How Reebok became a Billion Dollar company | Reebok Co-Founder Joe Foster

We'd only been in our business about four years when a letter arrived from the lawyers of Adidas. Adidas had three stripes. We were using two stripes and a T bar. And they said that this was infringing their three stripes. And if we didn't assist, they would take action. Well, you know, first of all, you think, oh, then we started smiling. Wow. I just. They're already known we're here. I wanted America, that running was becoming big in America, really big. Everybody was out there putting a pair of trainers on, going out running and running was growing. And with it was this magazine, Runners World. That was, that was the break. A lot of luck, a lot of good timing, but, you know, I knew we could make a five star ship.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the 2%, where we have amazing conversations with peak performers in all walks of life to help decode excellence, to help give you the strategies, tips, tools, perhaps just inspirational stories to help you close that gap between your current and your best self. And I'm super excited today to be talking with Joe Foster. Joe is one of the co founders of Reebok. We all know that brand, mega galactic, billion dollar sports brand. And Joe is here with us today. So welcome, Joe. Real pleasure to have you.

Thank you, Eric. I'm delighted to be here with you. And hopefully we can shed some light on that 2%. Who knows?

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, Joe is referencing the, the name of the show and as a quick reminder, we call it the 2% because Abraham Maslow, the preeminent psychologist, estimated in his work that only 2% of people operate at their full potential and work in life. So the idea here is let's come up with some tips and strategies and tools to break free from the 98% and join that 2%. So we're starting right at the top there. We've used words like billion dollar. We're talking about the 2% already. Maybe we can bring things back down to earth a little bit, Joe. And maybe you could share some humbler beginnings because I know you certainly talk about that in your new book, Shoemaker, which we'll be talking about as well. Can you tell us a bit about your, your beginnings and how things started?

Well, really, when we started with Reebok, we didn't have any plans in mind. We were following a family, family history. My grandfather in 1895. Now I'm really taking it back out to 1895.

1895.

Wow. And he was just 15 years old and he made himself a pair of running shoes with Spikes in the bottom. A lot of people say he invented it. I think more he was a pioneer rather than inventor. I think most of these things are picked up because he actually picked up the idea from his grandfather. His grandfather was a cobbler repairing in the uk, repairing cricket boots. And cricket boots had spikes or studs in the bottom. And I'm pretty sure because he used to visit his grandfather, I'm pretty sure he asked him what they got spikes in the bottom for these cricket boots. And the obvious response was to give them grip when they're bowling, when they're batting, when in the field. So I think he went back with this idea and being a member of his local athletics club, thought, if I could get some spikes in the bottom of a pair of shoes, that would give me more grip and maybe that would promote me up the field. Which he did. And it promoted him up the field from being very average to becoming number two in the event that he wore his shoes. Of course, that caused a lot of interest.

I think the question was, was he cheating doing these shoes or was this the start of a business? Well, it was the start of a business. Fantastic business. And even by, well, we talk about 1895, he's 15. By the time he's 20, he had a business and he was selling his shoes not only locally but throughout the UK and in some instances throughout the what was then the British Empire. So we're talking Canada, Australia, South Africa. He was selling his shoes that far and wide. And by 1904, he had three world records in his shoes by one man, that was Al Shrubs, who on one event, a mile event, a one hour event, broke three world records in Glasgow.

So, and then it goes on. We have World War I, of course, which took away the second decade, really, you know, from 1910, but 14 to 18, it more or less blue one, but 1920s, that was his real belle Epoque. In fact, we have a replica letterhead on which it states that he supplied all the athletes in the Antwerp Olympic Games in 1920. Wow.

So he was. Okay, that's interesting. So, you know, everyone talks about influencers today, but, you know, but he was doing the influencer model, you know, 100 years ago.

Absolutely. I mean, he must have given his shoes to Al Shrub and he must. He obviously gave his shoes to the Olympians. And they got so many gold medals. Have you heard the film Chariots of Fire?

Yeah, of course, of course.

Chariots of Fire immortalizes three athletes, Eric Liddell, Harold Abrahams and Lord Burleigh. They won gold Medals. I think Liddell and Abrahams won theirs in 1924. I think that might have been in America. And then I think Lord Burleigh won his in 1928. But there were three Olympians who got gold medals and they actually got. Won the gold medals in Foster's shoes, in my grandfather's shoes. Joe Foster.

Right.

Same name as me, of course.

