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As sportswear incumbents like Nike and Adidas falter, smaller players are winning market share; building die-hard networks of fans by aligning with niche fitness communities.
Represent 247 is one such brand. If you were on the streets of Manchester, England on Sunday, you may have seen 600 young people running through the streets wearing T-shirts and track pants emblazoned with the brand’s signature 247 logo. The run starting point? British streetwear brand Represent’s new Manchester flagship, which opened to the public on Saturday, with queues around the block.
The Manchester flagship is Represent’s first UK store. It’s a homecoming for the brand, which launched just outside of Manchester in 2011. Manchester was always the number one target for physical retail, but the brand opened its first flagship in LA in March 2024 while it waited for the right location in its home town, opposite Louis Vuitton and Selfridges. “I guess if you compare [the Manchester location] to Los Angeles, it’s like the Rodeo Drive of Manchester. We waited like three or four years for this spot to come up. Then, we heard Burberry was leaving and we got it over the line,” says Represent co-founder George Heaton.
The Represent 247 space is a crucial part of the new store, and reflects Heaton’s ambitions to scale the label in its own right. Harrods and Selfridges have both held 247 pop-ups in the last two months. But generally, when it’s bought by retailers, they mix 247 bestsellers like the performance tee or the track pants into their buy of Represent, he says. Creating a dedicated space in the Manchester and upcoming London flagship (opening next year) will help people understand it’s its own entity now, he adds. “247 is exploding, with its own ambassadors and people behind it. It deserves its own ecosystem.”
247 sales have risen 60 per cent annually for the last two years, and the brand now accounts for 11 per cent of Represent’s total revenue, which hit £80.8 million in 2023. Having sat within the Represent ecosystem up until now, 247 is aiming to become a label that stands on its own. To reach the next stage, Heaton has tapped sportswear executive Matt Shotton, a Nike and Adidas alum, as head of 247, to scale the brand as a standalone.
“What attracted me to 247 was the ambition to take it where sportswear doesn’t normally go,” says Shotton, who was previously global sportswear category director at Adidas. “Nike and Adidas are big beasts. Here, we can be super agile, super reactive to trends, but we can take it beyond what’s expected of a normal sportswear brand. We can take it where people don’t really expect us to.”
Aligning with niche communities
Much like Represent, which prides itself on a dedicated community that sits within the brand’s closed Whatsapp and Facebook groups (or that DM Heaton and his brother/co-founder Michael on the daily), the 247 ecosystem is built on a tight-knit community. As running clubs become the new club nights, with Gen Zs trading cocktails for gym dates and brunch, it’s reflective of a wider shift towards community-led sportswear. While Grace Beverley’s Tala or Manchester label Adanola address the pilates and brunch customer, 247 is uniquely shooting for the functional fitness, CrossFit and ultramarathon communities.
Heaton founded 247 in 2020 as a small capsule of performance tops and track pants under the Represent brand (sold on Represent’s website), just as consumers shifted spend to performance wear and athleisure. Building his own fitness alongside the brand, Heaton has run ultramarathons, competed in cult fitness tournament Hyrox and appeared on the cover of Men’s Health in the last few years, regularly posting fitness content to his 256,000 followers in head-to-toe 247.
“At Nike and Adidas, I spent a long time trying to really tap into fitness and sports communities authentically. It’s actually really tough when you’re part of a massive global corporation,” Shotton says. “Which is what at Represent we do very naturally and organically, through the lens of George and our athletes, we tap into these communities in an organic way.”
Heaton says 247’s recent growth spurt is down to its alignment with Hyrox, the functional fitness and running competition that’s become a global phenomenon. While mainstream sportswear players continue to tap athletes, and challengers like Alo and On go for celebrities such as the Jenners or Zendaya, 247 has focused on Hyrox champions like Michael Sandbach as brand ambassadors, alongside Heaton.
“Hyrox is so transitional, it’s not just running and it’s not just lifting. You’re getting athletes coming in from CrossFit, you’re getting athletes coming in from bodybuilding, you’re getting runners coming in. So we’re able to cross all those different sports and not have to get pigeonholed into one thing,” says Heaton. “We’ve got some of the best guys in Hyrox and they’re doing it ‘247’. We’re so genuine and authentic to that sport that it really catapults us into all types of markets as well.”
“We’ve done so well to connect to Hyrox, via George’s [participation] and working with Hyrox athletes. If you attend now, you see so much 247 on the floor,” Shotton says. “Also, with ultramarathons, the bigger brands, they’re sort of putting teams in place to really try and tap into communities like that. Whereas we’ve done it organically.”
247 also launched a free fitness app during the pandemic, featuring Heaton’s workouts, alongside ambassadors like Sandbach and famous trainer Jake Dearden. This mirrors the brand’s work culture: Represent HQ, located just outside of Manchester, has a gym and holds optional daily workouts, morning and evening for staff.
“Brands like 247 are in a great position to be agile and create sportswear that resonates with their consumers, speaking to them authentically across various channels, including social media,” says Bosse Myhr, director of menswear, womenswear and childrenswear at Selfridges. “With limited distribution and a focus on individuality for the client, 247 has found a winning formula. This strategic adaptation has allowed 247 to be a successful disruptor in the market, competing with larger sports brands on their own terms.”
To expand the audiences in its focus areas, 247 is investing in the co-creation of capsule collections with record-breaking athletes that have highly engaged fitness followings — for instance, ultra runner William Goodge, who recently ran 240 miles across America with over 300,000 feet of elevation. Goodge, who has 180,000 Instagram followers, co-branded a performance wear collection for Represent that he wears during his races. The collection comes with fresh features like specialist sweat wicking designed for longer races. At the Manchester opening over the weekend, 247 shot content with Sandbach and famous French CrossFit athlete Victor Hoffer, who participated in a workout at Represent HQ the day of the store opening, alongside press, influencers and Represent staff.
While the brand has got the community-building down, Heaton admits he underestimated the level of product development required in performance gear, most notably footwear, which he’s been trying to develop for some time. (Performance footwear is notoriously difficult to develop for smaller labels, without the infrastructure and research and development capabilities of a major innovation lab, as it requires so many components.)
Under Shotton’s leadership, Heaton is confident the brand can level up and expand its offering. Yet-to-be-announced collaborations will also help the label lean into additional categories and learn the ropes, Heaton adds. “Having someone with a lot of experience and understanding the market is key to 247’s growth. We could just plateau what we’re at now and it’d do well. But we want to go to the next level.”
“George has always spoken about aiming for Represent to be the best brand in the world,” says Shotton. “So now we’re aiming for 247 to be the best elevated performance brand in the world. It’s dreaming big, but it’s actually something to work towards.”
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