Sportswear brand Castore has now confirmed a multi-year kit supply deal with Old Firm football club Rangers, starting in 2020/21.

Castore, unlike many of the global mass-market brands it aims to challenge, may not be a household name.

However, the Liverpool-based business has achieved some high-profile successes since being launched by brothers Tom and Phil Beahon, who both come from professional sporting backgrounds, in 2015. These successes include a partnership with one Scot who is certainly a household name.

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Castore is the official kit supplier to Scottish tennis star Andy Murray, who is also a shareholder in the business.

In February this year, Castore raised £7.5 million of funding as part of its expansion drive, with moves into the top-flight football market in various countries flagged as among potential opportunities.

Announcing the deal with Rangers, Castore says: "We have no intention of entering the football market and making up the numbers – we intend to challenge at the very highest level."

It adds: "The cities of Glasgow and Liverpool share many of the values that drive Castore – resilience, a commitment to hard work, a desire to overcome the odds. Nothing worth having in life comes easy and success is hard earned. Our Better Never Stops brand ethos is infused deep inside the psyche of both cities and Rangers as a club represent this mindset more than most."

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When Andy Murray announced a long-term partnership with Castore last year, the tennis star said: “Castore is a young, exciting brand that offers something different, with products that are really well cut and designed. For me, it was a natural progression from previous kit partners. They’re the best I have tried and trained in.”

Giving an insight into the philosophy of Castore and its roots, Tom Beahon has said: “Phil and I are both former athletes; he was a cricketer and I was a footballer. Pursuing our passion for sport meant intensive training, and living in sports clothes, day-in and day-out.”

Phil Beahon is a Newcastle University law graduate. He was awarded his law degree in 2014.

In late 2017, Newcastle University highlighted the fact that the brothers had set up Castore with the help of a START UP foundership offered by its careers service.

The university said: “Part of the 2016/2017 cohort, Phil and Tom were two of ten founders and co-founders selected by a special panel of university alumni and friends to receive a START UP foundership and the associated support and funding as a fledgeling business.”

On its website, Castore highlights the Beahon brothers’ view that the sportswear market “remains dominated by a small number of global mass-market brands”.

The website says: “This led to a deeply infused passion about creating the highest-performing technical sportswear available anywhere in the world and redefining the market for athletes who simply cannot settle for second-best.”

Castore notes that all of its garments are tested by elite athletes, and are worn for 100 consecutive days before being approved for full production.