Yeah. So, okay, so before there was Reebok. Your family is doing a. Essentially, it sounds like predominantly focused on running shoes.

A running shoes business, not just many shoes they supplied. I think it was about 95 teams on this same letterhead, their suppliers of 95 either football teams, which you may know better as soccer, but being in the uk, know it as football. You know, we talk about Man United, Man City, Arsenal, every real football team you can mention on his letterhead, he's supplying them with training shoes and boots. But of course, we talk about influence. In those days, the influence was to other performance athletes. It hadn't gone street. Now influence is street, big street. And it was so when Jeff and I started our company in 1958. But to finish off what grandfather. Grandfather died in 1933. So he very successful, twenties, great. And his sons took over. My father and my uncle. And I wasn't born until 1935.

Right.

I happened to be born on his birthday, the 18th of May. So my grandmother, of course, who was quite a fire, he brought his name with him. So that's why I am called Joe as well. So I am called Joe. And of course, in 1935, we're just four years away from World War II, 1939 till 1945, we're in an area where it's war. No athletic shoes are being made, really. The Foster Company are repairing army boots. Had to do something. And my father was scrubbing the mud of flounders off the boots in the yard. And he used to tell that story quite often, that there was more red in there than more blood than mud. And his story was quite. Quite gory, really. But anyway, that's. So I'm 10 years old when suddenly the lights come on again. We had no street lights all through the war. No street lighting, nothing. So the lights come on. However, during the war.

We'Ve been able to look at bombs dropping on Manchester. We were slightly elevated in Bolton and it overlooked Manchester. You could see all the lights up of the flames and whatever. So that was an experience. But, you know, we're just young. You don't know any difference. That's life. That's what happens every Day this, you know, whatever. 10 years old, the lights come on again and I go to college. In fact, I do engineering at college. I don't do anything to do with athletics. But when I'm 17, I did join the J.W. foster company one year, then I'm 18. And by the time you're 18, you had to do two years of national service, so had to go off. I served in the raf and Jeff went. Even though Jeff was two years older than me, he went the same time, but he went to Germany.

Right.

He saw what's happening in Germany. Adidas Spielman. Oh, right. What they're doing, look at the improvements there they're making on the shoot. When we come back, after two years, we come back to the company. It didn't take long to look at our company, JDM Fosters, and say, this is a fair new company.

What made you think that?

Because it was still making shoes that were making in the 1930s, they'd not moved on. Life was so easy, so good. Grandfather built such a reputation that it's carried on. But of course, their orders were diminishing. They were going down. We need to get salesmen, we need to change, we need to get a plan. You know, we've got all the machinery. We need to get some new machinery, new ideas. But unfortunately, my father and uncle and I still don't know today why they just didn't get on. They were feuding. In fact, they were fighting. Literally, Jeff and I had to pull them apart on more than one occasion. From fighting about what? Again, I have no idea. And so we looked at this and thought, this is an impossible situation. We can't get them to change. So what can we do? Set up our own company. Oh, we went to college night school and we learned a lot about shoemaking because we knew what to do in the Foster's shoemaking company, which was to make running shoes with spikes in the bottom. Rugby boots. We made a lot of rugby boots, but we didn't know much about materials. So going to college was very good for us because we made friends, we made a lot of association with people who were either teaching or other people who were coming to the same classes. So when we left in 1958, with no money, really, just bits and pieces. So to set up a company, and we set up six miles down the road and the next town called Bury, which was nearer to Rossendale Valley, which was the shoemaking area of Lancashire. And when we set up that, we had to buy, and you could buy cheap machinery, but Even that was better than they had at Foster's. J.W. foster had this very old machinery and we were, we were buying secondhand machinery for, for something like 25, 30 pounds a time. Not much money at all. But you know, second and shoemaker machine, who wants it? But we did. So we set up our company and we set up our company in 1958 as Mercury Sports Footwear.

Mercury. And how did you come up with that name?

Well, I think Mercury the wing messenger. The wing messenger who carries his torch and his wing. You know, that sounded like athletics. That sounded like something good. So Mercury, of course, has this quicksilver sort of sound with it. So yeah, that was a good name. And we came up with that and that became our name for 18 months.

And then something prompted a change to the famous Reebok.

