Entrepreneur interview: Castore

Please note: Barclays Private Bank does not endorse any of the companies or individuals referenced in this article.

The Driving Seat

In the third article of our new entrepreneur series, ‘The Driving Seat’, we interviewed Tom Beahon, the Co-Founder of Castore. 

From almost making it at professional sport, to asking their parents to re-mortgage and give them a leg-up, here’s the incredible story behind a family-built company now valued at just under £1billion¹. 

Tom Read (TR), Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management: Hi Tom, thanks for speaking to us today, I know it’s been a very busy few weeks for you. Can we start by asking you about Castore – what does your company do?

Tom Beahon (TB), Castore: My pleasure. In summary, we are a premium British sportswear firm, co-founded with my brother Phil in 2016, because we saw two gaps in the market. 

First, there was space for an aspirational brand to compete with the well-established global brands like Nike, Adidas, Puma and so on. 

Second, we felt that we could do a better job of partnering with sports stars and teams around the world who were being overlooked by existing players in the market. Take F1 for example, it’s got international appeal and it’s fast embracing digital platforms, but it was under-served in our area. We saw a gap and went for it.

TR: What inspired you to set your company up? 

TB: We don’t come from a business background and we’re a product of our environment. My Mum’s a teacher, my Dad works in construction, and we grew up in Merseyside where sport is like a religion. 

Both my brother and I were good at sports, specifically cricket and football, and I signed a contract with Tranmere. But I didn’t quite make it, and that sense of failure really lit a spark in me. I wanted to crack on and be the master of my own destiny. Setting up a business felt like a natural way for me to take control of my life and fulfil the ambitions that I wasn’t able to do directly in professional sport. 

TR: Have you always been entrepreneurial? Or do you think it’s something you can learn?

TB: It’s a good question. I wasn’t that kid at school selling sweets for a profit during dinnertime. What definitely helped me were the parallels between sport and business – the need for discipline and team work, and the value of being competitive.

We’re also proof that there’s no singular path of success. My brother went to university, and I left school at 16. But we spark off each other and have very complementary skills. Together, we work.

TR: The growth of Castore has been rapid to say the least. How have you gone about growing the business?

TB: We had a clear vision when we started, believing passionately that the market for sportswear was broken. We filled a clear gap by unlocking value with our partners and becoming more digital in how we worked. 

But on top of that, I’m a firm believer in that saying, ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. We’re up at 5am to grind – our parents re-mortgaged when we needed funding at the start and that really lit a fire under us to make sure that Castore became a success. The odds were personally too high for there to be any other outcome. I’ve always bought into that idea that you create your own luck – the harder you work, the luckier you become. 

And it’s having a passion that makes a real difference. A salary and bonus will only motivate you so much, and if you want to be exceptional, you need something extra in the locker. For me, that extra thing is passion.

The other thing I’d add is that people can assume our line of work is glamorous because of the people and teams we partner with. While that’s true to an extent, we’ve had our fair share of tough days. You can’t avoid them.  

TR: And talking of tough days, what challenges have you overcome?

TB: There have been a number of them to be honest. Right at the beginning, we had to overcome the perception that we were two young, working class lads from Merseyside who didn’t have the capabilities we knew we had. It made it hard to get early financing and even some factories were hesitant to deal with us, not believing we’d stick around. 

It’s passion that ultimately made a difference. For every person I met, I wanted to leave them with the impression that I would never give up, I would work and work until I achieved my goal, and I was someone worth backing.

Our brand maxim is ‘better never stops’, because we know yesterday’s success is no guarantee of tomorrow’s success. As we’ve scaled up, the skill-set required to run the business is completely different. Building a team, setting a coherent vision, setting targets, making sure different parts are working synergistically, involves a lot of agility and learning on our part. 

TR: And conversely, what have been the biggest positives?

TB: It’s hard to name them all but the major sporting events are always special. Whether you’re watching Andy Murray wear your brand at Wimbledon, or Rangers playing in your kit at a final in Seville, or England walking out to take on the Australians in the Ashes, it’s all amazing. 

Those are the moments that make you realise you’ve come a long way since packing boxes in on your Mum’s kitchen table. I’d be lying if I said I don’t get goosebumps, but we also try very hard not to let emotions distract our business decision-making.

And then most recently, the fund raising we secured from institutional investors was a magic moment.

TR: Broadly speaking, what do you think makes an entrepreneur successful? Is there a recipe for success?

TB: There’s no fail-proof recipe, but I do think the three Ps are impossible to ignore – passion, people and perseverance. 

You can’t achieve in life without passion. Don’t think about money at the beginning, that can come later. Think about what you are genuinely passionate about, what excites you.

And for people, no one achieves big things on their own. You should surround yourself with people who are optimistic and resilient. These are the people who won’t drag you down when the going gets tough but will instead help find a solution. 

Lastly, there’s perseverance. Being a successful business owner is hard work, and it takes a huge amount of effort. There’s a mistaken belief, partly because of social media, that success is easy and quick. In reality, success comes off the back of slogging it out, not giving up and bouncing back after a failure. Dealing with setbacks is such a valuable lesson, and it’s often the difference between success and failure.

TR: Has your style of leadership and management changed since you’ve grown the business?

TB: Leadership is a really interesting topic because you learn it on the job, you can’t truly learn it from a book. 

I look back to 3 years ago, and we had 25-30 employees, all of whom I knew really well. To the extent that I could say if someone was a cat or a dog person. Fast forward to today and we’ve got over 500 staff, most of whom I don’t see every day, partly because we’ve expanded abroad. My role as a leader has therefore had to change. I’ve got to build the vision and the culture to attract ambitious people and to let them thrive.  

TR: So your role has changed a fair bit then?

TB: Yes. As a founder, you never lose the passion. Or rather, if you do lose the passion, you should probably think about doing something else. 

There’s always a risk that you want to be too involved in everything, and I’m really obsessed by product and all the details that come with it. But the trick is recognising your capacity and your skillset. If you’ve hired someone to do a specific role which they’re really good at, let them do it. 

TR: The last question is this – what’s next for your business?

TB: I genuinely believe we’re just getting started. We wanted to build a premium British brand and now we’ve got global plans. We recently branched into Europe and Dubai, and we want to go further. Our experiences up to now have proven us right when we first thought there was a gap in the market. We’re backing ourselves to keep growing. 

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