Gym+Coffee co-founder Diarmuid McSweeney talks to ThinkBusiness about brand building, retailing and startup life.
What is Gym+Coffee?
Gym+Coffee is a new Irish clothing and lifestyle brand. We launched in January 2017, and we’re focused on the growing “athleisure” market with a range of hoodies, t-shirts, tanks, leggings, hats, and accessories.
I guess Gym+Coffee was born out of two main things. There’s a growing lifestyle shift in Ireland. People just don’t want to hang out in pubs and bars as much, and are looking for active things to do at the weekends. And, coffee shops are becoming the new places to meet and socialise.
“We have to focus on our priorities.”
How are you different than other clothing companies?
I guess we didn’t want to just be a clothing company, we didn’t just want to be activeclothing.com. For us, it was about growing a brand to encourage this active lifestyle, so we’ve built our brand around the idea to ‘Make life richer’ and are focusing on developing a community around this.
I mean don’t get us wrong, we sell great clothing, so we’re not trying to hide from that, but we’re not focused on trying to pretend we’re Nike and that our clothing has been technically invented to improve your performance.
“The big surprise is how emotionally attached you get to everything.”
Where did the name come from?
[Laughs], the name’s a bit weird and people ask us about it. The simple reason is that we wanted to tell our target audience precisely who they are. If you are interested in being active, going to the gym, throwing on a hoodie and going meeting friends for coffee after then you hopefully should be involved in our brand and clothing.
“It does take a great deal of self-discipline to run a startup.”
What’s the dream? Who do you compare yourself to?
We are big dreamers. For