Well, yes, yes. Our accountant, our accountant said, well, look guys, you know, you're doing well, you're making some money, making some nice product. You better register your name. Ah, okay. I'm 23. Well, by that time I'm nearly 25. But we're young, you know, we look at our accountants saying, what do you mean, register our name? Why? Well, if somebody starts making shoes and they decide that that name Mercury sounds pretty good and they start making Mercury shoes, you know you're going to have trouble because you're going to have to prove it was you that started first and that's going to cost you a lot of money in court. Go register. Well, that's when we found out that Mercury was already pre registered. Oh, God. Lotus and Delta, part of British Shoe Corporation. And the annoying thing is they weren't using it. They had it registered and for shoemaking. And of course we were shoemaking, even though it was sports shoes, they had it registered and they offered it to us for a thousand pounds. But you know, if somebody offered you for something for say, half a million, would you say, just a minute. Not got that spur. At the moment.

We don't have it. So I went along to see an agent, patent agent in Manchester. It was very nice day. I think it was something like May. And I'm sitting in his office. The door, the window was open. They said, okay, you've got to find a new name, okay. And he pointed through his window to Kodak. And I said, okay, Kodak, Kodak, yeah, I know what Kodak is. So you need a name like that, something that means nothing, you know, it's made up, it belongs to them. Get me a name like that. Well, you know, I went back and Jeff And I, we sit down and we, you know, we had our wives as well. Everybody started scratching it. What should we do? Coming up, new name. You can name your company some things. Like Cougar. Yeah, that's good. You know, Falcon. Falcon. You know, that's one of the hardest.

Things to do, isn't it, is naming a company. It's so hard.

So we have this list of names, but I'm going to take you back to 1943. I'm 8 years old, it's in the middle of the war. I'm in a running race, a local race event, and I win. Well, 60. I sprint. I mean, and, okay, I go up to collect my prize and what do I get? A dictionary.

They've given me a dictionary. All the toys, guys, you know, one of the things to play with. Where's the fun? Exactly. But, yeah, you know, it was a Webster's dictionary that. That didn't confuse me at the time. But the Webster's dictionary is an American dictionary.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So why give? Somebody in the UK who's going to school, he learns how to spell color C, O, L, O, U, R. And he looks in his dictionary and it's spelled C O, L, O, R. Oh.

So this is sort of littered with little changes of spelling. The word's the same, but a lot of U's are taken out in the American spelling of anything. So, okay, I didn't know that time, but I pick up. We. We're now going forward again to looking for names. And I pick up my dictionary and I. I like that letter R. Like R. Strong, bold. Yes. Open the dictionary, R. And I'm coming through. It's not long before when you. You get through the R, E, E, B. Okay, Rebo, what's that? A small South African gazelle. Wow, a gazelle. Yeah, that's us, isn't it? We're fast, we're speedy.

Top of the list, right?

So what I do, I take this list back to our agent, to St. Luke. These are all the names. But we need this one. Reebok. We've got to be in love with it. It's got to be our passion. We've got to really feel this. As it happened, Reebok was the only one that came clear from the registrar. But the registrar had made one little sort of comment, and that is, we're going to have to put you into the B section.

What's the B section? It's a register. No, well, we have the B section. Why the B section? Well, he said or the excuse was if. If anybody came and said, we're making shoes out of Reebok skin, I can't stop them. You can't stop them. The law, they can do that. But, you know, Jeff and I, we looked at each other and thought, that's going to be a rare experience. That's never going. That's never going to happen now.

Yeah.

So we registered Reebok. Twenty years later, the registrar came back and said, look, we've moved you from B section to the A section of the register. Oh, why? Well, everybody now knows that Reebok is a shoe. It is not an animal anymore. That's what we got, a Reebok.

Well, that's fascinating because I didn't, you know, I didn't realize that it was an animal either. I thought it was, you know, like Kodak. I mean, well, for all I know, Kodak is a word as well, like a real word.

But.

But, yeah, that's. That's absolutely fascinating. I could totally relate to. To. You know, I've built a few different businesses over the years, and. And when it comes to naming a business, oh, my gosh, it's just so difficult. So many things go through your head and you get to these highs and lows and these high moments. You're like, that's it. That's the name. And then after a day or two, you're like, no, it's not it.

Fantastic. Okay, so, all right. I like where we are now. So you've started the business.

You'Ve renamed the business now, and you talked about buying machinery earlier. And in your book Shoemaker, and anybody listening or watching, you got to read it. It's absolutely fantastic. Basically, the untold story of how the mega Reebok brand was built. But, you know, in there, you talk about. There was this moment where because the factory floor was so weak, you had to keep the machinery on the perimeter of the floor so that it wouldn't fall through. Right?

