The sports footwear brand, Reebok wasn’t always as big as it is today. It started in a small factory in 1958 and it was called Mercury Sports Footwear. The founders, Joe and Jeff Foster had recently just left their family company, J.W. Foster and Sons. From there on, Joe and Jeff renamed it after a gazelle, and Reebok was born. Join Patty Ann Tublin as she takes a deeper look into Reebok’s history with the founder of Reebok, Joe Foster. Learn Joe’s history and how he started in the shoemaking business. Find out how life was back in the 50s, especially when it came to athletic footwear. Discover how Reebok broke into America in the 80s with aerobics. Learn how Joe grew a business that would even rival Nike and Addidas. And, know more about Joe’s new book Shoemaker: The Untold Story of the British Family Firm that Became a Global Brand. Listen to how Reebok became the brand that it is today.
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The Real Reebok Story With Joe Foster
During this show, you are going to be thinking about your feet. How’s that for a teaser? Before we go any further, make sure you like, comment, share, and subscribe to this show. This guest is world-renowned. His product has been featured in movies such as the Chariots of Fire. His product has been on Olympians’ feet and I am speaking about Joe Foster, the Founder of Reebok. Without any further ado, welcome, Joe, and thank you so much for being a guest now.
What a massive and incredible introduction there. I’m not that well-known. I’m only a small person. Reebok, that was the name. I didn’t want to disturb Reebok as being the name of the company. Yes, I am Joe Foster. Yes, with my brother. We did found the company Reebok a long time ago, back in 1958.
That was a while ago. The world was a little different. We have so many years of wisdom that we can take from you. As a relationship expert that focuses on trust in creating healthy business relationships, I must ask you to start with the story of the breach of trust or the rift within your family. There’s nothing like a rift in a family business that led you to create Rebook, please.
I must start by saying that my grandfather invented the spiked running shoe back in 1895.
What did they use before that? There might be some young people reading.
Before that, they didn’t have spikes. They would have a boot to run them on cinder tracks, and that meant there was a lack of traction, so they would slip in or slide in. Such a lot. My grandfather got his idea from his grandfather because his grandfather was a cobbler. He repairs shoes, but he also repairs cricket boots. I’m sure you know what cricket is.
I even know what a cobbler is. It’s a shoemaker for the people that aren’t in the UK.
With cricket boots, they had studs in the bottom. They had small spikes. My grandfather obviously asked his grandfather, “Why did they have spikes in the bottom of cricket boots?” We are pretty sure my grandfather’s the answer. His grandfather was to give them grip because when you are batting, bowling, in the field, or on grass, you don’t want to slip. You need that grip.
That inspired my grandfather to make running shoes because he lived probably 60 miles away from his grandfather, but he was a member of his local athletic club. He thought he could improve his position in any of the races they had by putting spikes in the bottom of his shoe, and it did work because he came a very unlikely second in the first race he had with his shoes which started the business. That started making money. My grandfather also was a cobbler. We repaired street shoes and he started to make athletic shoes or running shoes.
What were street shoes made of back in the day? Was it leather? What was the material?
It was made of leather, the upper and the sole. The outsole would be a thick piece of leather. The upper would be a bit softer, but whichever way you looked at it, the street shoes needed breaking in. When you put your street shoes on, you probably ended up with a few blisters for a few weeks until those shoes wear in if we are going back to 1895.
For a moment, give us a glimpse of what the world was like then, like electricity and plumbing. We know no cell phones.
No cell phones, even when I was born. In my grandfather’s day, you’d be talking about gas for lighting, candles for lighting. Electricity would be coming on the scene later, but in those days, when it went dark, it went dark. You lit a few candles. You had the risk. You probably only had one pair of shoes. You probably only had 1 or maybe 2 shirts and trousers.
Radio or no radio?
No radio. All you had there was print. You have newspapers. My grandfather being in the North of England, he had to use newspapers to get his message over. If you look back on him, he was incredibly brilliant at marketing his product. He knew how to influence people before what we say now as influencers and a lot of influencers now.
Not sure what the influencers are influencing, but yes, they are making a lot of money doing it.
He gave his shoes to leading runners and athletes, and that was the influence for other athletes to buy them.
Was there any pushback? Did any of the athletes not want them or were they very open to it?
In those days, anybody who gave you anything that was a benefit. It was a real benefit to be given a pair of running shoes, which would probably be in those days considered a luxury. It’s be given a pair of running shoes, and you mentioned they were worn by the athletes who were immortalized in the film. Chariots of Fire. The athletes who wore them were three athletes. Eric Liddell, Harold Abrahams, and Lord Burghley. They all won gold medals in the 1920s.
Back in the day, getting a pair of running shoes was considered a luxury.
I love that movie and they all wore your grandfather’s sneakers. Did that put them on the map or no?
The spiked running shoes. They all ran in his running shoes to win the gold medals back in the 1920s. You can imagine that in those days, how do you influence people in a way you no radio, television, and none of this that we see now. To influence people was performance. The athletes who performed well, he would give them. He would also give them to people who wrote articles in the sports papers. They would say all the good things about Joe Foster’s running spikes, or in those days, they were called running pumps in those early days. That gives you a picture of my grandfather’s building of his business.
I do see the thought leadership and being a visionary there. I do have to ask this question even though I think I know the answer, and this was solely for men, correct? If the thought of women was not there?
It was there. You ask yourself a one-sided question because we normally talk about running as being men and men, but sexless because he did supply, and we have it on record. It was a woman called Nellie Halstead back in the 1920s, and she was in the 400 yards in those days, not 400 meters that we are now.
Running has always been seen as sexless.
She was the UK record holder for 400 yards. Yes, women were involved even in those early days, but like you say, funny enough, we don’t talk much about that. It’s mainly about the men and what they got up to. That gives you some picture because to get back to the question and that was what created this, what was the problem? Why did we leave this magnificent company that sold shoes all around the world and not too far away from you? It was Yale University. The name of one of his spiked running shoes was called New Haven because it was supplying Yale University. I remember meeting one of the coaches there in the 1950s, or probably 1960s, Frank Ryan. He was at the US Mile Champion in those days.
I remember that name. I didn’t place it until you said it, but the name was familiar.
Unfortunately, my grandfather died in 1933.
