Manchester based clothing brand, Rascal Clothing, acquires back its shares from sports retail giant, JD Sports. Rascal Clothing completed its sale from JD Sports in March 2023, making global digital creator, Billy Wingrove, sole owner of the business. Rascal Clothing is a kids focused brand that prioritises movement, style and comfort in its core DNA.
The youth & adults sports e-tailer is said to have experienced rapid growth since it was founded in 2014 thanks to its innovative designs and Wingrove’s years of experience in the fashion and social media space. He is one of the pioneers of product and brand building to come out of the Youtube community, building Rascal Clothing on the back of the success of the F2Freestylers Youtube platform- the world’s largest football social channel with over 20 million social followers between Youtube and Instagram.
Rascal uses a social-first marketing strategy which has seen huge customer demand and brand awareness thanks to Wingrove’s growing profile and loyal fan base. It is set to make new waves in the fashion industry after being bought back by the entrepreneur who plans to rebuild the brand in-line with his family channel and focus on new, style-led ranges and products to drop every season.
Wingrove quickly recognised the power of Youtube and that its core strength was user generated content; having created a career in football freestyle performing in front crowds of up to 300,000 people and performing shows in front of the likes of Messi, Ronaldo, Pep Guardiola to name a few, Wingrove went onto co-found his youtube channel which celebrated everything he loved about football. F2Freestylers gives tutorials, entertainment and a wide range of skills and challenges throughout the channel making it a one stop shop for every football fan. The channel amassed a whopping 14m Youtube subscribers, 11m Instagram followers and gained huge popularity with fans including sporting legends, Lionel Messi, Luis Suares, Neymar and even NFL’s Odell Beckham JR being featured. Alongside their channel, the co-founders have also performed at stadiums across England including Manchester United’s Old Trafford.
Further to this, in 2019, the young entrepreneur went onto launch his own family Channel ‘The Wingrove Family’ which has gained over 800 million views to date, making it one of the UK’s fastest-growing YouTube family channels.
Wingrove’s huge social media successes led him to create Rascal Clothing in 2014 as it was the natural step to take to add to his ever-growing lifestyle empire. He said of the latest move: “I’ve had an incredible journey partnering up with JD Sports, but now is the most exciting time of all as I am so proud to be able to say that I am the sole owner of Rascal Clothing. We’ve witnessed high growth in the last few years and our goal is to bring to the market, a new fresh innovative catalogue that will spread across many different genres of clothing whilst staying stylish, high quality and accessible. Our main market is a junior market, however, our clothing isn’t just limited to juniors with unique ranges for adults and both sexes which we’re keen to expand. I’m really excited about our new direction for 2023 and I’m so grateful to all of our customers who have continued to support us and follow our journey.”
A brand built for the community with love and care behind every step, Rascal Clothing launches a new collection every quarter, ensuring that the business is always forward-thinking and is able to respond to the rapidly changing customer demands.