Absolutely right. Yes. It was an old brewery, an old Berry Brewery Company. And right in the middle of the brewery, there was a big well. Just a big well. And this. This was full up by the people who rented for us. They did something with mattresses. I think they restuffed my. So this was full of mattresses. Okay, so the middle floor. But as a brewery, there was no windows on the ground floor. I don't know why. There was no windows on the ground floor in the brewery. No windows. So we couldn't use that middle floor. Great. Top floor. Three floors up on the top Floor, okay. Half of that floor was really rotten because there was hardly any. So many, so many slates missing from the roof. That rain was coming through and had been coming through for years. And up there was buckets, cans, everything, just to catch the rain. And we had to go and check this every other day. Certainly when it was raining, we had to go check to make sure we were. So, you know, we know money, we're not going to put a new roof on this. And the people who owned the building, they weren't going to put any roof on it either. So we're in the middle floor and we're thinking, well, that weak up there, you could feel the floor sort of bouncy. You know, some of this machine was quite heavy. So we decided, put it around the edges. And then we had. In the middle, we had sort of a workbench so you could actually work on it. Workbenches were okay, but the machinery had to go around the edge. And I do remember because after we left Foster's two years later, or a bit more.

Than that, they closed the factory down because eventually time caught up with them. That was it. My uncle died, in fact, about two years after we left, and my father was left with this company, and he wasn't taking it anywhere, so he closed down. And what he did say is that if you want any of the machinery of our machinery, you can have it. I mean, it was very old in the first place, but we were still short on money. And we said, well, he did have a press, a big press which worked on it. Must have weighed well over a ton. Big steel press which came down and cut out the leather for the soles of the shoes. Well, that wouldn't be a bad idea. So we got somebody to bring it over to our place and we offloaded this onto the floor. Then. Then we had to take it up to the first floor. This was a ton. This was a weight. And we had a staircase just a bit wider than the machine. Wow, how do we get this up here? So we had planks down the staircase. We levered it onto these planks, and then we had a chain and pulley to pull it up. And I remember being behind this, pushing, and it was only after thinking, my God, if that had slipped, yep, me and the other guy, we would have been mincemeat flattened. However, we did get it to the top of the staircase and then we got it onto the floor and we had to move it to the far end because again, it was, how do we get it? How do we make sure this machine is a tonway going through this floor. So we had some big pieces of wood that we intend to put it on that would take the weight, spread the weight. We had to take it across the floor. So we got the crowbar, leave it underneath, and every time we tried to lift and push it, the crowbar went straight through the floor.

We eventually got across there with rollers and his nose. But every time the guy who used the press, every time it came down, the floor would just go. Would just bounce.

So very humble beginnings indeed.

Very indeed exciting. You know, you're young. What can go wrong? You know, you're indestructible, aren't you? Yeah. 23 and 25 when we started out, you know, so we're young.

But I think that. I think it's like a fantastic message, though, you know, for the people listening and. Or watching that.

You know, you weren't given. You know, it wasn't like the company was given to you on a platter. You created it. You had to make use of used equipment, equipment that you otherwise couldn't have afford. You're making use of factory space that is in such a state of disrepair that the machinery might even fall through the floor. And.

This is not like an extravagant start to the business, but I think it would be nice to hear, though. So what was the first moment? What happened when the money started to come in? What was that first inflection point?

Well, I don't know, really. I know there was times when the money didn't come in. And I know the accountant on one occasion said, look, guys, you're insolvent. And again, we're shoemakers. We're not accountants. We don't have all these big words at that moment of time. It's like entrepreneur in those days. Who'd heard of the word entrepreneur? No. And they came to Cedric solvent, and I. What does that mean? Well, what it means is you owe more money than you've got. Oh, I see. So what does that mean? Well, if somebody wants the money and you can't pay them, you're going to go out of business. Yeah. And you're thinking, what can we do?

All we can do is get on with it. So the accounts went in a drawer. I shut the door, too. And we just got on with making shoes. And if anybody came on, I would make it my personal job that I would answer the phone and if necessary, I would even go and meet them and say, look, give us some time. You know, this is. This is our problems that we've got, but give us some time. We're doing okay. And, you know, everybody, but everybody said, okay, job, give you some time. So the lesson to me was, don't try and dodge around these things. Face them, Face these problems. We'd only been in our business about four years when a letter arrived from the lawyers of Adidas. Uh, oh.

