i'm ben and i love to make things and,one of those things is jim sharp which i,created when i was 19 years old,i'm now 24 and i've never had so much,going on in my life,gymshark is officially the uk's fastest,growing company and i'm traveling a lot,we're about to take some huge leaps to,compete with some of the biggest,companies so i've decided to document,this journey i think the best place to,start is with the gym shot story where i,started and how gym shots started as a,young teenager all i did was make,websites my first fully functioning,website sold license plates so the first,bit of money that i earned i bought,plates and sold them online with my,friends next i got my first iphone and i,was absolutely fascinated by it i,instantly downloaded the iphone sdk and,started to learn to develop i made four,iphone apps two of which were fitness,apps and both of them made it into the,top charts in the uk and several other,countries and they were about teaching,you how to work out populating your,calendar and diary with workouts and,things like that next i made a fitness,social network a website called,twotone.com it got several thousand,members but it just wasn't getting the,traffic for it to be sustainable,and then the next website i made was the,gymshark website i incorporated gymshark,in 2012 with my friend lewis another,time i'd spend all my day at university,then after that i'd deliver pizzas for,pizza and any time in between the two i,spent in the gym on working on gymshark,now we couldn't afford to stop because,we had no money so,the solution that i thought up was to,have every single supplement you can,ever imagine on the website and we,didn't stock any of them and what i did,was when people would order off the,website it would automatically trigger,another retailer to drop ship the,supplement to them and we just add a,small margin to it i think it took about,two months to get our first sale um and,we've done a lot of world tours and we,met a lot of people expos and stuff and,a lot of people ask me advice on,starting a business and i think the key,thing that i would say based on um the,way that we started gymshark is that you,have to be creative with both the front,end of your business business and the,back end because if we weren't creative,enough to think of the drop ship,shipping solution for the back end of,the business then gym shop wouldn't,exist at all so it's from doing this,that we earn enough money to be able to,stock other people's brands of clothing,and when we got it i realized that there,was nothing out there like what we,wanted to wear so we spent everything we,had on a screen printer and a sewing,machine and we started to design our own,answer to fitness wear which is longer,stretchier and more feared this says,that every single gymshark product was,custom made i remember spending hours,and hours printing the t-shirts sewing,the t-shirts designing all the logos and,then printing them off burning them into,screens,it was just this was the most manual,time for gymshark and i remember going,to body power around this time and just,walking around and seeing sort of the,bodybuilders the more i guess it was a,little bit more boring than what it is,now and thinking that this expo is,missing something huge so i went,straight to the show office and i just,said to them like what can we afford,what can we get we have to be here next,year and i remember literally emptying,the bank account on the floor space for,body power the following year so after,signing up for body power next year the,following year was spent just non-stop,work again just packaging orders um,printing sewing just non-stop custom,making product,it was really really tough the hours,were long it was non-stop but it never,really felt like work because we were,always just creating what we loved i was,absolutely obsessed with youtube whilst,i was working i remember watching scott,herman and scooby every single video,that they would ever upload um matt,ogres chris levardo,jeff side lex allen just watched them,all the time and as massive fans we,decided to send them the gymshark,product lex was the first person to ever,get jim sharp product the first gymshark,athlete i remember when he got it and he,gave us his feedback and he uploaded a,video in it it was just the coolest,thing ever at the time no one else was,doing this uh now it's called influencer,marketing but at the time it just came,totally natural to us as we were just,fans of the guys i guess at the end of,2012 we started to design the luxe,fitted tracksuit the tracksuit and the,product that would shoot jim shark into,huge growth when we finished designing,it the minimum order quantity was so,high that it costed again everything,that we had at the time but we loved the,product so much and we knew that it was,such a game changer that we just went,with it we ordered it and it was due to,arrive may the following year ready for,body power i remember receiving the,samples of the lux tracksuit on,christmas day 2012 and it was the most,excited i had ever been to have this gym,sharp product in our hands that we,hadn't had to physically make ourselves,was just incredible we invited,matt chris jeff allen lex to the body,power expo they all said yes and it was,absolutely awesome so we headed off to,the body power expo and my dad and my,brother joe stayed back to package all,the orders and cover things whilst we,were away,and there was nothing that could prepare,us for what we were about to experience,at this expo we went from just sort of,being an online business we'd have never,actually been able to see physically the,people that we were affecting in person,and i remember turning up to the expo,and the second the doors opened we were,flooded i have never seen so many people,just draw into a stand at once,ever it was absolutely incredible it was,unmanageable,we spent the whole weekend talking just,helping people obviously people were,buying loads of gymshark product and we,were with the guys it was so crazy that,dan and craig our two friends dropped,their final university exams and lost,their degrees so that they could come to,birmingham to help us out that weekend,it was just so busy dan blackwell and,ash grant came and they helped us out,all weekend as well i remember they,brought their friends who we didn't even,know