Grace Beverley: Paving The Way for A More Sustainable Fitness Industry
Female Founder Feature
At the ripe age of twenty-four, Grace Beverley is the CEO of three self-founded fitness companies: B_ND, a premium gym equipment company that primarily sells vegan resistance bands, Shreddy, a fitness app that is designed to present the perfect workout and meal plans based on preferences and goals, and TALA, a sustainable activewear and casual wear company. In 2020, she topped the Forbes Europe 30 under 30 list for her company, TALA, in the retail and e-commerce category.
As an Oxford music graduate, she possesses a unique resume, which includes work experience at the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as working for a year for IBM. As a social influencer, she maintains her widely popular Youtube channel, where she documented her life through university and her fitness and business journey, and a social media presence of over a million followers. In 2017, during her second year in Oxford, Beverley founded her first business, resistance band and fitness equipment company B_ND, and followed this up by founding two other companies, gym wear company Tala and fitness app Shreddy, in 2019.
The gym wear market in the UK is set to be worth more than £6.7bn over the next five years, so it’s no surprise that many large brands are competing for a facet of this attention. However, Beverley has created a niche in this particularly crowded market: ethical and sustainable gym equipment and gym wear. By using the money she garnered through selling her own workout plans and social media brand partnerships, she started B_ND. Beverley was motivated to start her company when she realized that she was either using either really expensive quality bands or cheap plastic bands, so she looked into manufacturing to see how “she could produce and affordable, yet also ethical product,” she told Radio 1 Newsbeat. Her company, B_ND, focused on bringing vegan-friendly resistance bands and barbell pads products to customers. In November 2019, she won Natwest’s young entrepreneur of the year award for her work on paving the way to a more sustainable fashion industry.
In May of 2019, she also launched her very own activewear brand: TALA, where items that included sports tops and leggings are made of 92% reusable materials, such as plastic bottles. TALA, like her previous companies, prioritizes sustainability first and foremost, competing usually with “fast fashion labels,” such as rivals Gymshark and Nike, in terms of style and price. Making clothes 92% recycled, and not 100% recycled, allowed TALA’s price point to be more reachable for their young customer base. Beverley feels that one of her biggest achievements is "matching those bigger fast fashion brands by making prices under £35-40.” A unique aspect of her brand is that it has dictated that women of all sizes should feel comfortable in gym clothes, catering for sizes 4-20, and has featured women of all sizes and races in their campaigns, which has been a hot topic for many big fashionwear companies, such as Nike, for years.
Recently, TALA has expanded even more into loungewear and has launched a pyjama set and scrunchie campaign with 100% recycled materials. Additionally, the scrunchies were made from “pyjama fabric cut-offs,” minimizing waste. I was impressed by the neutral color tones of the pyjama sets, ranging from blush, sage, and cream, and which could easily be styled up, depending on the wearer, for a day of wearing out, as well.
Overall, TALA's packaging is fully recyclable, including its tags, which are filled with seasonal seeds which can be planted in soil later on. Their factories are located in Portugal, Morocco, Turkey, and China, and each factory undergoes regular external audits to make sure they have a safe working environment and ethical labor conditions, highlighting TALA's and Beverley’s efforts to improve the ethics of fashion production.
I first found out about Grace through her YouTube channel a little over two years ago when she was just about to finish her last year at Oxford. I’ve learned a lot from her, whether that be through improving my fitness or learning more about business through her social media presence, and I have admired her hard work ethic as a student, influencer, and an entrepreneur, and her work in the sustainable fitness industry. At the time, I was and still am currently very passionate about both fitness and sustainability in business, and I found it personally very interesting to see her grow from solely just an influencer to founding three multi-million dollar companies at such a young age. I hope that she can be an inspiration to all young entrepreneurs to consider taking an ethical approach towards creating and growing companies in the future, whether that be in the composition of their own products or how their services will be provided.
Want to learn more?
BBC Newsbeat's Grace Beverley: The 22-year-old Taking on the Gym Wear World
Forbes' Grace Beverley: Ethical Fitness Influencer On The Path From Founder to CEO
Remake's 13 Questions with the Founder of We Are Tala
Vogue Business' Four Founders on why Sustainable Fashion Must Include Racial Equality