VO2 Sportswear
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
VO2 Sportswear was a Bolton, UK-based sportswear brand founded by former athlete Matt Tomkin around 2014. It designed and sold cycling and triathlon apparel, including custom team kits, triathlon suits and limited-edition cycling jerseys, selling directly to consumers through its own website and raising a small crowdfunding round on Crowdcube.
02 / VO2 Sportswear FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
VO2 grew revenue to about £250,000 a year, but grew costs even faster: monthly overheads reached roughly £13,000 against average monthly sales of about £21,000 at a 50% gross margin. Bringing sales in-house quadrupled the cost of processing orders, and the website demanded constant reinvestment. The business was profitable at the unit level but ran out of liquid cash, and a small late investment of £15,000 was not enough to keep it alive.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
The retained source record identifies the company as having ended operations; the exact event details remain unverified.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Revenue climbed from about £6,500 in year one to £99,000 in year two and roughly £250,000 (about $325,000) in year three.
- 02
Overheads grew to roughly £13,000 (about $17,000) per month, against average monthly sales of about £21,000 (about $27,000) at a 50% gross margin, so costs exceeded what sales could support.
- 03
With liquid cash exhausted and only a small £15,000 (about $20,000) late investment raised, the company could not fund continued operations and shut down.