and they helped us out it was so,cool to be a part of we didn't even,realize it but at the time we were,revolutionizing the way that experts,were done like in this industry it was,just the best experience for our entire,lives everyone went home and i remember,being sat in the living room it was late,one night,because during the expo we turned all,the stuff down so there wasn't too many,orders,i remember doing a post and i flicked,all the stock back on i put the luxe,track suit on the website and the,website literally blew up we had more,traffic and had more sales in the first,30 minutes of me putting the stock back,on the website than we had in the entire,of the gym shark history and i remember,being sat there with sold out i was,clawing at my laptop to try and turn all,the stuff off that night and afterwards,i was sat there on my own in the living,room thinking wow we have made something,incredible over the next few years tons,happened we kept creating the product,that we loved we went on a huge expo,world tour loads of stuff joined jim,sharp because we were growing so fast,lewis decided to move on because he,wanted to do other things we launched,our women's range which at first wasn't,great but now it's a huge part of our,community and business we brought on our,first female athlete nikki blacketer we,invested heavily into the gymshark,women's brand and community and that's,been great i think anyone that saw the,flex launch a few weeks ago will know,just how crazy the growth is right now,we thought we'd have enough flex,leggings to last us maybe a month or two,and they sold out in minutes so we're,really working on this right now more,recently we got to a point where we had,to make a decision we could keep going,as a small relatively fast growing,business or we could take some big risks,and go for the big time and that was a,decision that i wanted to make what,really helped me to understand this is,paul and steve who both won the gym,shark business with me and they taught,me the importance of the structure and,the back end and the foundations of the,business as well as the investment in,the front and the market and the,products and the creativity that i love,so much and i think it's the combination,of my front end creativity and their,brains on the back end that has allowed,us to create a company that is so agile,structured and is constantly invested in,people and creating the things that we,love,especially now because we've got 70,staff in the uk we ship from,norway and sweden and we're an,international business it's so difficult,for someone of my age to run so having,those guys to help me in the back end of,the business is just priceless to me so,there it is a really short overview of,the gymshark story and i'm sure there's,loads that i've missed so if anyone has,any questions then feel free to comment,them below,i want to thank everyone that came out,to the gym shop world tour and asked me,to do a video like this because it,wasn't for you guys asking then i,wouldn't have done it i want this,channel to be a documentation of my,journey and a source of inspiration and,information for others too so if anyone,has any further questions then please,like the video comment the video,subscribe and thanks for watching,we were able,and as you can see anyone that has arms,or,12 inches,this will go out today as well so,another happy customer for jim sharp,post ready to go jeff seed stuff,my,laptop computer,as you can see got some more coming in,the stock room,a little bit of packaging here more,package in there so yeah this is um,the headquarters if you will,there it is,bodybuilding clothing,number three,just sewed the new gym chart light bulbs,in so you've got the gym shark fitness,logo on the stringer,as you can see you've got the official,gymshark logo,the official gymshart hang tag which is,very nice you've got the quality string,official jim sharp merchandise it's a,all-round wonderful product now,all-round wonderful product,baby blue string the best first,second,third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth,nine,ten,all right that's the car is actually,packaged and as you can see i can't,actually,move my chair back anymore,this one is just,the whole car basically is just,absolutely,rand,incredible speed of production,this is ben francis,handmade look at the thickness of these,ink pads,look at the thickness of the ink yeah,it's looking good nice and shiny,this section down,um,just thought i'd give you a tutorial on,how to fold the t-shirt right out flat,face down pull the one side over pull,the other side over and then simply,fold it over twice more,like that and then you've got a,perfectly folded t-shirt another happy,gym shot customer i thought i'd uh,look around we've got the uh,the back door in it got all the uh,rack in here,we'll have more,soon so just in the unit printing off a,design a bit nervous the first one went,wrong,you know what happened with the ink,apparently just spewed ink everywhere,fresh ones coming out now,maxed out on the uh,ink that it's putting out looking good,so far,perfect just this is the area where,we're gonna have some more carpet down,here desk here here in the corner and,all that just got stuck on the floor at,the moment,packaging all these need to go up today,there's only one bag of postage and i've,got to put them in as well we normally,take about four a day i think the,racking on here,just a load of stock things like that i,think we've got about two thousand,investing coming together got the office,chair ready racking that we need to take,back this is the printing machine,some old prints on there so yeah it's,the dryer,scrap basically desk over there a few,things here racking all down the side,but we're gonna put the racking up,quite high i mean the grooves pretty,high so we're going to double up that,racking uh,yeah that's it really,and so you've got the string your small,medium large accessories on the bottom,so i've actually invented,the shorter dispenser,small,medium and well it's going to be large,and all you have to do is,just pull out the short dispenser easy,doesn't take up any room simple quick,effective,so at least we're actually starting to,get in order,um,as you can see we're packing up the unit,as we're actually moving somewhere
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