The case study on Gymshark, a UK-based sportswear retailer

by | Aug 5, 2021 | Main

Read and analyse the case study on Gymshark, a UK-based sportswear retailer. Then write a well-formulated essay in response to the following questions:
• Which of the four drivers of globalisation has been the most influential in the expansion of Gymshark and to what extent do you think it is a globalised business?
Using the written communication skills you have developed in LB170, write an essay that provides a well-supported response to these questions, drawing on relevant business concepts taught in this module.
Your essay should contain:
• an introduction
• a main body, which develops your argument
• a conclusion that summarises key points of the essay and answers the questions.
Part 1 of the TMA is intended to assess your ability to write an effective business essay by applying relevant business concepts to develop your argument. You may benefit from applying your tutor’s feedback on previous written TMAs to this assignment where relevant.
This part of your assignment should be 1000 words in length and you should keep to within 10 per cent above or below this limit. Any figures or diagrams should be included in the body of the main text and will form part of the total word count. However, the reference list does not contribute to the word limit.

Article 1
Clothing brand Gymshark becomes UK’s newest £1bn start-up.
Company founded by Ben Francis as a student nine years ago wins £200m investment
Ben Francis, the 28 year old founder of clothing brand Gymshark, has become one of the wealthiest British entrepreneurs after finalising a fundraising that makes his nine year old business the UK’s newest £1bn-valued “unicorn”.
Mr Francis founded the gym wear company as a 19 year-old student in Birmingham out of his parents’ garage. Its headquarters remain nearby in Solihull. The brand has become a hit with younger gym goers. It does not use the traditional combination of advertising and high street shops for promotion, relying instead on support from a network of athletes and social media “influencers” on Instagram and Facebook.
On Friday, Gymshark raised its first ever external funds, with about £200m invested by US fund manager General Atlantic. This values the company at more than £1bn, and will make Mr Francis, who owns a 70 per cent stake, one of the wealthiest business owners in the UK. General Atlantic will own just over 20 per cent, with the remainder held by Mr Francis’ partners and senior management. Gymshark employs about 500 people. Gymshark said it was only the second British company since 2001 to have achieved unicorn status without any prior investment.
Mr Francis told the FT that the funds would be used to help expand the business in North America, where Gymshark already makes a large part of its sales, and in Asia. The company has already opened an office in Denver. “We are nothing without our community,” said Mr Francis, “so we will use this new investment partnership to get even closer to them on a truly global scale. I firmly believe Gymshark has the potential to be to the UK what Nike is to the US and Adidas is to Germany.”

Sample Solution

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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