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Gymshark founder who launched £1.25bn empire in parents’ garage awarded MBE | Business

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The 30-year-old founder of the exercise clothing brand Gymshark has been awarded an MBE in the new year honours list, – just one of a slew of businesspeople to be recognised for their services to commerce and the economy.

Ben Francis, who began his £1.25bn empire sewing his own gym clothes in his parents’ garage in Bromsgrove, near Birmingham, in 2012, is the youngest of those to be honoured for their services to business.

He owns 70% of Gymshark, which was valued at £1.25bn by the Sunday Times earlier this year, giving him an estimated fortune of about £875m – making him the 191th richest person in the UK and the third richest person aged 30 or under.

Francis dropped out of Aston University, where he was studying international business and management, to focus on Gymshark – his third business venture.

“As a kid I was obsessed with football, but as I realised I’d never be good enough to make a living from football, that obsession moved to computer-based projects,” he said.

“I was never great at school (something I later learned was more down to application rather than anything else), until at the age of 17 I took an IT class. This IT class was different to anything else I’d done before because it was all about learning and applying real skills – not just writing about them.”

At around the same time Francis joined a gym and noticed that many of the other bodybuilders had adapted their own gym clothes as none available were quite the right fit.

He asked his grandmother, a curtain-maker, to teach him how to sew, before investing in a machine to create his clothes.

Gymshark secured investment from the US private equity firm General Atlantic in 2020, raising the brand’s value to £1bn and attaining the prized status of being a “unicorn” startup.

Other business people also recognised in the honours list included Alison Rose, the chief executive of NatWest and the first woman to run one Britain’s biggest high street, who has has been given a damehood. Anita Frew, the chair of Rolls-Royce and one of only 18 women leading boards at Britain’s biggest listed companies, also got the top honour.

Ivan Menezes, the boss of the drinks business Diageo, was knighted for services to business and equality, while Johnnie Boden, the Eton-educated former stockbroker who founded clothing company Boden, was awarded a CBE.

Rose, who joined the bank 30 years ago as a graduate and climbed the ranks to take on the top job in November 2019, said: “It is a tremendous privilege to receive a damehood in His Majesty’s new year honours list and I am immensely proud to lead an organisation that plays such a positive role in the lives of people and families across the UK.”

Liz and Charles Ritchie, the parents of a young man who killed himself after becoming addicted to gambling and launched a campaign to tackle problem gambling, were awarded MBEs for services to charity. Gillian Wilmot was also awarded an MBE for services to the prevention of problem gambling.

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