How old was he about then?
He would be 53.
A relatively young man.
Relatively young by today’s standards, yes. I wasn’t born until 1935, but I was born on his birthday. That was the 18th of May, and so my grandmother insisted I bring my name with me because it was only eighteen months after my grandfather died. I was born on his birthday. I have arrived now. We have talked about 1945. Four years later, we have World War II and I don’t remember much before World War II. I remember a lot about World War II.
Do you remember World War II?
Yes. I remember it. I was between 4 and 10 years old. Any time there, you can remember certain things that happened.
London was being bombed.
Manchester was being bombed, and now Manchester was about 10 miles away from where I am now. We are slightly elevated or we were where we lived. Slightly elevated above Manchester. From our bedroom windows, we could see flames, you might say, of Manchester being bombed. We probably remembered most I remember is the air raid sirens.
When there was an air raid, we would have the siren come on, which would be wailing and everybody then had to go into shelters. At first, yes. We used to go into shelters. As the war went on, you became a little bit more blase about it and didn’t bother because where we were away from Manchester. We were not a target area, although we did get 1 or 2 stray bombs. One nearly hit the J.W. Foster Factory. It blew the window in and it landed on very near to a fishing chip shop and killed a lot of people who were there in the fishing chip shop.
As far as Fosters were concerned, it blew in the window. I do remember my father, when he went to the factory in the morning, he didn’t go in through the front door. He walked in through the front window. He did find a piece of shrapnel off a bomb which he did bring home, and we had that for many years as a keepsake or whatever, but I have no idea where that piece of shrapnel is now.
The war certainly forged the great relationship between the States and the UK. I could talk about that forever, Winston Churchill and Roosevelt. We could go on and on, but back to the sneakers.
We are now at the point that my father and uncle have taken all over the J.W. Foster Company.
Your grandfather died and the war was raging throughout the world, and they are carrying on as the Brits do.
That’s right. This was okay while grandmother was alive because grandmother somehow kept the peace because my father and uncle were at war with each other.
Always or only in business?
They were running a business, 50% each, more or less. In those days, the company wasn’t a formal company. It was just grandfather had set up this company, but it was formalized in 1939 and became an unlimited liability company.
Once the lawyers get involved, everything gets formalized.
That’s right, but at that point, you have shares. They have so many shares. My uncle had 50%, I will say, out of 100%, and my father had 50%. That was a time when grandmother gave up all in the business as it were. The business had transferred to my grandmother in 1933, but in an informal way. It was only formalized in 1939 and she gave up the business, but she kept them working.
I have a quick question for you, and this might be a naive question. When your grandmother and your grandfather, and then your grandmother owned the company, did it bring in as much wealth then as it did later on?
Yes. We are talking about the 1920s and the early-30s and they had a car. That was a big deal in those days. All the way through World War II, my grandmother did own a car. However, two things were a bit difficult because one, you couldn’t get petrol or gas. You couldn’t get that, and two, it was a French car. It was a Renault. We used to call it a Renault because that’s how it was spelled, but now we know how to pronounce it in French. A Renault. Unfortunately, the Renault developed a fault. Being a French car, we could not get a part for it because France was in occupation, but they were doing very nicely. Good company.
People know there’s money involved.
My father and uncle did not get on together, and after grandmother died and she died as both Jeff and myself left the company because we had to do national service after the war.
We used to call it the draft.
Conscription. We had to do two years each. Up until then from ten years old when the war stopped up to being eighteen when I had to go in, I did one year in the factory, but we are young. We are enjoying life. Shoes are not important. Girls are more important. Play and sports are important. All these things are much more important than thinking about a business, and we didn’t know too much about the business. We carried on with life.
Two years away, your mother’s not doing the washing. She’s not making a bed, making your breakfast, and cooking the meals. You’ve got to look after yourself and you begin to think, “If I’m going to do something, it’s up to me.” You learn a lot of being self-reliant. You used to learn how to do that, and you learned a little bit more about how to get what you want if you want something.
I was very fortunate because in those days I used to play badminton. By a co-worker’s fate and it so happened I was noticed by one of the leading officers who were in charge. Half of the time I was supposed to be doing national service, I was playing badminton and enjoying life. That was great, but two years have come to an end and you have to make a decision.
The decision is normal. You go back home and do whatever. The RF, the forces, would like to keep you for a while, so they do offer different things. They offer like, “If you want, you can take the officer’s training course and maybe even go flying airplanes and things like that.” I thought, “Maybe don’t. Maybe I better go home and go back into the factory and the family business.”
Jeff was two years older than me. He was my brother. He was a cofounder. We come back and we see a failing company. We see that grandma died and now my father and uncle didn’t speak with each other. If they did, they usually ended up in a fight in more than one occasion. On one occasion, Jeff and myself had to drag them apart. Literally fistfight.
As you can imagine, they are 50% each of a company that we are now working in. I used to say to Father, “We have got to do something because this company is not going anywhere.” He would say, “When your uncle’s gone and I’m gone, this is your company. You can do what you like with it.” “Dad, this company will be dead long before you and we don’t want you to go. That’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about the future. We’d like you to be there.” It didn’t make any difference. I don’t know whether two World Wars or the fact that my father and uncle couldn’t get on, whether that was too much and we’re happy with whatever money came in, that was okay for them.
It sounds like your grandfather was the visionary, but it’s interesting because a lot of my work is I work with cofounders when they are doing what your uncle and your dad did. Killing each other and the business.
This is no different than Adidas. Addy Dassler and Rudy Dassler. They were the same. They couldn’t get on. They fought, but they had a little bit more intelligence and Rudy left the Dassler company and set up Puma. He set up Puma and Addy Dassler kept on with the company Adidas. They remained hostile to each other. All the lives both added Addy Dassler and Rudy Dassler. Adidas on one side of the river and Puma on the other side of the river.
You and your brother come back with clarity when you’ve been away. You see that they are killing each other and they are destroying the business in the process. It sounds like you feel there is somewhat of a sense of urgency and your father’s like, “When we are dead, you can have it,” but you feel like there will be nothing left to be had.
There will be nothing left at all. It would die. We could see it dying. Jeff and I tried to persuade my father to come and set up a separate company, but no. He didn’t want to know. We got together with the little money we had. We set up a very small factory. In November 1958, we left the family company and set up our small company in the next town, Barry, and we called it Mercury Sports Footwear.
