Max Verstappen. Ben Stokes. Andy Murray. Adam Peaty. The all-conquering 2023/24 Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen. Just some of the top names who adorn sportswear produced by Castore – a company born on Merseyside in 2015.
The brothers behind the label, Tom and Phil Beahon took jobs in finance to fund their project, learning as they went by conducting market research while planning to take on the established order of athletic clothing manufacturers.
Earlier this year, Castore struck the largest apparel partnership in Formula 1 history as it extended its agreement with reigning champions Red Bull for a deal reported to be worth more than $200million, while also holding a similar position with rivals McLaren.
“I love the saying: ‘You don't have to be a Harvard student. You've just got to have the balls to do it’ and it is so true. That audacity, that big vision,” Tom tells Autosport.
“People, in my experience, whether you're meeting Christian Horner, whether you're meeting the CEO of England Cricket, I've been fortunate enough to meet Prime Ministers.
“People respect ambition. If you're passionate and you're ambitious, people buy into that.
“It was my dream to see elite athletes wearing Castore in competition. But it's all built around performance and our story about hard work and taking a risk and trying to compete with the big boys is undoubtedly part of Castore’s DNA of ‘better never stops’.”
Tom, who previously played football in the youth set-up at Tranmere Rovers, likens Castore’s arrival on the scene to that of Red Bull itself. The upstarts entered the F1 paddock looking to shake things up and to do things differently – and in that it certainly succeeded.
“You're looking for partners that share your values and that means different things to different people,” he added.
“So of course, with someone like Red Bull Racing, the fact that they've had the success that they've had – that is unbelievable. We didn't do the partnership with the guys expecting that to happen, the fact that it has, is an amazing bonus.
“But what you're looking at is the ambition, the commitment to innovation, the commitment to disruption, that is what makes the partnership a success. How that plays out on track or on the pitch, you're never going to predict perfectly.
“Logically, what Red Bull did right at the beginning shouldn't have been achievable, because there's all of these big, established status quo people that on paper have got all of these advantages; whether it's in infrastructure or experience or whatever else.
“What Dietrich Mateschitz [Red Bull founder] said was, ‘We're going to mix up the status quo, we're going to do it differently and why can't we win?’ It was a very similar mindset to the one we had, which was - everything on paper says that Castore shouldn't be able to challenge Nike and Adidas. But we believe that we can and we're going to think differently.
“We're not going to copy and paste what they do; we are going to try and disrupt and innovate and be creative. If you've got that mindset and you refuse to give up and you're super passionate, you can achieve some pretty exciting things.”
Such an outlook has also held the Beahon brothers in good stead during the inevitable bad times that come with starting a business.
At the start of 2024, a deal with Aston Villa was cut short after players from both the men’s and women’s teams complained about the Castore-designed kit, while rumours suggest the Leverkusen contract will end prematurely at the culmination of the current football season.
With former tennis ace Murray and the Issa brothers among its shareholders, Castore reported a pre-tax loss of almost £29m for the year ending February 2024, despite sales improving.
“There's going to be mistakes, there's going to be setbacks,” Tom adds. "That's part of the journey. Embrace it.
“We'll go further by having that mindset than we ever will by trying to copy someone else or being cautious.
“The two things, more than anything else, that you need are passion, because it's going to be so hard, there'll be so many setbacks and challenges.
“The only thing that keeps you going throughout all of those hardships - factories refuse to work with you because you're not big enough, banks don't want to lend you any money… The only thing that keeps you going is passion.
“That is the number one characteristic that you need to be successful. Then the second one is resilience.
“You have to have this ability to keep working hard, to keep going, to have that resilience, no matter how difficult it gets.
“They are always the two big things that I cite, but the third one, and again, I genuinely do believe there's a lot of parallels with Red Bull Racing in this - you have to dream big, you have to be audacious. You have to believe when no one else believes.”
