Gymshark vs Under Armour: The Battle Between Athletes and Influencers
How a British start-up challenged a sportswear giant without playing by its rules
In 2012, Under Armour looked unstoppable.
It had elite athletes.
Massive retailers.
Television advertising.
Stadium sponsorships.
Gymshark had a teenager, a sewing machine and a handful of bodybuilders with YouTube channels.
That should not have been a fair fight.
It wasn’t.
Just not in the way Under Armour expected.
Imagine you wanted to launch a sportswear brand in the early 2000s.
The path was obvious.
Develop a technical product.
Persuade retailers to stock it.
Sign professional athletes.
Buy advertising.
Repeat until your logo became famous.
That was Under Armour’s route.
Founded by former college football player Kevin Plank in 1996, the company began with a sweat-wicking shirt designed to replace the heavy cotton tops worn beneath football uniforms.
It solved a genuine problem and built its identity around serious athletic performance.
By the time Gymshark appeared, Under Armour was already a global sportswear business.
So Gymshark ignored the traditional route entirely.
Under Armour built for athletes
Under Armour’s marketing was loud, intense and unmistakably American.
Its world was built around competition.
Professional sport.
Physical sacrifice.
Sweat.
Pain.
Victory.
The message was simple:
Wear Under Armour and perform like an athlete.
It worked because the product supported the promise.
Under Armour was not simply selling another T-shirt.
It was selling performance technology.
Then came the endorsements.
Tom Brady.
Stephen Curry.
Anthony Joshua.
Dwayne Johnson.
These partnerships gave Under Armour reach, authority and credibility.
But they also reinforced a traditional marketing model.
The famous athlete spoke.
The customer listened.
Celebrity endorsements can deliver enormous attention, but they also place part of the brand’s reputation in somebody else’s hands, as explored in When Brand Ambassadors Go Wrong.
Gymshark built with its customers
Gymshark began in 2012 when 19-year-old Ben Francis started producing fitted gym clothing from his parents’ home.
He did not have access to global sports stars.
He could not afford television advertising.
He did not have relationships with major retailers.
What he did have was the internet.
Francis sent Gymshark products to fitness YouTubers whose audiences were small by celebrity standards but intensely engaged.
These creators did not appear in polished television commercials.
They trained in the clothes.
Reviewed them.
Posted photographs in them.
Met followers while wearing them.
Gymshark says these early relationships were not even regarded as influencer marketing at the time.
They were simply an effective way to reach the people already shaping online fitness culture.
The difference was subtle but enormous.
Under Armour sponsored heroes.
Gymshark recruited members.
The new face of fitness
Traditional sportswear marketing had focused on professional athletes because they represented the highest level of performance.
Gymshark recognised that fitness culture was changing.
Its customers were not necessarily training for Olympic medals or professional contracts.
They were training to build muscle.
Lose weight.
Improve their confidence.
Post progress photographs.
Become part of an online community.
The person influencing their clothing choices was no longer always a global sports star.
It might be the bodybuilder whose videos they watched every evening.
The personal trainer they followed on Instagram.
Or someone documenting a transformation that felt achievable.
Gymshark’s athletes looked impressive.
But they also felt accessible.
That made them powerful.
Micro-influencers can often create more trust than traditional celebrities because their audiences feel closer to them. This shift is explored further in An Introduction to Social Media Marketing.
Community became the advertising
Gymshark did not simply pay creators to hold products in photographs.
It built events around them.
Followers could meet the athletes they watched online.
Thousands attended pop-up events and fitness expos.
Customers filmed the experience.
Creators shared it.
The audience distributed the advertising voluntarily.
Every Gymshark post encouraged another.
Every athlete attracted another audience.
Every customer wearing the clothing became visible evidence that the community was growing.
Under Armour largely communicated from the top down.
Gymshark spread from person to person.
One built an audience.
The other built a network.
Under Armour’s strength became a constraint
There was nothing inherently wrong with Under Armour’s strategy.
Its technical products, athlete endorsements and wholesale distribution had helped create a multibillion-dollar company.
But scale changes what a brand can do.
A company stocked by thousands of retailers must manage inventory, pricing, product ranges and relationships across an enormous distribution network.
A digital-first brand can move differently.
Gymshark could launch products directly to its audience.
Watch the response.
Collect the customer data.
Adjust quickly.
And control almost every part of the buying experience.
Under Armour still derived a substantial proportion of its revenue from wholesale, while Gymshark built its growth primarily through direct relationships with customers.
This direct-to-consumer model allowed Gymshark to bypass traditional retailers and remain closer to its audience. The differences between these models are explained in B2B vs D2C/B2C Marketing.
Under Armour had greater reach.
Gymshark had greater proximity.
Then the challenger started growing up
Gymshark could not remain an internet start-up forever.
As the brand grew, it opened permanent stores, expanded internationally and invested in broader brand awareness.
It began adopting some of the physical infrastructure associated with traditional sportswear companies.
Meanwhile, Under Armour began trying to recover some of the focus that had made it successful.
Founder Kevin Plank returned as chief executive in 2024 and began reducing product lines while attempting to reposition the company around premium performance categories.
The two businesses began moving towards one another.
Gymshark needed more reach.
Under Armour needed more relevance.
That is what makes the comparison interesting.
What marketers should learn
Gymshark did not succeed because influencer marketing is automatically better than athlete sponsorship.
It succeeded because it understood who influenced its customers.
That distinction matters.
Under Armour asked:
Which famous athlete can represent our brand?
Gymshark asked:
Who does our audience already trust?
Those questions can produce completely different marketing strategies.
The most famous person is not always the most influential.
The largest audience is not always the most engaged.
And the most expensive media is not always the most persuasive.
Gymshark found people who already belonged to the culture it wanted to serve.
Then it helped them spread the brand from inside that culture.
Red Bull used a similar principle by embedding itself inside sporting and youth cultures rather than merely placing advertisements around them, explored in How Red Bull Became a Media Empire.
The bottom line
Under Armour built one of the world’s biggest sportswear brands by convincing ordinary customers to dress like elite athletes.
Gymshark grew by convincing ordinary customers that they were the athletes.
That is the real difference.
Under Armour sold aspiration from a distance.
Gymshark made customers feel part of the story.
That sense of identity and belonging is one of the most valuable things a brand can create, as explained in An Introduction to Branding for Marketers.
And in the age of social media, belonging can be far more powerful than celebrity.