One quick question. You tell us about Mercury because I do want to hear about that. How did your father take the news that his two sons were leaving the company and setting up another one? Was he freaking out? Was he didn’t care? I would imagine you were the heir apparent to the company, no?
Yes. Jeff and I would have inherited the company. How does he take it? He didn’t take it very well. Although Jeff was older than me, I was looked on as the rebel. The one who would, say, same word as he should say and do this thing. It was up to me that I went into the office and I said, “Jeff and myself were leaving,” and he ignored me.
I said, “Did you hear me? We are leaving.” At the end of the day, Friday end of the week, and we were leaving that day. He did turn to face me and he picked up a letter. He’s coming towards me with a letter. I’m wondering what he is going to do with this letter, but all he did is he held his hand out and gave it to me and said, “Stab me now.” It’s hard to say exactly what it feels. More or less, what I said is, “This is stupid,” and I put the letter down, turned around and walked out. That was how we left the company.
He was basically saying you are killing him. Did it give you pause to leave or you and Jeff made your mind up?
If you consider that sensory came back from national service, for a period of two and a half years, we had been saying, “We have got to change. You’ve got to come with us. We have got to do something.” He must have known that we were going to leave or something would happen, or he didn’t take that in. Maybe he thought that was us being dramatic or me being dramatic, whatever it is.
We did. He didn’t take it well. The Foster company closed down. My uncle died within twelve months of us leaving, which meant that my father had all the business. He didn’t close it down. What happened is the local authority decided they wanted that area to build what is now Bolton University. They purchased the property. It was compulsory purchase on the property.
Is it like in the States like we call it eminent domain? The government can come in and buy anything, no matter who’s there.
Yes. Compulsive purchase, we call it in the UK. They took over the property and gave him what they thought was value for it. From that point, the J.W. Foster business stopped. My father opened a small sports shop and for the rest of his life, he ran this small sports shop. Eventually, we bought all the Foster company, and it became part of Reebok, but we’d set up Mercury Sports Footwear. That’s when our challenges started.
One more question. Were you and your brother able to keep a personal relationship with your father or were you cut off when you left the business?
Funny enough, I was married and I had left home, but my brother, Jeff, older than me, still lived at home. As I say, I was accused of being one of the rebel. I’m accused of taking my brother away as well. I persuaded Jeff, “We have got to leave.” Fortunately for Jeff, he didn’t get blamed for this. He was still living at home, but I was the one who’d done this and was an outcast by that time.
It took about two years for my father to come around and we did get together again. I’m not saying forgiven was the word, but acceptance was more the word. Accepted the fact. By the time we got together, the Reebok company had started to grow, but we had started off as Mercury and that was our first challenge. I’m an accountant. As we were doing nice, our accountant said, “You better register your name.” We were a bit naïve and young. We didn’t understand why we needed to register our names. You needed to register Mercury.
We said, “Why do I need to do that?” He told us, “If other people might use this, they think that the Mercury shoes are looking pretty good and they start making Mercury, you are going to have a problem as to who owns the name.” We tried. I said, “How do I do that?” He said, “You go and see a patent agent.” He gave me the name of somebody in Manchester, which was local to us. He said, “They will do the registering of the name.”
That would be a trademark attorney.
You probably called it trademark attorney. We’d call them patent agent. They did the same thing. I went along to see him and told him what we wanted. He said, “We’ll do that.” It took him about seven days or so because he searched the register and came up that it was already registered. Mercury was preregistered by British shoe corporation, and they were massive. They were a big corporation.
He’d already checked things out with them and said, “They have got it registered but are not using it. You can buy it from them for £1,000. We set up a whole company for £250. Machinery and everything. The whole thing for £250. I said, “We haven’t got that money. We did not have £1,000 in the bank. We’re too young. The bank will not lend that money without collateral, and we don’t have collateral.”
He said, “If you can’t buy it, you could take them to court because they are not using it, you could take them to court and you could claim it.” “How much would that cost us?” He said, “About £1,000.” Catch-22. Which way do you go? He said, “If you can’t do that, you got to find me another name,” which was a bit destroying. We were eighteen months down the road.
How many years? Eight. Mercury, how did you come up with that name? That was a God, right?
Mercury is a winged messenger. He has wings on his heels. He holds a torch. It was very relevant. We are a running company. This sounds pretty good, Mercury. Mercury, a winged messenger, was our logo. We were happy with that. I went back to the office and we were sitting down pretty well destroyed, but the patent agent said, “Don’t bring me one name. Bring me ten.”
Ten names. I’m saying to him, “How do we do now?” We sit down and we round the table and thinking Cougar. We come up with Cougar Sports. That sounds pretty good, Cougar. We came up with a lot more names, either animals or birds and we had all this list. I’m going to take you back now to 1943. We were now sitting in 1960, but let me take you back to 1943.
1943, I was eight years old, and this was right in the middle of World War II. A bit like COVID, people couldn’t go anywhere. The holidays at the Seaside, no. There were out. You couldn’t get petrol. They had these stay-at-home athletic meetings, and my father had entered me into an 80 yards race, an 80-yard sprint and it was a handicap race.
I had a bit of a lead on this, but only 8 and under 10 or whatever it was. The biggest advantage I had is I was wearing foster spiked running shoes. If you can imagine, during the war, who else would be wearing spiked running shoes? Nobody. That was my secret weapon, and I won the race. I won the race and I went up for my prize. What was my prize? My prize was a dictionary and somewhat protesting. I said, “Where’s the football? What can I do with the dictionary?” Also, the fact is, it was an American dictionary. The spellings in there.
The Americans don’t use the letter U. Color is C, O, L, O, R. In the UK, color is C, O, L, O, U, R, and same with labor, so a lot of the spellings are different. At the time, I probably used it as a football. I probably was so disgusted by the fact we have given the dictionary. Now we come back to 1960, and here’s my dictionary sitting by my side. I liked the letter R. For whatever reason, R seemed a strong letter to me.
That’s interesting. I’d never heard anybody think of a letter as strong.
