Ben Francis is a university dropout and former Pizza Hut delivery driver who founded Gymshark.
He founded the sportswear label in 2012 and has turned it into a billion dollar company.
The 30-year-old has moved up seven places to be ranked 184th on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.
A decade ago, Ben Francis dropped out of college and was working as a Pizza Hut delivery driver. He is now worth £900 million, or $1.1 billion, taking him up seven places to No. 184 on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.
After dropping out of Aston University in Birmingham, England, Francis founded the sportswear company Gymshark.
The 30-year-old has since grown the business into a billion-dollar company, while his own wealth has more than tripled that of singer Ed Sheeran.
Writing for The Sunday Times in 2022, Francis noted some of Gymshark’s key milestones, including achieving “unicorn” status in 2020, which occurs when a company generates at least $1 billion in revenue. Appraises, “Without any prior funding.”
The company has also expanded into the US, where it now has more than 100 employees in its Denver office, he said.
Gymshark was his seventh attempt at setting up a successful business, he wrote in The Sunday Times: “I just wanted a website that would transact.”
So when Gymshark made its first profit of just £2, Francis said it felt like “winning the lottery.”
He and his co-founder, university friend Lewis Morgan, used whatever they had to pay for a stand at the BodyPower Expo in 2013.
At the time the pair were trading over £300 a day, Francis wrote. But after the expo, Gymshark was suddenly selling £30,000 in 30 minutes and he realized this could be something big.
The brand now has over six million followers on Instagram.
Francis previously shared her morning routine with Insider, which includes getting up before 6 a.m. and “doing the same things every day.”
The Gymshark co-founder also received an MBE, a British royal honour, earlier this year for his services to business.
Francis did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, which was made outside normal working hours.
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