Castore boss: How I convinced Andy Murray to back my sportswear brand
The co-founder of sports apparel brand Castore has opened up about how he and his brother managed to convince Sir Andy Murray to invest in their company.
Tom and Phil Beahon set up their business in 2016 and quickly set about attempting to get a high-profile backer to help get the brand off the ground.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of City AM‘s Boardroom Uncovered podcast, Tom Beahon – who shares CEO duties with his brother – reveals the process of wooing the two-time Wimbledon champion was not as easy as it might have looked.
Murray holds a stake in the Manchester-headquartered company alongside the likes of billionaire brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa, New Look founder Tom Singh and PureGym co-founders Peter Roberts and Brian Scurrah.
Other notable shareholders also include The Gym Group founder John Treharne, Eric Fellner, the co-chairman of Working Title Films and Arnaud Massenet, the co-founder of Net-a-Porter.
Andy Murray deal was ‘entrepreneurial hustle’
When asked how they managed to pull the deal off, Beahon said: “With difficulty – is the short answer.
“The partnership with Andy, I think, was probably as close to perfect an example that you could get of entrepreneurial hustle.
“I am a big believer in the maxim of the harder you work in life, the luckier you get. Working with Andy exemplifies that.
“We’d created some product, which sounds really easy, but actually it’s quite hard to do. We built a website which sounds really easy and it’s quite hard to do.
“We’d convinced some people to part with their hard earned cash in return for our product, which is when you’re starting out is this big, seminal moment and we started to gain some traction.
“We were still a small business, but growing quite nicely. We were profitable.
“Probably because of our Merseyside upbringing, we’ve both always had this mindset of, you need to generate profit in order to be a real business.”
Free Castore gear works a charm
The Castore co-chief added: “We were growing nice and steadily, but we’d always had this ambition right from the beginning of wanting to be a global brand.
“So being very proud to be British but wanting to be global, which most people thought was crazy and I understand why they did. But to us at least it made complete sense.
“When you have that mindset, it actually became very straightforward to reverse engineer, okay, how do we become global?
“We need to have globally recognised athletes wearing our product on a global stage. So we thought about athletes that would fit our brand DNA.
“Andy embodies all of those characteristics perfectly, and we essentially gifted product to everyone around him. So his coach, his physio, his personal trainer, his psychologist, all these guys and girls.
“So Andy would just keep seeing the brand. Not particularly sophisticated, but, you know, it worked.
“When we got introduced to him – it sounds really cliched, but it’s completely true – there was just an instinct chemistry.
“I can’t speak for Andy, but very much I got the sense that he liked the fact we were young, British and had these big ambitions.
“And once you’ve got that chemistry and natural affinity, the rest of it kind of flows quite naturally from there.”
Sports apparel brand keeps on growing
In November last year, Castore was named as the UK’s fastest growing retailer.
The company topped the list from Retail Index which analyses revenue growth over a two-year period.
Based on the figures used for the ranking, Castore’s sales grew seven-fold from 2021 to the £115m it reported in the year to 31 January, 2023.
A month earlier, City AM reported that the business had slumped to a loss despite its sales jumping by £75m.
The company had posted a pre-tax loss of £28.8m for the year to 4 February, 2024, after the brand achieved a pre-tax profit of £14.6m in the prior 12 months.
However, the results also showed its turnover surged from £115m to £190.3m over the same period.
Castore’s accounts show that it incurred exceptional costs of more than £24.4m in the year which pushed it into the red.
However, even before taking into account those extra costs, the firm’s operating profit was slashed in the year from £16.5m to £399,148.
In March, City AM exclusively reported that England’s rugby teams will replace Umbro with Castore after this year’s Six Nations.
The new kit deal is due to start in May and follows months of talks between the Rugby Football Union and Castore, which was founded by former City workers.