There you go. It’s the first. I felt it was a good letter. I opened up my dictionary at the letter R and I started leafing through. It’s not long before I come across Reebok. What’s that? What’s Reebok? It’s a small South African gazelle. We are a running company. A gazelle. That’s it. Reebok. Top of the list. We then had a list of ten, but Reebok was at the top. I went back to the patent agent and I said, “This has got to be our life. We have got to be in love with this. This is our emotion and here are ten names, but the one I want is this one, Reebok. It’s got to be Reebok.” He’s a lawyer. Does he care? No.
A Reebok is a small South African Gazelle, the perfect name for a running company.
However, two weeks later, he’d searched all these names out and he called me on the phone and said, “You’ve got your wish.” The only one that’s clear. There are a couple of things on it, but what’s clear is Reebok. Phonetically we have two problems. One is Rebow and they make ladies’ underwear. He said, “We don’t think that they will even consider that Reebok is a problem.” The other one is Rail Brook. Rail Brook is a name for a shirt which is a large local company. We are making this ship called Rail Brook.
He said, “I’m also their patent agent,” so we won’t complain. That was it. He said, “There’s one caveat here that the register is raised. If somebody comes along and starts making shoes out of Reebok skin, you can’t stop them.” Jeff and I sat there and said, “That’s never going to happen. Nobody is going to do that. No. That’s it.” “Okay. You can have your name,” but because of that, the registrar said, “We are going to put you in the B section of the register.”
I thought it was a register. I didn’t know there was an A or B section or whatever. That puts Reebok. It was our name in the B section. We didn’t believe anybody would make a shoe out of reebok skin anyway, or anybody would be allowed to make a shoe out of reebok skin. However, ten years later, the registrar came back to us and said, “We moved you from the B section to the A section,” and we said, “Why is that?” “Everybody now knows Reebok as a sports shoe, not as an animal.” We moved into the A section of the register. That’s how it became Reebok.
People know Reebok more as a sports shoe than an animal.
What year was that when it moved from B to A?
We are talking ‘60s. We are probably in the early ’70s.
Who was your competition at the time?
In the UK, we had 2 or 3. We call them shoemakers. Shoemakers who made running shoes. They weren’t in the sports industry. This made running shoes as they made soccer boots. They did that, but they were not in the sport. We were so much involved in sports. We used to go to events. We used to involve a lot of people.
We were in the sports industry and for us, there was nobody. They didn’t compete with us. They made shoes and sold them through sport shops. That’s all they were doing because we were very much involved with the sporting side of sports in general. We were very much involved. We advertised in sports magazines. They weren’t out there.
I can remember one called Kingswell. There were about three others in the UK. Apart from that, we were talking about Adidas because Addy does. Jeff, during his national service, had done it in Germany, and he’d seen Adidas and Puma. They were making their way into the UK as well. We recognized the fact that probably our stiffest competition was Adidas and the next one would be Puma. The advantage we had at that moment in time was that we were in the North of England and in the North of England, athletic clubs competed in fell racing, which is racing uphill.
We call that here cross-country.
We are cross-country as well.
Maybe this is different.
Fell running is running up mountains as against over country. It’s fairly extreme. It takes them probably 20 minutes to get up and 5 minutes to come down. They run down that fast. It’s very dangerous running that fast. We had that. We also have the rugby league. Rugby league was in the North of England. Whilst rugby union was more known, rugby boots made by Adidas would be more union, but I knew all the rugby league teams.
We built a nice business with track and field because that’s what running was in our day. Track and field apart from country and we had cross-country. We had fell running and we got the rugby league. We had a nice business, but the one business that we were not in was soccer. Believe it or not, but my grandfather made boots and training shoes for all the soccer teams. He made boots for all the soccer teams in the United Kingdom. I don’t know if you know anything about soccer.
I believe it is the most popular sport in the world, except in the States. The whole world shuts down every four years for the World’s Cup. People die if their team loses.
More or less, yes. The top teams there, we would say, is Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, and all these top teams wore J.W. Foster boots. He made them for all these teams, and yet this is one area that my father and uncle lost. They lost that in this period between taking over.
To a competitor or they stopped doing it?
They lost it to Adidas. By the time Jeff and I left the company and set up Mercury, it was too expensive to get into the soccer market. They were too well-entrenched and they had the top players. Reebok was then well-known in the athletic side, in track and field. We had a good position, but in terms of sport, in general, it was a small sport.
The crown jewel would be if you had soccer or football, you’d be good.
That was it. We’d be good. Knowing we couldn’t get soccer, it would be too expensive to get in there. My eyes then went to America USA because of Frank Ryan. He was getting a bit older whilst he’d imported Fosters. He now lost his interest in that business, so he wouldn’t be taking Reebok.
Was he out of Oregon? I’m trying to remember where he ran.
I don’t know his origins, but he was at Yale University, so he was at New Haven.
You come across the pond to the capitalism galore.
I knew that every university and every college had a coach. You could go to a university on a sports scholarship. I knew it was very big and had met up with Frank Ryan. This was a massive market. For me to expand the company, I thought the best way is to have a look and even go to America. I had my brother, who was a 50/50 partner. We had wives and you can’t do that. It’s too expensive. How do you go across to America? That’s the NSGA show. The National Sporting Goods of America in Chicago. The show is every year in February.
What’s the year?
We are talking about 1966 or 1967.
Before Title IX.
However, I got that resistance. No, we can’t do that. We got to think of something else, but there was a magazine. A magazine called Euro Sport. The British government was advertising in this magazine, and they wanted us to export, and they said, “We will pay for your effort. We will also pay for the stand at the NSGA Show, and we’ll pay for half of your expenses while you are there.” No resistance. It was cheaper for me back home. No resistance. You can go. No problem.
This is 1968, and my first trip to America was in 1968. I went with a friend. I had a friend who has a lot of outdoor stores and one of the things we are doing is we are making him a rock-climbing boot. I’m making a rock-climbing boot for Brigham company. I was good friends with him at the time. I said, “I’m going over to America with this. Do you want to come?” Bob says, “I will come along, fine.”
The boot we were making for him was thinking of doing wholesale on that one and selling it around and maybe doing some export. I don’t know why we did this, but we got a budget ticket to go to America, which you had to stay for fourteen days, because if you went city to city, and you stayed fourteen days, you got a very good price. I still don’t know why we did that since the government were paying.
