A pair of Wirral brothers are challenging the giants of sports apparel with a company they created in the early mornings and late nights of their spare time.
Tom and Phil Beahon are making waves in the industry and have secured high-profile support.
Five years since launch in 2016, their business is backed by the brothers who own Asda and is due to create 150 jobs this year.
READ MORE: Two Merseyside towns and two different 'Levelling Up' realities
Neither had a background in business before starting Castore, a company kitting out investor and Wimbledon champion Andy Murray, along with Premier League teams, McLaren F1 and England Cricket.
Tom, 32, told the ECHO about the difficult decision that led the pair to change the course of their lives.
Speaking of that decision, he said: "It's undoubtedly difficult. There's no question about that.
"When you've dedicated your life to something as I did, and then it doesn't work out that, that of course is incredibly difficult."
Tom played football for Tranmere Rovers, while his younger brother Phil played cricket in the Premier Division of the Liverpool Competition.
Despite their love for sport, both realised they couldn't make it to the very top level, so instead they turned to business.
The brothers set about planning how to fill a gap they saw in the market for a high-quality, premium and aspirational brand as an alternative to mass-market companies like Adidas, Nike and Puma.
Tom said: "There's not really that history in our family or anything like that, but we just have this desire that, whatever we do in life, if we're going to be successful, or in fact fail, we want to have that responsibility on ourselves.
"And there's no better opportunity for that than if you run your own business."
With only their work ethic, discipline and competitiveness gained from sport, the brothers moved to London.
For two years, they worked in finance to earn enough money to buy the first products, build the website and launch the business.
They woke at 5am every morning, working on the idea for a few hours before starting their day jobs, returning in the evening to continue planning from 7pm to midnight.
Annual leave gave time to fly abroad to visit fabric mills and spark those business relationships that proved crucial to their success.
Tom said: "We had to go and meet factories in Portugal who don't normally, or don't ever, like working with new brands because they represent a risk.
"We had to talk them into working with us."
He added: "We were two young guys. We didn't have any money, we didn't have any experience.
"But what we did have was passion, and I think, if someone sees that you're deeply and genuinely passionate about what you do, you're more than halfway there because people want to work with passionate people.
"I think that's true in any area of life, and I think that factor, more than any rational factor, was probably what helped us convince those guys to take a chance on us."
Tom and Phil aimed from the beginning to create the number one premium sportswear brand.
Now their mainly digital business is thriving thanks to spikes in demand driven by announcements of major deals with rugby, football and Formula 1 teams.
Just last month Castore signed multi-year deals with USA Rugby and GB Taekwondo, lasting until 2027 and 2026 respectively.
But five years ago, Tom was back living with his parents while all his friends were moving into homes of their own with their partners.
He told the ECHO: "All of our friends at that age were moving out of their partners, getting married, having babies, and I was kind of doing the opposite, kind of going backwards.
"And we didn't pay ourselves a salary from the business for the first maybe two years."
The brothers spent £50,000 of money they'd saved, along with a further £30,000 from their parents re-mortgaging their house, to get the business off the ground.
Tom said: "It's stressful enough starting a business anyway, but when you think that, if it doesn't work, your parents might be homeless, then that is definitely enough to focus the mind even more.
"So there was definitely a lot of pressure in those early days."
Fortunately, their efforts paid off.
Castore secured high-profile backing, with investor Andy Murray wearing branded kit on the tennis court and a seemingly endless stream of sports teams signing up with the company.
Although the company moved to Manchester as its success blossomed, the pair still consider Castore's spiritual home to be Liverpool, the city home to one of their two stores.
It was here they had their first office on Tithebarn Street and their first celebratory nights out in McCooley's on Mathew Street.
Reflecting on the journey, Tom said: "It's definitely been a whirlwind.
"When we started the business, it's not an overstatement to say that you dedicate your life to it, you're completely obsessive, you're so passionate about it.
"There's not really room for anything else in your life, and you have this mindset that you will do whatever it takes to be successful.
"You're willing to do whatever it takes to make the business a success.
"As you start to have a little bit of success - and we've been very fortunate that Castore has grown extremely quickly in the last five years - you never really stop to consider it.
"You're so deeply ingrained in the business on an everyday basis that you never really stopped to sit back and think, 'Okay, that's gone well', because all you're thinking about is, 'Okay, what's next? What can go wrong? Where are the opportunities? Where can we improve? What things do we need? Do we need to think above and beyond what we're doing now?'
"It's a very competitive world out there, and there's always someone that's willing to do something that you're not.
"We're a challenger brand. We see ourselves as a brand that wants to go and challenge the big guys. We want to be a Liverpool brand and a British brand that competes on the global stage.
"And in order to achieve that ambition, we have to be harder working, more creative, more innovative than all of our competitors who are a lot bigger than us."
