Gymshark to Open First U.S. Flagship in NoHo on Saturday

Gymshark has flexed its considerable muscle for its first U.S. flagship.

On Saturday, the U.K.-based activewear brand will open the doors to a four-level, 13,000-square-foot store at 11 Bond Street. The store, which is near Kith, On and several other popular brands, is located in the former Showfields space, a 1913-era brick building in the heart of NoHo. It includes two floors of men’s and women’s merchandise as well as flexible upper levels for workout studios and community gathering spaces.

Gymshark, which was founded in Birmingham, England, in 2012, has been testing the waters in the U.S. for nearly a decade, and this country represents nearly half of its overall sales, which exceeded $800 million last year. The company has been operating pop-ups in New York, opened a U.S. office on Greene Street last year and hosted a Lift: NY event that attracted more than 7,500 people to Pier 36 in 2024.

But now’s the time to set down permanent roots that speak to its heritage as a gym-based brand from England that also embraces its new home city. Case in point: the main entrance flies both the U.K. and U.S. flags, but the interior of the store is distinctly New York. The color scheme throughout is Statue of Liberty green, there’s a Financial District-style ticker with the latest news and offers, cash registers are inspired by subway cars, and there are bodega-like stations for exclusive merchandise. The original brick walls were retained on the selling floors and in the stairwells.

Gymshark actually signed the lease for the location about a year ago and has been working since then to ensure it represents the full expression of the brand, said Hannah Mercer, the company’s global general merchandise manager of wholesale, retail and franchise during a walkthrough with WWD.

While the work was being done, the company opened a smaller store in the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, N.Y., in October, and its performance has exceeded projections. “It’s the only place that you can buy Gymshark so people travel from all over, and it’s a small store,” Mercer said. “It’s only 2,500 square-foot trading — this is 13,000 square feet. This will have the best expression of Gymshark within the heart of New York, so we’re expecting huge traffic coming into this space.”

The first floor is dedicated to womenswear, a growing category that now accounts for nearly half of company sales. “When we first started Gymshark, it was very male dominated,” Mercer said. “So we really tried to equalize that to make sure that we stand for something for her.”

The department features a sizable bra bar that showcases all the different styles and colors, as well as a big presentation of its popular Vital leggings and shorts. Because the collection is centered around “contouring” and fit, she said, Gymshark has created rotating mannequins to ensure customers can see how each style looks on the body.

“We’re an inclusive brand with a lot of different sizing,” she said. “So we’re making sure this feels like a destination for these hero products.”

The bodega display on this floor offers exclusive New York City-themed Ts, bags, water bottles and other product.

The main floor also features racks that can raised and lowered. Mercer said the idea is that when new product is being introduced, it can be displayed on these racks, which will be raised to ceiling height where it can be seen but not shopped. Once it’s ready to be introduced, the racks are brought down. “It’s teasing the consumer,” Mercer explained, adding that the Gymshark London flagship on Regent Street has a similar system.

Other fixtures have “storytelling messages” attached to them to explain the attributes of each product and there are also digital screens.

Throughout the store, there are mannequins of some of Gymshark’s key ambassadors including Chris Bumstead, Bronx native Analis Cruz, Carlos Belcast and others. The mannequins are actual 3D representations of the athletes and there are narratives underneath outlining their achievements.

The second floor houses menswear. Upon exiting the stairwell, backlit weight plates are evident on the rear of the six generously sized fitting rooms that offer panels with different lighting options for customers.

In terms of merchandise, compression tops — the origin of the brand — are front and center along with the Olde English collection of more-lifestyle product. The latest offering from Onyx, a key compression franchise, will be launching at this store, Mercer said.

“We’ve done hype drops for Onyx through the seasons,” she said. “The last one at Regent Street had queues from four in the morning.”

There are areas for conditioning products and the Power T-shirts where the Gymshark name is printed across the shoulders on the back to accentuate the size and strength of the lifters. “This is our top seller in all of our spaces,” Mercer said.

Sticking to the theme, the handles to the restrooms on this floor are a lifting bar and the overall feel of the floor is industrial.

The third floor will feature a gallery and lockers for customers to store their belongings when they work out. There’s also a personal shopping area.

But the main part of the floor is a flexible space where Gymshark can host conditioning, mobility, stretching or meditation classes and other community-oriented events.

“We do 40 classes a week in London,” Mercer said.

The floor can also be used for special product drops or any other special events.

The fourth floor is also flexible and will be used as “a green room for our athletes,” Mercer said. “It could be a workout floor but there’s a kitchen area.” It also features a large outdoor patio with a green replica of a shipping container that can be used as a backdrop for photos during events.

Gymshark continues to be primarily a direct-to-consumer brand but the New York flagship marks its fifth brick-and-mortar location. The others are located in the U.K. and Amsterdam. There are also stores in the Middle East, which are operated through a franchise partner, she said. A unit in Kuwait is slated to open in March.

This October, Dick’s Sporting Goods launched the brand exclusively in its House of Sport stores, marking Gymshark’s first wholesale partnership. Mercer said that since launching, the brand is already the second most popular one at the stores in which it is offered. As a result, the plan is to continue to expand the number of doors this spring.

Mercer, who joined Gymshark 18 months ago after working for Adidas and Nike, said the plan is to continue to open stores in the States going forward. “We’re proactively looking at spaces in the U.S.,” she said. That includes the most-productive malls as well as “high street” locations in Texas, Miami, Los Angeles and other key cities on the East and West Coasts. “We’re agile. If we see an opportunity, we’ll take it.”

Although most of the new stores wouldn’t be as large as Bond Street, they’ll have the same aesthetic. “Boring retail is dead,” Mercer said. “Our stores have to be a place where the community wants to come and hang out.”

Gymshark was founded by Ben Francis in 2012, and although he’s not a professional bodybuilder, he was an enthusiast and created the brand at 19 in his parents’ garage to design apparel that accentuated his gym-toned body.

Although the brand has amassed a large following, it has also experienced some growing pains. While sales rose 9 percent in fiscal 2024, pre-tax profits dipped to 11.8 million pounds from 13 million pounds the prior year as the company continued to invest in store expansion.

Mercer said that as Gymshark expands, it will remain focused on its mission as a gym-based brand. “If you look across the high street, you see a lot of brands don’t stand for anything anymore,” she said. “They go away from the root cause of what their point of difference was. The good thing about Gymshark is, yes, we do things for your rest day, but we’ll always stick to the core of the brand.”