You said Chicago, yes?
First of all, we went to New York.
As we said earlier, according to me, it’s the center of the universe.
Bob went to have a look at outdoor stores. I went to have a look at sports stores and see how they were, what they were selling, and who was big there. I remember almost every meal that went to Tat Steak Bar. I don’t know if you ever remember Tat Steak Bar, but for $1.50, you could get a big steak. A big potato with a big slab of butter.
That was New York, but then we traveled to Chicago. We went to the exhibition there at the NSGA show. I have got my running shoes and Bob has his climbing boot. I didn’t get an order for my running shoes, but Bob did get an order for his climbing boot which was pretty good. The running shoes. The guys come along saying, “Great. I love your shoe. Where do we get this from?” I’m saying, “From England.” They said to me, “Is that New England?” “England across the water.” “London. That’s the place. London.” “Yes.” “I love the shoes.”
All I could say is, “When you get somebody over here and you’ve got a distributor, we would love to try your shoe.” Meanwhile, people like Frank Shorter and Bill Rogers. I don’t know if you remember those names. They were leading runners. We’d have to supply them. They’d come. They wanted our shoes. We supplied Bill Rogers and Frank Shorter.
I was wondering when you were going to tell me about the marquee names that wore them because you learned that from your grandfather, right?
Yes. We had these runners, but I couldn’t get them. Now, this is 1968 and I’m trying hard to get into the American market. Luckily the British government paid my airfare and all my expenses and they are providing me with a stand. When am I getting there? When do I make it? I made it in 1979. It took eleven years to get in
Why? Is it because you weren’t manufacturing it in the States?
I don’t think it’s manufacturing. We didn’t have distribution. I tried to get distribution. I had six different attempts to get distribution and they all failed. One of the guys in Philadelphia, I was four years with him trying to get a product into the States. Why did we get in 1979? I don’t know if you have heard of Runner’s World magazine.
I believe they still exist. I think I might have it in my house.
They probably do exist. I don’t think Bob Anderson owns it anymore. Bob Anderson retired from it and sold it, but Bob Anderson set up Runner’s World.
How did you meet him?
We were in the running business. We kept our eyes out for what was going on. Bob Anderson set up his Runner’s World in, probably, ’69 or ‘70 as a single four-page. By 1975, that was a glossy magazine, 50, 60, to 70 pages telling you who won these races, where the next races were, and running had become a big category.
All of a sudden by 1975, America wanted to go out there, get fit, and run.
All of a sudden, all of America wanted to get out there and get fit. Get out there and run. Bob Anderson is telling where the next 5K, 10K, half marathon, or full marathon, the whole thing, he can in his magazine. You advertise in that magazine. We advertise in that magazine. However, it was an expensive magazine to advertising, but we advertised and the market grew.
Nike came along, and Nike grew with Runner’s World. Nike grew as well. We were over in England. Again, how do we get into that market? How do we get there? We had the product. We knew that our product would work, but it was finding that distributor. As I said, I had six different distributors, all trying to get into the market. Bob Anderson had all these people buying his magazine. If you think 350 million Americans, maybe 10%, 35 million were out there buying shoes and running.
Pre-internet. The only place to get the information.
Bob Anderson decided that he could tell everybody which was the best or the number one shoe that they should buy, which he did and that’s Nike. Nike was up the road from him in Oregon. He’s down in San Francisco, Los Altos. That’s great, but Phil Knight has important issues from Japan, Asia. All of a sudden, 3 million or more Americans want to want to buy that shoe, and he couldn’t turn up production.
He meant, “I need this production,” and he couldn’t get it. By the time he’d got the production working, Bob Anderson said, “We probably say there’s another shoe now, which is number one.” He did all these so-called tests and he came up with another shoe. I can’t tell you whether that was it. Possibly New Balance, maybe Altra or Brooks, whatever it was, but he came up with another shoe.
It certainly wasn’t Nike on the second attempt, but the same happened because these guys are making the shoes. Not in America. They couldn’t turn up production. All the time, the retail trade, the footlockers, they couldn’t get the product. I don’t know who told or who worked with Bob Anderson, but he changed it and he changed it. Instead of it being this is the number one shoe to buy, he changed to star rating. If you had a five-star shoe, that would be number one, but you could have 4 or 5-star shoes.
The rest is history.
Yeah. That was the time that I knew we could make a five-star shoe. We knew what everybody was making. We knew how Bob Anderson and we’d met Bob Anderson. I’d taken the trip over to Los Altos and we’d sat down and had a chat and we’d talk about this. That was a good move because that made him very much aware of Reebok as well as everything else.
You know it was a good move too.
When the star rate came out, we did get a five-star shoe. Previous to that, I’m talking about 1979. I’m in Chicago, ‘79, February. Cold, always cold in February. It came out. Kmart. By that time, running was so big. That came out and was so interested. They wanted a running shoe. I can still remember his name. He came along and he said, “We like to buy 25,000 pairs of shoes.” “Really?” “We want 25,000 pairs.” They wanted a running product. He said, “We need a better price.”
Back then, Reebok was a 5-star shoe in Runner’s World Magazine.
Was that your biggest order at the time?
Yes. I never had 25,000. He said, “I need a better price for that.” I knew, at that point, two things. I knew that if we had got a five-star shoe, we would need production beyond what our factory in the UK could do. I had a friend who worked for Bata. Do you remember Bata?
No, I don’t.
Funny enough, they are still the biggest shoemakers in the world. In the UK, in the USA, every high street had a Bata, but they made street shoes. As such, over a period of time, they have disappeared. They are very big in Latin America and they are very big in India. The best and probably the only shoe museum in the world is the Bata Museum which is in Toronto.
I knew the guy had gone to set up a Bata sports shoe division. I met him and he was happy. He said, “If you get five-star shoes, we’ll help you at Bata.” That was good, but while Bata could make them cheaper, then I could make them. This is not what Kmart wanted. The Kmart wanted Far East prices, which meant we had to go to South Korea.
Freethinking the idea that we might get a five-star shoe. We might get volume. I had made contacts with a company that were representing the biggest shoe manufacturers in South Korea. I’ve got a couple of things covered. He wanted a better price. We can work on that one. Fine. Towards the end of the show, the last day I was there, along came Paul Fireman. Have you heard of Paul Fireman?
