gym… after 30 mins, he came across the one: GymSHARK!

He scooped it up and listed all the supplements he could find.

Sales DID NOT pour in…

9/ It took 6 weeks to make his first sale. He barely broke even, but he was addicted to selling online.

To make ends meet, he started delivering pizzas in his free time. Looking for new ideas about what to sell, he often brainstormed with gym friends...

10/ That's when inspiration struck.

Ben and his gym friends didn’t like any of the clothes available at the time.

In an instant he knew this would be HIS product, not another dropshipping scheme.

11/ None of them liked the gym clothes available at that time: American sportswear was baggy while UK/European was stylish but not practical.

Lululemon was just getting started.

What if they could make stylish but functional clothes?

He took the plunge…

12/ Ben bought a screenprinting machine and his mom taught him to sew.

He made his first products in his parents garage.

It took him nearly a year to make anything sellable, but he never gave up.

13/ The site was doing barely 300 GBP a day in sales and there was no clear path to scale.

Desperate for growth, Ben decided to attend a local tradeshow for the gym industry.

What happened next changed his life…

14/ One of his new tracksuit designs started going viral on Facebook and YT!

The day after the tradeshow, the site did 30K GBP in sales.

100x their daily average sales from one event!

15/ Ben realized this could be the strategy… find popular figures in the fitness community and give them apparel. They’d wear it in videos and on social, and that would lead to sales.

Today, we call it influencer marketing… Gymshark would use to scale to new heights:

16/ They did over 5.8MM in sales the next year in 2014.

Gymshark was on track to hit 9MM+, but a disaster set them back on one of the busiest days in retail...

17/ It was Black Friday. They were set to blow away all their predictions...

Until the entire site crashed.

It was down for 8 hours.

Ben wrote over 2500 personalized letters to Gymshark customers who couldn't buy from them that day.

They were scaling too fast...

18/ Ben saw that he didn't have the experience to lead the company through this next phase yet.

Showing great humility and insight, he stepped down as CEO.

He became Chief Brand Officer and brought on an experienced team to help the company become the UK's answer to Nike...

19/ His move to lead brand proved prescient, as it is key to their success.

Gymshark is hyper focused on a
single customer segment.

16-25 year olds who are obsessed with:
• Fitness (Gym)
• Fashion
• Music

Everyone else is secondary.

20/ As a result of their customer focus, Gymshark is active and innovative across all major social platforms, especially YouTube, IG, and TikTok.

Unlike competitors, they use social to educate, engage, and entertain their audience rather than sell products outright.

21/ In 2020, Ben's focus and drive proved worth it when General Atlantic took a 21% stake in the business and valued them north of 1 billion pounds.

They're one of only 2 bootstrapped British unicorns in the past decade.

Not bad for a pizza delivery driver.

22/ Sources:

forbes.com/sites/jodiecoo…
cnbc.com/2021/08/24/how…
generalatlantic.com/media-article/…
beeketing.com/blog/gymshark-…
esquire.com/uk/life/a35519…
benfrancis.com/business/about/

23/ Lessons to take with you from Ben Francis's journey from pizza delivery to $700MM+ fitness/fashion icon:

1. Keep trying
2. Solve your own problem
3. Luck matters, but you can make your own
4. Build a community, sales will follow
5. Seriously, don't give up!

24/ If you enjoyed this thread, follow me @jspujji

I tweet a Bootstrapped Giants🧵 like this every week.

Like this one about how Fashion Nova went from an LA discount chain to the biggest brand in ecommerce fashion.:

https://twitter.com/jspujji/status/1456677283587137537?s=20

25/ And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter: The 3-1-4. It comes up every other week with 3 links, 1 thought, and 4 opportunities.

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