We were using two stripes. Adidas have three stripes. We were using two stripes and a T bar.

And they said that this was infringing the three stripes. And if we didn't desist, they would take action. Well, you know, first of all, you think, oh, then we started smiling. Wow, Adidas. They already know we're here.

They know we're here. We're now a threat. Isn't that great? So what we do, it's like changing the name. We could change our side stripe. We can change. So we ended up with what is now known as the vector, which is a nice arrow shape, and then the lateral strike, which come across. And that now is the. Well, that became our silhouette, and that is still the Reebok recognized silhouette, even from back then. But, you know, it was like, okay, so the.

We can't find out. Do we want to find out? No. Isn't it brilliant that we got this letter? And I know for quite a lot, quite a while. It was on the wall. We have that pinned to the wall. That's great. Wonderful.

Yeah, it is. And it is a statement, right? Because they wouldn't send you a letter if they didn't perceive you to be of no threat at all. And there you go. So it's like, more letters, please. In a way.

More letters, please. But you mentioned money and. Okay. We started expanding our company, and.

We became known as the Athletic Shoe Company in the United Kingdom. There were other shoemakers, other people made running shoes, but they seem to be part of the manufacturing industry. They seem to be part of footwear manufacturing. We seem to be part of sport. Yeah, we made the shoes, but we made them for the sport that we were actually working in. We went to athletics meeting, we talked to athletes, and athletes would come. Most of the local athletes would come around, and if we wanted something, do it. If there was a plumber, he would come and do some jobs for us. They came and they actually did work to help us get our factory up and running and. Okay. And they buy the shoes as well. You know, on occasions we could afford to give them, but we didn't give too many away. And these people just came, they wanted to help us. So we became part of A fraternity. So if anybody wanted running shoes, I mean, even Barter Stylo, who were people on the high street shops, if they wanted to, as they did eventually try to get into or produce a sports product, they came to us and we made them for them because we were the ones they knew. If it was made by Reebok, they could have always said it. But, you know, Reebok are making this for us. And so we got that reputation. So we started making some money again. I had a very bad experience because we're growing that well that a friend of mine who was a sales sales director of a company said they made football boots. We didn't. And they had a good range of football boots, although they did have three stripes on them. And they were getting away with that. I don't know how they got away with it.

Maybe they bluffed. They took the Adidas threshers and bluff, I don't know. But all they were making were football boots. But running and athletics was growing as a category and the shops were sort of looking for this. So he suggested that they act as our sales distribution. Fantastic. Great. And this was, right, this worked fantastic for 18 months, maybe two years. Then. Well, I know the reason. The sales manager, the sales director, he left the company. So my friend left the company and went to work for Barter.

And the company didn't realize just how important that salesman was. Just he made such a big difference. And the sales started going. But the worst thing is they decided to upgrade the technology on football boot soles. And they decided they would do injection molding. They went to Germany and bought this wonderful machine.

And it was late arriving. They actually built a special building to put the machine in too small. And by the time they'd actually got this working, the season gone. So they'd missed the selling season for football boots. They'd lost all the orders and it just sent them out of business. Which meant that we were going to go down as well because they were our distribution. I had to hire a van and go. And I think 2,3000 pairs of shoes were down there in their works and bring them back because now we had no distribution. So we really put up sort of a big front, right? We went around to every school, what we could do. We got in touch with everybody we knew and said, look, we have these shoes. They're being sold at half price. And we sold them all. And we were getting more money. We got more money for those shoes than we were being paid by our distributor. So we made more money out of it. In the end. And then, I mean, we had to lay people off. Our factory was only small. We had about 20 people. I had to.

We laid them off about 15. We had to because we needed distribution. But half of them were saying, well, can we work for nothing? Can we stay? You know, they didn't want to leave. Wow. And everyone that did said, can we come back? Because, well, we were a family. You know, we grown this. We've grown this culture that, you know, you work, you do this together. So. So many events like that happened in our growth that it was difficult. But, you know, we did expand nice, steadily, slowly. But I wanted to get to America because athletics, nice business, running clubs. Yes, okay. But nothing like soccer. You know, football boots. Football boots. That was a big business. And Adidas had got that, well, sewn up. Difficult to get into because I used to go to sports stores in the early days and bring out my shoes, and they'd look at me and I'm Reebok. Who's Reebok? Yeah, here's the shoes. Oh, there's a nice shoes. But, you know, I've got. I've got Adidas and I've got Dunlop. Why do I need Reebok?