Yes. I’m trying to place the name. That wasn’t the Nike guy, was it?
No. That was Phil Knight. Paul Fireman was running a company in Boston called Boston Camping. I think he inherited it from his father, but he was running it with his brother and his brother-in-law. I got on one with Paul. We spoke the same language, and he’d been doing this for ten years. He’d been running this company for ten years, and I think it was like the fish running around the bull. He was going nowhere. They said, “You get a five-star shoe and I’d love to be your distributor.” I said, “Paul, come on. Have a look at this one.”
I took him to show him our Aztec shoe. I said, “I’m sure this has got to be a five-star shoe,” and he said, “Okay, but it isn’t, is it yet?” “No, it’s not yet.” He says, “If you get that five-star, I’m your man.” “Paul, it’s a deal.” We then all went home. Paul went back to Boston, and I went back to the UK. We are talking now February and the shoe edition for Runner’s World doesn’t come out until the end of July. The August edition is the shoe edition. That’s quite a time between then.
I took a trip back to America to Kmart. I went into reception at Kmart and said, “Can I see the buyer because he saw me at the NSGA Show, and he wants to order some shoes.” The girl took me through to a big room. There must have been 100 desks in the room. She pointed him out and I thought, “Okay.”
I went and we sat and we had a conversation and it was great. I figured all these people are buyers for Kmart. Twenty-five thousand pairs is a lot of shoes, but it might have been my first and last order because I’m sure they judge how good the product is by the square footage they gave me and how much that square footage would bring them money. I left on good terms. No problem. I took the next flight to Boston and went to see Paul Fireman and he has a nice operation there. He had a salesman. He got everything. This would be great.
He had a corner office.
We could build this onto his outdoor business. Outdoor, they’re different stores than sports stores, but they are in the same area. I go back, but during the last week of July, I picked up the phone to him and said, “Get down to a local kiosk, please, and have a look at Runner’s World Shoe Edition. It is out.” Nobody tells you when you’ve got five stars. You’ve got to get the magazine, and the magazine didn’t appear in the UK until at least a week after it appeared in America.
I’m sitting there for an hour and yes, an hour later, the phone rings. The secretary said, “It’s Paul Fireman for you.” He said, “Aztec, it’s five stars.” That was it. We just struck gold. He said, “Not only did Aztec get five stars, but Midas, which is your racing shoe, got five stars, and Inca, which is your spiked track shoe, that got five stars.” We got three five-star shoes. That was the difference from trying to push into America because once the five-star shoes were our shoes wanted. There was demand. It changed everything. Paul had three five-star shoes to go with, although he only went with the one which was the volume one, which was Aztec, the world’s training shoe.
That was the one that you teed up to him too. That’s why he probably went with it.
That’s it. We did get it. That was the one. The three shoes, it was the gold range. The gold range was Aztec, Inca, and Midas. That was our gold range and we’d tried that out a year before. At the Edmonton Commonwealth Games in Canada, we got a shed load of gold medals and good results from that. We were pretty confident we had a good shoe, and that’s how we got it. That’s where we arrived in America in 1979 as Reebok, but that didn’t make our money. That didn’t make Reebok big. That happened with aerobics.
The craze in the ’80s, correct? Was it a specific instructor? Was it Jane Fonda? I’m trying to think of, but tell us.
Jane Fonda creeps in there.
I was doing aerobics then.
You were into aerobics then. We had a technical rep selling our running shoes in Los Angeles. That was the heart for us. His name is Arnold Martinez. He was a tech rep and his wife, Frankie. She was going to these classes and coming back with her friends and they were following. “Great stuff,” and I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “We are doing aerobics.” “What’s aerobics?” “We are exercising to music and it’s fantastic.” Arnold said, “Can I come and start to have a look at your next class that you go to?” “Yeah. Why not?” He did. Arnold is at the class.
He was the only guy in the room at the time.
Yes. A good place to be. The instructor was wearing a pair of sneakers and we think there were New Balance sneakers, all white, and half the class was wearing the same sneaker. The other half, they were barefoot. This was Arnold’s light bulb moment. Arnold was a clever guy. He did a lot of good things, but this was a light bulb moment and he thought, “Why don’t we make a shoe specifically for aerobics, but specifically for women? On women’s sizes and make it out of glove leather.” What an idea.
He was on the next plane to Boston. “I must go and see Paul Fireman. He’s our distributor.” He went to Paul. He explained everything to Paul, and Paul said, “Slow down. We are a running company. Why do we want to make dancing shoes for girls?” “It’s going to be big. Keep your eye on it.” This didn’t satisfy Arnold at all. Arnold went round to the back door. We are only quite small still.
He went round to the back door and he met up with Steve. Steve was in charge of production at that point. He made a better job with Steve than he did with Paul because Steve got him 200 pairs samples of shoes made to his spec. Glove leather. Great. He took them back down to Los Angeles and gave them to instructors and some of the real lead-in girls down there were doing aerobics and they were in love.
If you get a woman to like your product, women talk. They tell all the other women, “Where’d you get that?” We are the best networkers on the planet.
Absolutely, but we had a problem. The problem is it’s made of glove leather and glove leather is 0.7 of a millimeter thick, and then you’ve got to take the surface off so you can allow the adhesive when you are sticking the sole on. You have probably 0.5 millimeters, and it won’t stand jumping up and down and bouncing. It started to rip away. Had that been in any other part of the world, Reebok would have died at that moment. However, the women loved it. It was fabulous. They didn’t care. “We are going to buy another pair.”
We had to answer the problem. We did it in numerous ways, but eventually, we ended up with more like garment leather than glove leather. It was still soft, nice, and wonderful, and then this is where Jane Fonda comes in. She saw this and she went and bought a pair and started to use them in her exercise videos. At that point, explosion.
We were a $9 million business at that time. In four years’ time, we were nearly $900 million. That was the growth. Although financing it at first was difficult, but we did find Stephen Rubin. He was a sourcing company, ASCO. He was a sourcing company out of South Korea. What we needed was a credit line. We needed something big.
