Irish “Athleisure” Brand Achieves Seamless Six-Figure Sales

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Let us talk today about an Irish athletic leisure brand. And you may have noticed that athleisure, which is a word that I don't think was really in our popular vocabulary until a few years ago, if not even more recent. Anyway, you may have noticed that athleisure is all the rage these days. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, athleisure is considered business casual, which probably tells you a lot about fashion these days, as well as life in Portlandia. It's not just on the US West Coast, of course, athleisure is taken off all over the place.

And so the three guys in this story grow their new brand to a high end six figure hustle in just 12 months. Where do they get the idea? How do they make it happen? And what happens along the way? All of that is coming up in this story.

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Dear Matt McSweeney and co-founders Niall Horgan and Carl Swain are the lads behind a successful Irish athletic and leisure brand, Jim Plus Coffee. This caffeinated triumph for it launched in January 2017 and earned a hearty six figure revenue in their first year.

They've even gone beyond that since then. GNC, as they're known, features a variety of products, including hoodies, T-shirts, tanks, leggings, hats, and accessories. Everything you could say, athleisure. What started as a side hustle has now grown to a major operation. So how do they do it?

Well, when Dear Matt started Jim Plus Coffee, he was working as a strategy director in an advertising agency. During one of his regular coffee meetups with mates Niall and Carl, they got to talking about the growing lifestyle shift in Ireland. They realized not everybody wanted to hang out in pubs all the time, drinking alcohol. More and more people were looking for active things to do. Corner cafes were quickly becoming the place to meet and socialize.

Meanwhile, outdoor workouts and trail running throughout Ireland's bucolic backdrop were in vogue. Dear Matt had spent time in both Australia and the US, where this active lifestyle was more prominent. He felt there was an opportunity to promote an Irish brand. And he also saw a rise in athletic clothing. People everywhere were wearing hoodies and yoga pants, even to work.

Athleisure wear could be a way to connect with an active audience and encourage the lifestyle. So the trio set out to boldly tell their target audience exactly who they were with that distinct name, Jim Plus Coffee. If you're interested in being active, going to the gym, throwing out a hoodie, and then meeting friends for coffee afterwards, this brand is for you. And Dear Matt and company went all in. Here's how they put it.

They said, "As soon as we'd made the call to order some hoodies, which remains our flagship product, we thought there was no going back. Either that, or we'd have a lifetime supply of hoodies." They used Alibaba to handle manufacturing, Fiverr to create a logo, and Shopify to set up their payment platform. Storage and distribution are managed by a local partner that provides an all-in-one storage pick and pack service. Every product is designed in Ireland and then manufactured in China, Singapore, or Indonesia. They also use an independent quality control team.

As far as getting the word out, community is at the heart of what Jim Plus Coffee offers. Dear Matt said authenticity is crucial to connecting with their customers. They can't tell people they're the most innovative technical brand in the world because people would view it as fake. Jim Plus Coffee's approach is to celebrate their community, real people doing incredible things. For example, when they get tagged in a nice Instagram photo, they'll message that person and then write a blog post about them on their site.

If that post then gets a lot of views, they'll make a video about that person on their other social channels. The idea started around a campaign called Pick of the Week, where Jim Plus Coffee highlighted all the amazing people tagging them in pictures doing awesome activities. They also tried to create experiences to complement their brand. For example, while working full-time jobs, the three co-founders ran a 10-week outdoor workout event, aptly named the Summer Stretch Series. Generating pre-launch buzz was also important.

They spent the months leading up to launch spreading the word within their network. The idea was to make people feel special. They let their friends know something big was happening and that they were on the inside track to be part of it. One helpful strategy was setting up a simple pre-launch landing page with a trackable referral link. The more referrals a person got signed up, the more perks that person received at launch.

And here's a pro tip. Dearman said, don't be shy about the explicit ask. Go and tell people what you want them to do. Encourage them directly to share, give them the links, make it easy. GNC went from idea to launch in just under six months.

They wanted to sprint, not crawl. They built their audience organically and didn't rely on media coverage. In year one, 2017, they achieved healthy six-figure revenue. They grew that figure by 400% in 2018 and are on track to grow even further in 2019. Dearman has since stepped away from his job at the ad agency and gone full-time.

And the team is now focused on becoming a recognized global brand and furthering their mission to make life richer. Their customer base has grown substantially throughout Europe and the U.S. On the horizon are new product launches, their first international store, and creating even more experiences for their customers. [Music]

So as lifestyles change, both worldwide and wherever you live, people are looking for different experiences, not just experiences, but also products to reflect that change, which is why this story is really taken off. And I was thinking about it in like, I hang out in bars sometimes, but I'm just as likely, probably actually more likely to go for a run or have coffee instead of making the pub my evening entertainment.

By the way, I say this with no judgment. If you're into going to the pub every night, that's cool. The point is a lot of people have made a shift, especially in a country like Ireland, which has this very traditional pub culture. Now it's accommodating a different kind of culture as well. So maybe the lesson is, if you travel, if you spend a lot of time out and about around the world or even around a large country like the United States, notice what other places are doing.

Notice what people in other places are doing and then consider if it might apply at some point to your country or a hometown, state, province, et cetera. Whenever a shift happens someplace, it tends to eventually gravitate elsewhere. And that's kind of the nature of the globalized, hyper-connected world that we live in. So I love the idea of gym plus coffee, and it also sounds like they know what they're doing when it comes to execution, which of course is even more valuable than the idea itself. So good for them.

I'm gonna go check out their products. Maybe you want to do so as well. We will link that up on the show notes page, as well as any other resource I mentioned. I think we talked about Shopify, Alibaba, Fiverr, et cetera. All that will be at sidehustleschool.com/910.

Episode 910, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Thanks so much, my friends. I'll be back again tomorrow with the weekly recap. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau, for Side Hustle School. [Music]