How GymBeam Scaled From Slovakia to 16 European Markets

Introduction about GymBeam

GymBeam is one of the fastest-growing fitness brands in Europe, which has recorded remarkable growth since its founding in 2014. The company, founded by Dalibor Cicman, started as a Slovak startup and today operates in 16 European countries with more than 600 employees.

Key figures and milestones:

The company received a €6 million investment in 2020 (the largest e-commerce investment in Slovak history) from Crowdberry and Slovak Investment Holding.

Beatrix Vojtekova serves as CMO at GymBeam, where she manages the marketing department with 146 members. She built her career in the company gradually – she started as a marketing specialist, gradually worked her way up through positions as Head of Content, later Regional Country Manager CEE, to her current leadership role as CMO.

During her tenure as Regional Country Manager, she was responsible for ensuring revenue growth and market share in the CEE region (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Italy), directly setting strategy for local marketing activities and actively acquiring new customers while maintaining satisfaction of existing clients. In this position, she also managed foreign teams of native marketers and played a key role in finding new growth opportunities and implementing local marketing activities.

In her current position as CMO, she coordinates marketing strategies at a broader level and participates in the company’s expansion across key regional markets.

As part of her work, Beatrix has first-hand experience with the challenges of expanding an international e-commerce brand in Europe’s diverse environment. Her perspective on strategy, localisation, and data-driven decision-making provides valuable insights for scaling digital businesses across culturally different markets.

Source: Canva Pro

🎤 Beatrix, GymBeam has achieved €200M+ GMV since 2015 and successfully expanded to 16 European countries. From your position as CMO, you have a unique perspective on this journey. What do you consider the key factors of this success, and what were the biggest challenges in managing multi-country operations?

Behind our growth are several key pillars. First and foremost is the focus on the customer – they are truly always at the center of everything we do. From product development through UX to communication. We never tried to be just another supplement seller – we built a brand with a clear identity, strong community reach, and emphasis on education.

The second factor is our ability to innovate and grow quickly but wisely. From the beginning, we do many things in-house – from product development through content to performance marketing. This allows us to be flexible, quickly test new formats, and adapt to local specifics.

And the third crucial aspect is consistent localisation—each market is served by a native team that understands the culture, language, and specific customer behaviour. Thanks to this, we can act as a “local brand” in multiple countries simultaneously.

Regarding challenges — often the most difficult is scaling processes while maintaining quality and consistency. You have different challenges in a market where you’re starting from scratch versus a country where you’re already an established player. Managing multi-country operations requires strong teams, transparent communication, and, above all, the constant ability to learn and adapt.

🎤 What is your process when entering a new market? What do the first steps look like – from opportunity analysis to launch? Can you give us a specific example of successful market entry?

During our first expansions, we learnt a lot and gradually materialised these experiences into our internal Expansion Cookbook, which serves as both a framework and practical guide. It contains key milestones, checklists, and recommended procedures for the entire expansion process.

We always start with thorough market analysis – we track opportunity size, competition, local specifics, consumer behaviour, and regulatory environment. Then we set up key processes so that the customer has a great experience from the beginning: a localised website, fast logistics, and seamless customer service.

Only when we have these foundations firmly established does marketing come into play – we launch performance campaigns, prepare localised content, and build social networks and influencer networks. We collect first reviews, test, tune, and gradually scale.

🎤 Each European market has its specifics. Which differences between countries surprised you most from a consumer behaviour perspective? How do you adapt marketing strategy to different cultures?

Yes, there are differences between individual markets. For example, I was personally surprised that in Italy, life practically stops in August – a response to an email is more of an exception than a rule. Conversely, in Poland, it’s completely normal to negotiate prices for any service.

We also perceive big differences in the level of development of individual channels. While marketplace platforms are strong players and a common part of the shopping journey in Western European markets, in CEE countries it’s often still a relatively new format. This also affects how we approach distribution and marketing.

Our great advantage is that we have a local team in each market – native marketing specialists who understand local specifics very well. Their main task is to ensure that the GymBeam brand acts as a strong local player. In this regard, cooperation with local influencers, creating content on social networks, and quick reactions to local topics in the form of reactive marketing work excellently for us.

Source: LinkedIn

🎤 In each country you face different types of competition – from global brands to strong local players. How does your differentiation strategy change in different markets? Where is competition most intense?

In mature markets where we’ve been operating longer, we focus mainly on maintaining a strong position, building loyalty, and strengthening customer experience. Conversely, in new markets, we emphasise acquisition, building brand awareness, and gaining market share.

What remains the same across all countries, however, is our approach to the customer – they are always in first place for us. In practice, this means that with every decision, I consider how it will affect the customer experience.

We build our competitive advantage on the quality and breadth of our product portfolio and constant innovation and optimisation – not only in development, but also in marketing, automation, and internal processes. Personally, I think being flexible is the most important thing in management and strategy.

🎤 How do you measure expansion success? Which KPIs are most important for you when evaluating individual market performance? How long does it take for a new market to become profitable?

We evaluate expansion success through a combination of metrics. One of the key indicators for us is the development of brand search volume – that is, how often people in a given market search for the GymBeam brand compared to the competition. This metric shows us how the brand is getting into awareness and what interest we generate.

At the same time, we also track other key KPIs: revenue growth, number of new customers, website traffic, average margin, average order value (AOV), customer retention, and marketing investment efficiency (e.g., CAC vs. LTV).

Regarding profitability – it very much depends on the specific market, its size, competition, and also the degree of localisation that the given market requires.

🎤 Recently you opened Fitness Hubs in Prague and Budapest. What is the role of physical spaces in your primarily digital strategy? Do you plan similar steps in other countries?

Our Fitness Hubs are part of a blue ocean strategy – they’re not just stores, but multipurpose spaces where retail, showroom, and especially strong community merge. Their main goal is to build deeper relationships with customers and bring the digital brand into the offline world. In Fitness Hubs, we organise 150 events annually – from filming live podcasts, through meet & greets with influencers, to group workouts and lectures on nutrition and fitness.

At the same time, we perceive these spaces as logistical infrastructure – we’re developing the Q-commerce concept, i.e., express delivery within a few hours of ordering. Part of this vision are also vending machines and pickup boxes, which we’re starting to place within Fitness Hub locations. We believe that speed and convenience in shopping will play an increasingly important role.

And yes, we definitely plan expansion of this format. I can already reveal that we’re opening a new Fitness Hub in Warsaw in September, and another one in Vienna will be added by the end of the year.

🎤 What are your plans for further expansion? Which markets are interesting for you and why? And what three most important pieces of advice would you give to e-commerce brands planning European expansion?

Currently, our full focus is on the DACH region – Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We entered these markets a year ago, and we still see enormous potential in them, which we’re working on intensively. It’s a very competitive but at the same time valuable market – customers here have high expectations, which pushes us forward in every direction.

We’re also monitoring other markets, but we’re planning new expansion earliest in 2026.

If I were to give three pieces of advice to brands considering expansion within Europe, they would be these:

1. Make decisions based on data, not feelings. Intuition is fine, but in expansion it can be very expensive. Quality preparation and data analysis will save you not only money but also time and frustration.
2. Don’t be afraid to start small. Instead of a perfect, time- and financially demanding launch, I recommend building an MVP – minimum viable expansion version and continuously testing, iterating, and adapting.
3. Be prepared for investments. Expansion requires time, money, and patience – especially if you forget the first two points. 🙂 Without thorough preparation, even a good product can get lost in a new market.

Thank you so much for your time, Beatrix.