“Where did the idea behind the rebrand of Facets to Function come from?”

Guy Littlejohn

The change in brand name, company logo and the additional service all started when I went to my first Hyrox event in January this year...

As soon as I walked into the arena and I felt the buzz, the music, the atmosphere and the organised chaos of the place - I've described it to people as the feel of a park run, but everybody looks like they're on mile 18 of a marathon, so everybody is really digging it out -  I thought, I need to get involved in this in some way.

So in February and March, as it started to get bigger and bigger, and it will continue to do that, I started to look at the biggest challenges in Hyrox. 

Sweat is a big problem, therefore gripping on ropes or balls on certain stations is quite challenging, so I started by looking into gloves. I bought a load of American football gloves, cut the fingers off them, and spoke to a few manufacturers of these gloves. 

I started to look at drinks, products that had hydration salts in them, some sort of nootropics, and realised that I was slowly getting into a world of where I'd either own a product or become a retailer. And it was just really complex. 

In March this year, a PT I know said that he was going away for some warm weather training, which I think is quite common, but I didn't really know about that world at the time. He was going away for some training with two or three of his clients and asked if I wanted to come, but it was literally the next day so unfortunately I couldn't make it.

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But all of this sparked something.. the idea of going away with others just to purely train and be surrounded by like-minded people.. that was the whole reason that they were there.

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I knew this guy; he doesn't really drink, he eats really well, he's done very well at Hyroxs and world championships.

So that sparked this 24-48 hours of “how can I combine what the consultancy does with getting together a group of like minded people?”.. I wanted something fitness related, that still delivers a commercial service. 

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So the retreat was born. 

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I had a business incorporated called the retreat, and I [already] had facets, but I realised I didn’t really want to be managing two businesses. For me, it would be easier to have one business with two services because they actually feed each other; the same people that work with Function through the consultancy can also join us at the retreats. 

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The name “Function” came about because of the commercial function that we have embedded within our clients businesses through the consultancy over the last 4 years, and the functional fitness element that runs through the retreats. 

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“This was a natural progression”

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Facets as a business still runs, and it was tough to move away from that name because it was one that, again, 4 years prior to that, was really considered. It's an underused word that really makes sense for the consultancy, but function still fits really, really well. 

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I can definitely say that it has breathed new life back into me and back into the business. It was an exciting thing to do, a nervous thing to do, but exciting that it fits both of them. 

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