He gave us the credit line, took a piece of the company, but the company grew and it grew very fast. That wasn’t the problem, but we went from $9 million to $30 million to $90 million to $300 million to $900 million, and it’s how you get from $300 million to $900 million with a product. It was getting the product that was the problem because, as Phil Knight had found out in trying to get his product when the demand was to turn up to get the manufacturing, to do it was difficult.
It so happened that Nike, by this time, was a big company, but they ran into a wall. Companies do this. All of a sudden, the demand dropped. Just as we wanted to get from $300 million to $900 million, we needed production. Nike pulled out of about three factories in South Korea and we moved straight in. That’s luck.
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
Yes, but somebody else needs to be unlucky. Nike came out and Reebok went in. We continued to grow. We are nearly $1 billion. We grew up to $4 billion, and when we got $4 billion, that’s when I retired. I’m going to use Serena Williams for this one. She’s not retired from tennis. We have stepped back.
She’s evolving, and your brother?
My brother, we got news of the five-star Aztec. Unfortunately, my brother got cancer and died as we got there. It was a problem and not a problem because we were moving away from our own small factory. We had to go into the Far East, but he would have done that. He would have gone to the Far East. In between that, I mentioned Bata. Bata made the first 20,000 pairs of Reebok Aztec shoes, and they made them in the UK. If you’ve remembered the book, you should read the book. Unfortunately, they got it wrong.
Let’s talk about the book.
That’s why I’m talking to you now. It’s because apart from being the Cofounder of Reebok, I became an author. With a bit of help because you need help with these things. Shoemakers are not good at writing stories. They are good at telling stories. I wrote the book Shoemaker.
You referenced Shoemaker several times.
We are in about ten languages now. We are in Spanish, Chinese, and Bulgarian. We are in Ukrainian, of all things. We’re in a lot of languages. French, yes. A lot of people are reading this book and they are asking questions. “Why did you write the book? Why did you wait so long to write the book?” I stepped back from Reebok in 1989. The reason I stepped back was, by that time, $4 billion, we had so many lawyers.
Were you the sole owner when your brother passed?
Not at that time. There were so many people in the company. I was more or less an ambassador. After putting Paul Fireman on in USA, Canada, and Mexico, we decided to put that together. I put another 30 countries around the world as a distributor. My job was flying around the world, building the international distribution.
At the end of ‘89, I’d been doing this certainly continuously for about ten years, and I thought, “Flying up 35,000 feet for so much, I was doing it.” Wherever I arrived, I was picked up by a limousine. I went down to the best hotels and dined at the best restaurants and talked. I was also hosting the Pro-Celebrity Tennis tournament in Monaco, Monte Carlo.
At that time, we had all the stars from Hollywood because a lot of the stars, certainly the women, had bought the shoes. By that time, we were also into tennis. We were into American football. We were also into basketball with Shaquille O’Neal and a lot of them. I was hosting this in Monte Carlo and I have got some names here. John Forsythe, Linda Evans, Joan Collins. They were all in Dynasty.
Frank Sinatra, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Jane Seymour, Chuck Norris, Robert De Niro, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Hamill, Dolph Lundgren, Robert Wagner, and Jill St. John, all these people that I was hosting in Monte Carlo. Being with the A-list was great, but this won’t go on forever, and I have made the decision to step back, so step back I did.
Step back when you are on top.
The phone didn’t stop ringing because it was always, “What happened to this? What do we do here?” I even got a phone call from the IRS. They wanted to know why America is paying a royalty to the UK. A lot of those things happened, but I decided to step back. I’m okay. I’m relaxing and I’m in Tenerife at the time, which is nice, where you get some sunshine. World Wide Web, computers, smartphones, Wikipedia, and Google came along. I’m reading Wikipedia and Google, and they are telling me how Reebok started. I’m reading all this and there was even a photograph of Joe Foster.
It may have been Joe Foster, but it certainly wasn’t me. It took a bit, and then I go to the point where people said, “Why don’t you write your story anyway?” This convinced me. The only way I would get the word straight is to write the book. I sat down and started writing the book and that’s how Shoemaker came out.
The only way to get your word straight is to write a book.
How long did it take you to write?
About five years. Have you written a book?
Two best sellers.
Are they about your life?
Not specifically. One is for women in business called Not Tonight Dear, I’ve Got a Business to Run! Enrich Your Marriage While Prospering in Your Business and it teaches women how to create a business plan and a family plan. Another book on teaching women about negotiation. I’m not famous like you. I don’t have the story to tell.
I don’t consider myself famous because it was all about Reebok. It wasn’t about Joe Foster. Nobody knows Joe Foster. We are selling Joe Foster now. That’s what we are doing now.
They will know Joe Foster after this show, for sure.
We will be in America. We are in North Carolina, and then 2023, we have got sixteen cities that we are going to go to. We will be having a big tour. Will get between on a bit more in America.
Maybe I will get the opportunity to meet the real Joe Foster.
We should. There are a lot of people. As I say, I’m getting phone calls from a lot of people.
It took you five years. You asked me because it was a personal story. What was it that made it took so long?
It’s the chronology, to get the chronology right. When you do this, you ask a few questions. You read some things and you find out more, and you remember more. You do a draft and then you think, “I was doing this as well. How do I put that in?” I needed to get some help on how does this run as a story.
It has to be entertaining.
To get some color. I wrote it and then I got help to color it in. I don’t think you put in more enough emotion in it, to begin with. You tend to say, “We did this and we did that.”
That’s what I read for, what you are feeling, what’s going on behind the scenes when you take a risk. That’s what you said earlier. They wanted 25,000. I’m like, “You must have been doing the Irish Jig. Twenty-five thousand.”
Those moments are incredible. It’s having fun as well. You’ve got to enjoy it, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t enjoy it because people say to me, “How did you manage to do eleven years from start to go to America, to get into America? Why didn’t you give up? Why didn’t you say, ‘This isn’t working?’” The answer to that is you are having fun. It’s enjoyment, even though you know you are going to do it. It’s like the race isn’t over until you’ve won. There can be many parts along the way. You are not winning but it’s not over until you’ve won.
Grit and resilience.
You’ve got to have that attitude to do it. I look now because people are saying, “Is there a difference from what you were doing?” I said, “It’s totally different.” We were with some people and all they do is they will arrange marketing, money, and everything. They will even support you to get it. All these things. I only had the bank and the bank wouldn’t lend money unless you had collateral or unless you were able to do something. They will take small risks. Now, you don’t look at banks. Now there’s everybody else that will fund you.
