What is Gym + Coffee?
Gym + Coffee may be a new Irish clothing and lifestyle brand. Launched in January 2017, we target the growing ‘athleisure’ market with a variety of hoodies, t-shirts, tank tops, leggings, hats and accessories.
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I think Gym + Coffee was born from two main things. there’s a growing lifestyle change in Ireland. People just don’t need to hang around pubs and bars as much and are looking for active activities on weekends. And cafes are getting new places for meeting and socializing.
- We have to focus on our priorities.”
How are you different from other clothing companies?
I think we didn’t want to just be a clothing company, we didn’t want to only be activeclothing.com. For us, it had been about growing the brand to support this active lifestyle, so we built our brand round the idea of ”Making Life Richer” and focus on developing a community around this.
Don’t get us wrong, we sell great clothes, so we do not try to hide from that, but we do not focus on trying to pretend that we’re Nike and that our clothes were technically invented to improve your performance.
- “The big surprise is how emotionally attached you’re to everything.
Where did the name come from?
[laughs] the name is quite weird and people ask us about it. the straightforward reason is that we wanted to tell our target audience exactly who they are. If you’re curious about being active, visiting the gym, throwing on a hoodie then meeting your friends for coffee, hopefully you ought to engage with our brand and apparel.
- Running a startup requires plenty of self-discipline.”
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what is the dream Who are you comparing yourself to?
We are big dreamers. For us, it’s about becoming a brand that instantly connects with people that want to do more. So if we will continue to encourage people to make life more productive, it’ll be a dream come true for us.
A brand we actually admire is American brand Chubbies and we’ve met them a few times, about five years ago they started making shorts popular again within the US. They’ve built an excellent community all around that “Friday 5pm” feel and that “weekend feel”. We also really admire everything that ‘All Birds’ do. Irish brands we love and admire include Fulfill, Spotlight and Glofox.
- “Instagram has been fantastic for us in creating awareness and building community
What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned since starting your own business?
Starting a business forced us to tackle tasks that took us far outside our experience and luxury zone. a day we deal with so many topics such as accounting, marketing, logistics, product design and customer experience to call a few. We’ve certainly taken the approach of just saying yes to opportunities and seeing where they take us, but an enormous lesson recently as the business has grown is when to say no. It is becoming clear that we cannot do business in all the directions that are offered. we’d like to focus on our priorities.
Another big lesson we’ve learned recently is that the importance of timing and planning. Being in early startup mode, we are constantly reacting and changing to the foremost pressing needs of the business. However, in many cases it’s clear that planning ahead is everything, especially when it involves product design and supply chain. for instance , rushing both of those stages at one point last year meant we paid for a topper item at source to get to market. Although sales were subsequently extremely positive, margins were hit and there was no recovery.
The big surprise really was how emotionally attached you are to everything. Strangely, everything is high and everything is low. We feel the heart beat of the business far more than anything we’ve worked on before. i assume maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s incredible how helpful people are and how willing people are to go out of their way.
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