Healthy meal-prep service Gymology sets sights on becoming 'one-stop shop' lifestyle brand as it enters activewear market

Gymology was set up by couple Jon Worsnop and Katie Booth - an ex-professional footballer and ex-triathlete, respectively

Bookmark
Share
Comments

Retail & Consumer

Isabel FinchBusiness Reporter

12:26, 13 MAR 2020
Updated18:42, 13 MAR 2020

Gymology supplies a number of professional football clubs and celebrities

The co-founder of healthy meal-prep service has said the company is setting on sights on becoming a “one-stop shop” fitness lifestyle brand.

Gymology, which began trading in September 2018, was set up by couple Jon Worsnop and Katie Booth - an ex-professional footballer and ex-triathlete, respectively - and supplies a number of professional football clubs and celebrities.

Now the company has launched into the activewear market, with the brand selling womenswear from its website, while a menswear collection is currently in the works.

Ms Booth told BusinessLive : “I’ve always been interested in gymwear and I was trying on all the brands and thinking ‘if they had this or that it would be the perfect legging’.

“I think, especially for women, you want leggings to hold you in, you want them to stay up while you’re working out, I’m forever pulling my leggings up and it’s a nightmare, so there’s a big thick waistband that holds your stomach and it has rubber strips around the waistband so it holds in place.

“Even if you’ve not got the best bum in the world, it makes it look like you’ve got a round peachy bum.”

She continued: “A lot of people who are into healthy eating like leisurewear, they wear it around the house, I wear it to the supermarket, and I just created what I thought was the perfect fit which, I’m not going to lie, it’s taken a few years for it to get absolutely correct.

“We just wanted a one-stop shop for everything, so Gymology is where you get your food from, get clothing from, get your PT advice, so to add the activewear, it makes sense because that’s the same kind of market.”

Ms Booth said they are “in talks with different people” about having online PTs on its platform, as well as nutritional advice, gym videos and different workouts excercises.

“A healthy lifestyle brand is what we want Gymology ultimately to be, and that is what we’re working on literally day in day out, to just keep expanding.”

With Gymology’s Instragram page boasting 27,600 followers, Ms Booth said the social media site is the main platform it uses, working closely with celebrities and fitness influencers.

“You name it every celebrity has tried our food. At the moment we’ve got Olly Murs currently having the meals, a few fitness influencers and social media stars.

“We’ve done transformations with Paddy McGuiness in the past and on the Manchester United team we’ve currently got Harry Maguire and a few others having the meals, so we work with anyone.”

“We have kept the activewear Instagram separate and that is because have a lot of male following on the food one and I didn’t want to be plastering womens leggings over,” she added.

In the first year of trading in 2019, Gymology turned over £601,000 and based on current forecasts, it said it is on track to more than double that return in 2020, with turnover set to reach £1.4m.

In February, the company said it delivered 100,000 meals in six month. It now delivers 20,000 meals per month all over the ��Ƶ and Europe.

It also added a juice cleanse to its offering, which Booth said was popular in January, as well as a kids range of meals.

“[European delivery] is something we added at a later date once we made sure it was tried and tested and worked in the ��Ƶ, so we did expand to Europe and we do get quite a few clients, which surprises me because it is a different country,” said Booth.

Gymology moved to a 5,000sq ft unit in Irlam before Christmas and, with that, took on a new executive chef - ex-Manchester United chef Victoria Dale - which Booth said “really pushed the business to the next level regarding the meals, the taste and the sustainability”.

Gymology has also become the official meal partner for GB Taekwondo in the run up to this summer’s Tokyo Olympics.

“We basically feed a few of them that are ready to go to the Olympics, so they’re busy training all the time and they just want food to be delivered to their doorstep.

“Because it is quite weight orientated, their weight has to hit certain compositions, for them they have the ‘build’ and then swap to the ‘burn’ category, which suits them down to the ground.”

She added: “Anyone within GB Taikwondo has access to the meals, but at them moment the main focus is on the athletes, especially Jade Jones because if she gets the gold medal, she’ll be the first female to get it.”

Story Saved

You can find this story in My Bookmarks.Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right.