Crowdsource.
I look now at the retail. When I was younger and starting to sell, I used to go to small sports shops all through the UK. Small sports shops were run by ex-soccer players, ex-athletes, and whatever. Now they don’t exist. Now the big, almost conglomerates, the retailer. I mentioned Stephen Rubin, they own the company which is JD Sports and JD Sports own a lot of retailers in America. They are a £7 billion company. They are very big and that’s retail. The retailers I used to see would be lucky if they turned over £100,000 in a year. It’s now grown. This, again, is luck because now you look around and you look at people and they are all wearing something which is sports.
I will tell you a very funny story. When I grew up, I was the first girl on my block in Brooklyn to wear sneakers, and it was scandalous. It was the black high-top Converse because they didn’t have girl sneakers. I wanted to play basketball and there was nothing else to wear, but it was a scandal. It was hard.
I remember when women went from wearing skirts to pants. We don’t think of it at that time, but you are right. Sportswear has become casual wear. I have sneakers on right now. I remember there was a time. Pre-COVID, I never would have worn sneakers to work, even if I’m working in my closet. It doesn’t matter. It’s the whole mindset shift.
There’s been a big shift because right now, we are all fashion brands. Nike, Adidas, and Reebok, you name them. They are all fashion brands now. At one time, Nike wouldn’t have the word fashion ever spoken in its campus. You don’t talk about fashion. We are performance, but now, we are all fashion. That’s the way the volume is, but you look at Nike and they are over $20 billion now. I think Adidas is around $15 billion to $16 billion.
Let me try to wrap this up. You’ve been so generous with your time. A couple of questions. What do you miss the most about the business?
I don’t think I miss anything because people say, “You are not with Reebok.” “No, but I’m the founder, and as a founder, you can’t change a founder.”
It’s in your DNA.
You can’t invent a new founder. A founder is the founder. It’s only ever happens when you found it. What would I miss? I’m enjoying Reebok as much now as ever because now, with ABG, they have bought it and taken it away from the big shadow of Adidas. We are not out in the open again. There’s tremendous excitement when ABG bought it, we are about $1.5 billion in revenue, and they paid $2.5 billion for it.
They are looking for $5 billion by the end of 2023, and they will get that because of exposure. All of a sudden, Reebok is going to be seen globally as it’s not been seen for a long time, if ever. There’s tremendous time and tremendous opportunities. I’m very excited. Now we have brought out Shoemaker, which is telling the story. It’s getting more and more exciting now because people want to know about it.
They want to know about the real Joe Foster.
Yes. They want to know, “Why did he do that? How did this happen?” I’m learning more. I’m learning more about, “Yes, we did that.” There are so many things that you forget that over time, and certainly, since writing the book, these things come back. I remember being with so and so and doing this. I remember being in LA and I remember going to Ginger Rogers’s house. I’m going up into a dance studio and thinking, “This is incredible. Here I am now in Ginger Rogers’ house.” Those sorts of things come back and you remember.
It sounds like you are still living it, which is awesome. What is the one major, most important takeaway you want people to get from the book and from your career?
I want them to understand that in order to do what we did, we had to enjoy it. We had to have fun. For anybody in a business as an entrepreneur, you’ve got to be optimistic, but you’ve got to have fun and you’ve got to accept luck. If you get your luck, you’ve got to accept it. You do make your own luck. I was talking to this guy. He’s an author in New York and I was talking to him about luck and he said he believes in luck. He said, “It’s because I was born in New York. I think I’m lucky.” Think if you were born in Ukraine or if you were born somewhere. Luck is there.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got to be optimistic, have fun, and accept luck.
You said that people have to accept it when it comes their way. Do you think people don’t accept luck when it comes their way?
I think a lot of people miss opportunities. Opportunities come and drift away. This is the risk taken. You are not gambling. You are taking a risk on the fact that this will happen.
A calculated risk.
It’s lucky in some ways. It does have. Whilst I agree with everybody that being prepared for when the opportunity arises is one way of saying it, making your own luck is another way, but I do accept the fact that on occasions, there’s no real answer for how did this happen to me.
It’s like when Nike left the factories. Last question. What is the one song that you couldn’t live without?
I’m not deep into music, but the one song that probably lives with me now is Benny Goodman, Sing, Sing, Sing because it has energy. I have always liked the jazz side of music. I’m not too much into songs with lots of words and meanings, but Sing, Sing, Sing is something. Any day when I hear that, I can feel the energy.
It resonates with you.
It resonates very much. Yes.
Where can people find out more about you and purchase your book? Where would you like them go to learn more about Shoemaker, Joe Foster, and Reebok? Where would you like to send people?
The easiest one is simply Amazon. On Amazon, you can get the book and there are many other places. We are in quite a few of the stores, but Amazon is the easy one. You can get it on audio. You can get it on Kindle or you can buy the book itself. I find a lot of people now want the audio version. They love it when they are driving to work or when they are doing something that doesn’t require attention. We have all those and you can buy this through Amazon. That’s the simplest way.
Thank you so much. This was incredible. You’ve been so generous with your time. I appreciate it. You’ve imparted so much wisdom. I can’t wait to get the book to have the readers get their book and be carrying Joe Foster around with them even more. That concludes this episode of the show. As promised, you will never look at a pair of sneakers the same way ever again after this interview with Joe Foster, the Cofounder of Reebok. As I promised, you would love this show. Make sure you like, comment, share, and subscribe, and until next time, be well.
Important Links
- Reebok
- Shoemaker
- Not Tonight Dear, I’ve Got a Business to Run! Enrich Your Marriage While Prospering in Your Business
- https://www.Twitter.com/reebokfounder
- https://www.Instagram.com/reebokthefounder
- https://www.JWFosterHeritage.com/
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/joe-foster-a38a4b10b/
About Joe Foster
Joe founded Reebok in 1958 with his late brother Jeff, following their family heritage back to 1895. Joe’s Grandfather, also Joseph W Foster, pioneered the spiked running shoe and famously made shoes for the Worlds best athletes of the early 20th century, with World records and Olympics Gold Medals.
