Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories

CEO Of Athleisure Brand Gym + Coffee Shares The Suite of Tactics That Have Led To An Impressive 169% YOY Sales Growth

January 05, 2023 Brightpearl Podcasts Season 2 Episode 7
Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories
CEO Of Athleisure Brand Gym + Coffee Shares The Suite of Tactics That Have Led To An Impressive 169% YOY Sales Growth
Show Notes Transcript

Gym & Coffee is an Ireland-based fitness apparel retailer. Launched in 2017, the popular athleisure merchant focuses on socialising through fitness, using a suite of diverse marketing tools. 

On today's episode, we speak with Diarmuid McSweeney, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing and Community Officer at Gym & Coffee about the phenomenal strategy the brand has used to fuel its incredible 169% rate of growth - leading it to place 10th in the Lightning 50 list of fastest-growing UK brands.

Show Notes | Series 2, Episode 7 | Gym + Coffee

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Gym + Coffee is an Ireland-based fitness apparel retailer. Launched in 2017, the merchant focuses on socialising through fitness, using a suite of diverse marketing tools including setting up events and clubhouses across Ireland and the UK for fans of the brand to socialise in person. The brand placed 10th in the Lightning 50 list of fastest-growing UK brands with an incredible 169% rate of growth. For this podcast, we spoke to Diarmuid McSweeney, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing and Community Officer at Gym + Coffee.

Transcript highlights:

  • “We’re an Irish-founded athleisure company founded in 2017 with three co-founders - and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind five years. I don’t think we planned for Brexit and a once-in-a-century pandemic when we launched, but the brand is all about the mission to make life richer and build a community around exercise and socialising, so it managed to cut through. We’re not a gym, per se, and we don’t really sell coffee - but those two aspects of our name encapsulate the notion of socialising through exercise.”

  • “It’s a direct-to-consumer model so we spent almost two years purely online, then opened our first pop-up store. Turns out, people really like pop-ups and the omnichannel experience. Fast forward a few years and we have 11 stores across the UK and Ireland. It’s been hectic navigating the changes but it’s also been amazing, what we’ve achieved.” 

  • “In terms of our core foundations, the DTC model is crucial. We don’t have any wholesale relationships; our growth has been achievable because we have a direct relationship with all our customers. With the supply chain issues and delays that occurred last year, we could communicate that directly to our customers without relying on another entity to do it for us.”

  • “Covid helped. We put a lot of things into practice when the opportunity was presented to us, but we are under no illusions - we were lucky that cultural trends around Covid lent themselves to our brand. Our mission and passion to socialise around exercise; it was very difficult to do that over lockdowns. We weren’t just talking to our customers about products but about staying healthy and staying connected to people, so that really helped us get our message across.”

  • “Our other core brand value is sustainability. We are on a challenging and long road to becoming a B corp and we’ve made that part of our messaging. We are not yet a fully sustainable company - but we are very up front about the steps we have taken to improve sustainability across our team and through in-house processes as well as supply chain and so on. All of those things have bubbled together and we’ve become a brand that seems to be resonating with people.”

  • “Our marketing strategy includes events, e-commerce, digital growth and community - all growth levers and forms of acquisition. We’ve done a huge amount of analysis in the last 12 months and we can see the value of customers that come through our events for the first time. Customers that are omnichannel are more high-value than an online only or just a store customer. We’ve found that when a customer has that full breadth of brand experience, they’re more likely to be a huge fan of the brand.” 

  • “It’s hard to measure but we’ve been running events since year one of the business, we’ve run over 300 events for our community. It’s nice to be able to tell now, through the data, that it’s not just part of our passion and brand vision but it actually contributes to the business, brings customers in and creates more revenue.”  

  • “My multi-faceted role is more of a reflection of how people want to interact with brands now. Everyone needs to understand the customer journey - from an event to an e-commerce experience - and make sure everything along that customer route is working together. There’s elements of community to my role but it also includes events, e-commerce, digital growth and marketing - it covers all touchpoints of the business.”

  • “Supply chain is a constant challenge - I bow down to our supply team and how they keep on top of everything. When everyone thought the world was going back to normal it wasn’t, supply chain wise. There seems to be a levelling out now, which is great as we approach such a busy time of year – but it has been a rollercoaster.”

  • “We try to follow best practices when it comes to digital marketing. Everything is built on Shopify then we use Klaviyo for CRM segmentation and email flows etc - that’s been crucial to growth and being able to scale. The business has just got to that level where you need bespoke tech, which is where you get into fun things like ERP implementations and so on – and we’re understanding that at certain stages you need additional robust platforms to field the growth. It’s great getting demand - but if you’ve no way of meeting it, you’ve shot yourself in the foot.”

  • “Last year we reached approx £20M in revenue, the majority of which was online. The retail stores play a crucial role - there’s a lot of people who want that touch and feel relationship, and to make sure they’re comfortable with sizing - but the really encouraging thing is that omnichannel person. When their first interaction is a store or event, they become a more valuable prospect online. So we’ve accrued a lot of very valuable customers with our omnichannel approach.”

  • “We’re not looking to expand into every town as I don’t think every location needs a Gym + Coffee - it’s not that kind of utility store - it’s more about whether the location will draw use. There’s a running group in Liverpool who come to the store on a Wednesday evening, leave their stuff there and meet afterwards. They’re intended more as community hubs and we host events there too, to fulfil that promise we make through our marketing and online experience.”

  • “Black Friday is a crucial period for everyone in our category - a lot of our groundwork all year round is prepping for the last 9 or 10 weeks of the year. We’re not sure, as everyone seems not to be - whether it’s going to work this year. There’s a cost of living challenge all over the UK and Ireland so I don’t think we’re in the same headspace this year. You have to react accordingly, make slightly different plans and stay relevant. Everyone knows there are discounts but if you are a brand that people engage with, you’ll need to offer something more than that.” 

  • “It’s incredible to have come in the top 10 of the Lightning 50. You have your head down in the early days just to get everything off the ground, and through Covid too. We now have about 180 people working for us - and you might say the recognition isn’t needed, but it really is from time to time. To be ranked against other companies that you admire - it’s important to celebrate those things. To be gaining traction in the UK is a fantastic achievement for us and testament to all the work our team has put in.”

Top takeaways

●       Gym + Coffee is one of the top 10 fastest-growing retailers in the UK, placing 10th in the UK Lightning 50 rankings and winning overall regional title in the East Midlands.

●       The brand achieved an impressive 169% growth rate.

●      The tech that’s driven their growth includes Shopify, and Klaviyo, and they acknowledge that at different stages of business, tech is needed in order to scale effectively.

●     A diverse suite of marketing techniques have also boosted the brand’s success - including setting up clubhouses and pop-up events to deliver on the brand’s core values of exercising while socialising. 

  • Gym + Coffee has found its omnichannel customer (one who discovers the brand through physical stores or events then searches online, or vice versa) to be of a higher value and more likely to become a repeat customer.