How two friends took Elite Eleven Sporting from packing orders in a bedroom to a $20 million activewear brand

Melbourne-based activewear company Elite Eleven Sporting has created a $20 million retail empire by embracing app shopping as a future channel for all e-commerce.

The activewear brand, which sells premium sportswear and fitness apparel for men and women, was established in Melbourne and launched by best-mates-turned-co-founders Lisandro Paz and Benn Martiniello in mid-2014.

With a revenue of $20.86 million, Elite Eleven now ships across Australia and worldwide, and has a following of 348,000 followers on Instagram, more than 26,000 followers on TikTok and an Elite Eleven Fam group on Facebook that has almost 7000 members and counting.

The company will also hold the grand opening of its third Melbourne store at Northland Shopping Centre on December 23, 2022, which will quickly be followed by its first interstate store.

The company hired its first full-time employee in 2019 (after five years of building up the business) and now has more than 50 staff members between its headquarters in Tullamarine and two other retail stores in Melbourne’s Chadstone and Highpoint shopping centres.

SmartCompany Plus spoke with both Paz and Martiniello about making a mark with their influencer and celeb customers, their huge social media following and the future of app shopping for e-commerce.

Omni-channel success

Director and co-founder Martiniello says when the brand was launched, he and Paz set an ambitious goal to create a truly original sports and lifestyle brand, where fitness and fashion collide.

At the heart of this mission was to “find and develop the elite quality that typifies all the products we put out there, allowing users to perform at their maximum, whilst looking edgy and progressive,” he tells SmartCompany Plus.

Elite Eleven started off with an e-commerce presence before moving into brick-and-mortar. In March 2022, the brand launched its dedicated Elite Eleven app, which has seen more than 50,000 downloads and is projected to reach 80,000 by the end of the year.

Since March, 30% of Elite Eleven’s orders have come through the app, which equates to more than 40,000 orders to date.

Both Paz and Martiniello say this omnichannel approach has helped Elite Eleven maintain a steady year-on-year growth of 70%.

To keep up with the omnichannel shopping experience, the company has increased its headcount by 93% since 2020 and is pushing heavily into physical stores, expecting the accelerated growth of e-commerce during the pandemic to plateau in coming years.

While the brand started out by offering men’s performance wear in 2014, it was the addition of a range for women three years later that took Elite Eleven to the next level.

“We packed and dispatched orders from a bedroom until we could rent a 60-square-metre space of our own,” Paz recalled.

“After we decided to take the leap into womenswear in 2017, that’s when we found that the business really accelerated and took off.”

For Paz and Martiniello, the launch of the Elite Eleven app in particular means they can offer their customers “a complete shopping experience”, which allows them to more easily place an order “in the comfort of their own home or when they are out and about”.

“Our app provides an experience that is so much better than websites, especially mobile websites, and with instant loading, makes it easier to showcase our products to customers,” Paz said.

“But it’s not just about the products, it’s also about the content we create within the app.”

SmartCompany Plus downloaded the Elite Eleven app to check out the goods on offer and found that, in addition to being able to shop for both men’s and women’s activewear and accessories, customers can also use the app to contact the Elite Eleven team through direct message, track their orders, receive notifications and start a return, if they need, straight from their fingertips.

Taking customers behind the scenes

The app also gives the business a unique platform way to show its customers who and what is behind the Elite Eleven brand, says Paz.

“Our general goal is to continuously shift behind the scenes and encourage more transparency when it comes to businesses,” he explained.

“Customers relate to the people behind the scenes and they like knowing how we come up with the products, seeing our content and getting to know our team.”

Customer expectations are constantly evolving and that means offering something more.

“Gone are the days where you would just market a product; it’s all about the story you tell these days,” said Paz.

“Businesses need to focus on engaging ideas and releasing good quality content, whether it be daily blogs, short videos or social media posts.”

It’s all about building connections between customers and brands, adds Martiniello.

“Your content and your products go hand in hand,” he said.

“Great quality products, great content and the story behind the brand helps customers to feel that connection with the business.”

Paz says for Elite Eleven, content creation is vital to getting the brand and mission out there across Australia and around the world, and the brand regularly works with influencers to amplify this.

“Content creation has become second nature to us,” he said.

“The main thing to remember is to start small when it comes to content creation or planning it, [as] people are consuming so much social media on a daily basis and there’s not enough time in the day.”

Both Elite Eleven founders confirmed that 2023 is shaping up to be a big year for Elite Eleven, with a new 5500-square-metre headquarters planned for late in the year.