sync 2025 | What Gymshark’s former CEO wants every retail leader to know

What does it really take to turn a passion-fuelled idea into one of the UK’s most recognisable brands? At sync, attendees got a behind-the-scenes look at that transformation from none other than Steve Hewitt, the former CEO of Gymshark who helped steer the business from a £5M in turnover to an extraordinary £500M global enterprise. 

In a keynote packed with candour, clarity, and commercial insight, Steve walked us through the brand’s evolution, from early stage hustle to strategic scale. Whether you’re a scale up founder or an eCommerce leader navigating complex growth, his session was a blueprint for how vision, values, and relentless focus can truly fuel next-level growth.

Building the North Star: Strategy with discipling and purpose

At the heart of Gymshark’s scale-up success was a crystal clear North Star which was a three year roadmap: “One year isn’t enough in a product led-business when your product team is already a year ahead,” Steve shared, “And five years? That’s too far, governments change every four.”

So Gymshark worked in a 36 month time frame, setting 12 quarterly milestones ,even acting like a public company in discipline, even though they remained privately owned. Their growth from £5M to £500M was anchored in just four core buckets with purpose as the first: “Why do you exist?” For Gymshark, it was to unite the conditioning community. From this purpose it’s important to be laser focused on your audience as this is where most brands fall off when they try to be everything to everyone, they lose the relatability. 

When you get those two things together, your purpose and your audience, you can build a really strong brand positioning.

“If you don’t get your values set right you create a bit of a monster of egos… and ego kills businesses”

For Steve Hewitt, culture wasn’t a byproduct of growth, it was an intentional build from day one. Values were more than just slogans on a wall, they shaped how the brand behaved, how leaders led, and how employees showed up every day. “You can’t be late,” Steve said bluntly as he shared their number 1 rule, “it shows you don’t respect anyone else’s time.” Consistency was key. 

Gymshark built an environment that people wanted to be part of and never wanted to leave. Their five values included: do the right thing, be human, the phrase ‘put family first’ only works when you’re successful but when you’re not it ultimately works against you, be caring, and find the Gymshark way. These weren’t just nice-to-haves, they were cultural guardrails. When speaking about upholding values and standards  Steve admitted: “They’re really hard to action, and and really difficult to be consistent, but you have to be if you want to build a ridiculous culture and environment.”

Simple models, strong margins

Sustainable growth wasn’t just about big ideas for Steve, it revolved around “the maths had to work.” From the start, Gymshark chose to build internally, not because they were the best at it, but because it allowed them to control their own destiny. Today he acknowledges there are external partners who could outperform in certain areas, but only if their value set is aligned. “The first question you should ask an agency or someone who is not in your infrastructure should be around their values set… if they can’t answer it, they’re the wrong partner for you,” he said. True partners show up when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy. 

Gymshark’s three year focus was clear: build a community through storytelling, geo-focus on the UK and US, and stay 100% eCommerce. “Keep the business model as simple as possible for as long as possible,” Steve advised. His mantra? Start less, finish more. Prioritise what’s non-negotiable, and build from there, it’s not flashy but it’s what makes the numbers work.

Flying in formation

“If you ever see Canada Geese fly in the sky, it doesn’t matter how old or young you are, you’ll always go, ‘Wow, look at that, it’s incredible.’” Steve explained. “They are the only set of birds to fly like that and get to their destination far quicker and more efficiently than any other set of birds.” Challenging the audience, he asked: “In your own business, when you think about your own team, are you in formation?”  You need a lead bird, whether that be the founder, CEO or senior leadership team. “It has to go right through your organisation. Occasionally, you’ll get birds flying up and down. That's fine. You might get birds flying in the opposite direction… Normally your best performers, don’t let high performers behave with ego. You will cause chaos. You will ruin your business.” 

Steve’s message was clear: alignment beats individual brilliance, and culture must come before performance.

The blueprint for building the right environment 

“At Gymshark, we had one policy, our talent policy,” Steve said. “When we’d interview people, we’d start with a value set first. Not about how much experience you had… we’re going to work out how you’re built as a person first.” From there, he laid out five key ingredients for building the right environment:

1. Be consistent,  which means being disciplined. “If you’re looking for perfection, perfection doesn’t exist.”

2. Employ people with a superpower, the combination of passion and skill.

3. Don’t forget internal comms, “Bad internal comms get remembered forever.”

4. ‘Shy bairns get nowt’, be brave enough to ask.

5. No stairwell conversations, feedback culture needs to be open and honest.

Above all, Steve closed with a simple principle: trust over performance. When you create the right environment, everything else: culture, clarity, community, and commercial growth is far more likely to follow.

Watch Steve Hewitt’s keynote from Sync 2025 on demand.