Gymshark: how a creator network built a 27 billion view hashtag

November 8, 2026

Gymshark is the textbook case of a brand built on creators before "influencer marketing" had a name. We looked at what its social accounts look like today.

Background

Ben Francis started Gymshark in 2012, aged 19. Instead of ads, the company sent free product to bodybuilders on YouTube, "kind of like fanmail", and its first athletes were creators such as Lex Griffin, Matt Ogus and Chris Lavado source. In 2020 General Atlantic bought a minority stake at a valuation over £1bn source. Revenue reached £646m in the year to July 2025 source.

Strategy

• Creators first, brand second. The athletes are the content. Gymshark's own TikTok is largely edits and clips of the creators it works with.
• A long bench. Across its last 117 TikTok and Instagram posts, Gymshark tagged 29 different people. Sam Sulek alone appears 19 times, followed by Annabel Lucinda, Patty, Carlos Belcast and Sawyer Klatt.
• Steady output. 65 TikToks in the last 90 days, and about seven Instagram posts a week.

What stands out

The top three TikToks in our sample were all creator edits: Carlos Belcast's "stronger than yesterday" with 39.0M views, a Chris Bumstead "lesson of the day" with 10.2M, and a lifting edit tagging Sam Sulek and others with 4.4M. None is a product shot.

The engagement rate is the striking number. A median of 10.8% (likes, comments and shares over views) is in the top three of the ten brands we compared, and saves run at 0.71% of views, which suggests people keep these clips as motivation.

Results

Lessons

1. Pick creators early. Gymshark backed gym creators while they were small. That is cheaper and builds loyalty you cannot buy later.
2. Let the creators be the feed. The brand account works as a highlight reel of its athletes, so it never runs out of content.
3. Go deep with a few. One creator in 19 posts is a relationship, not a sponsorship.
4. Measure the hashtag, not just the account. 2.25M videos under #gymshark were mostly made by other people. That is the real reach.

How we pulled the numbers

About 9 credits of ScrapeIO calls, the same ones any script or AI agent can make:

curl "https://scrapeio.com/v1/tiktok/profile?handle=gymshark" -H "x-api-key: $SCRAPEIO_API_KEY"
curl "https://scrapeio.com/v3/tiktok/profile/videos?handle=gymshark" -H "x-api-key: $SCRAPEIO_API_KEY"   # 3 pages
curl "https://scrapeio.com/v2/instagram/user/posts?handle=gymshark" -H "x-api-key: $SCRAPEIO_API_KEY"  # 2 pages
curl "https://scrapeio.com/v1/tiktok/search/hashtag?hashtag=gymshark" -H "x-api-key: $SCRAPEIO_API_KEY"

Engagement rate is (likes + comments + shares) / views for each video, and we report the median so one viral post does not skew it. To run the same audit on any brand from Claude Code, Cursor or Codex, install the skills with npx skills add xhoantran/scrapeio-agent and ask for a competitor social audit.

Sources

Social numbers pulled through the ScrapeIO API on 8 November 2026 (UTC); they change daily. Everything else is from the sources below. This is an independent analysis of public data, not affiliated with or endorsed by the brand.

• https://www.gymshark.com/blog/article/the-official-gymshark-story
• https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/08/gymshark-hits-1bn-valuation-after-securing-major-investor/
• https://fashionunited.com/news/business/gymshark-reports-13th-consecutive-year-of-sales-growth-in-fy25/2026031271138