How Gymshark outgrew Adobe Commerce and transformed the platform to scale internationally

At the age of 19, Ben Francis founded Gymshark, a leading brand of fitness clothing and accessories, in a British garage in 2012. The company has gained significant engagement on social media and recently moved from Adobe Commerce to Shopify Plus after the disastrous Black Friday. publish the following results:

• Sales in 2017 were £41 million
• One of the fastest growing global fitness and clothing brands
• 5.1 million social media followers in 131 countries

Challenge

The accelerated growth that Gymshark experienced from its inception to 2015 required a platform that could handle significant spikes in traffic and grow with the brand. However, Ben and the Gymshark team quickly regretted their decision to choose Adobe Commerce as their commerce platform, due in part to the time it took to get ready and go live.

“The site itself took six to eight months to build,” recalls Ben. “By the time the site was completed, it had doubled in size and had already outgrown the site.”

The situation quickly deteriorated when the Adobe Commerce site, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to create and maintain, crashed at the most important stage of all for the retailer; Black Friday. According to Ben, the site was down for eight hours and Gymshark is estimated to cost £100,000.

Solutions

Ten months after partnering with Adobe Commerce, Gymshark transitioned to Shopify Plus, knowing the platform could scale on demand and grow with Gymshark as the company focused on additional international expansion. In fact, Gymshark delivers immersive customer experiences online and offline by using Shopify’s POS system to help host global tours where Gymshark customers can meet their fitness idols and shop in person at trade shows and special events.

“It’s an unparalleled customer experience,” says Daniel Knight, Gymshark brand manager. “It bridges the gap between the digital and physical worlds and provides customers with an emotional experience that cannot be achieved solely online.”

Gymshark also uses Shopify Scripts, which offers merchants the ability to write their own custom code on Shopify Plus servers to customize the checkout process and surprise customers with freebies that earn loyalty.

“Scripts allow us to customize the checkout process and offer customers who make a specific purchase a free gift,” says Ben. “It would take a lot of money and weeks to do this in Adobe Commerce. But with Shopify, we can do what we want almost instantly and know it will work.”

Results

Since migrating to Shopify Plus, the Gymshark team has been able to focus solely on growing the brand and experimenting with new, innovative products, such as fitness apparel that can provide athletes with extra energy or next-generation wearables that can prevent injuries.

The confidence that Shopify Plus can scale no matter how fast Gymshark grows helped the company achieve sales of £41 million in 2017, generate 5.1 million social media followers in 131 countries and become one of the fastest growing global fitness and clothing brands around the world.

“We have the same morals and values ​​as we did when we were a small company,” says Ben. “Each of these customers is a human being and deserves to be treated the way I wanted to be treated.”