Why do any rebound that stuck home? They didn't need Reebok. I had to make them need Reebok. I had to make sure they needed Reebok. And that was then a mission. We just got loads of agents throughout. But.

In athletics, there was the three A's, and they brought out a handbook, and in that handbook was the name and address of every secretary of every club in the country.

That's a good handbook.

Just a letter. And if there's a phone. Phone number, it was a phone call. And I think we got 200 agents, and they could be the agent in the club. And if there was 200 club members, that was a nice. You could pick up 15%. We give them 15%. So we grew our business that way, and that was good. Yeah, you know, we got ourselves a nice new car each. You know, we were doing okay, but I wanted America. And it so happened. In 1968, the Board of Trade, the British Board of Trade, decided that they wanted to help the sports trade to export, because they needed to start exporting. And the first one was to go to Chicago or places.

In February when the NSGA show was on.

We were talking about place.

Yeah, we talked about Chicago earlier. Right?

That's right. We talked about being very cold.

In fact, that was quite. Quite an experience. Our first experience there was so cold but their offer was okay. They would pay for the stand, they would pay our return air fare, and they would pay 50% of our hotels. Fantastic. Cheaper than stand at home.

So a friend of mine, Bob Brigham, who is Ellis Brigham now, they're in the outdoor business. They have outdoor stores throughout the UK Now. Ellis Brigham, Bob came with me. We were making books for him at the time. So it was pretty good. We were good friends and we decided we were to get. I don't know why we were saving money for the country, but we took a ticket. The cheaper ticket was to stay there for two weeks. And the advantage of doing that is we could go into New York and have a look at some of the shops and some of, you know, some of the outdoor stores and what the sports stores did, what they were doing with athletics. So we learned a bit then before going on to Chicago. And at Chicago. Oh, yeah, lots of people coming up. And actually we sold. Well, Bob sold some of his boots, which was okay because we were making the boots, so that was the way. But we couldn't. We didn't sell any shoes. A lot of. Lot of. A lot of retailers that came up and said, wow, love your product. This is great. Where do we get it? You know, England.

Because, you know, this was an English standard. England, is that New England?

But they couldn't take on board importation. You know, they have to import and pay duty and all. They couldn't. And there's, you know, we ended up with this saying, well, look, when. When you got something over here, when you got a stock over here, we'd love to buy it and give it a try. Fine. This is 1968. I eventually got a distribution going in 1979. 11 years.

Wow.

I had at least six failures. Six attempted people, and I condemn them all at one point. But we tried and we failed for different reasons. Lack of money.

Inability to supply the market in good time. All these sudden, there's a lot of things that we were learning.

Six different times, you tried to establish distribution to the US to open that market up properly. And you felt we failed.

Yes.

That right there is again because you built what became a billion dollar company. But to get to your key market, the U.S. which created a lot of that wealth, you tried six times and failed before you got in. That's amazing. It reminds me of one of my favorite proverbs, Japanese proverb. It says, fall down seven times, stand up eight. And you almost did it to the number.

Almost, yes. If I make a recount, I might find seven.

Exactly.

But you know, what was happening during the 70s, we're now into the 70s, that running was becoming big in America. Really big. Everybody was out there putting a pair of trainers on and going out running. And running was growing. And with it was this magazine, Runner's World. Runner's World started off as a single, a four piece of paper, black and white, with just results and things. Like by the mid-1970s, this was a glossy color magazine with all the photographs, all the shoes, so many races that were being. The results were in there. Everything was in there. And Bob Anderson was the publisher. And he became so, so confident of himself, maybe ego or whatever, that he would tell everybody which was the number one shoe that they should be buying, which he did. And I think it was sort of Nike Trail. Nike.

I don't. What is it? Tailwind? I think probably Nike Tailwind was probably one of the first that was number one. Well, you know, I mean, here we are. Thank you. They're buying these things. Phil Knight is buying them from Japan, the factories in Japan. All of a sudden a million people want that shoe. Because Rhonda's world said this is number one. Where does he get a million shoes from? He doesn't. It takes time. Takes him almost 12 months. Because Onitsuka, we're not producing shoes for just for Phil Knight. They were producing for other things. So he hardly managed to get. By the time they got there, the, the retail trade who've been crying out for these shoes. By the time they got them, 12 months had almost gone by. And okay, Bob Anderson now is another number one shoe.

So retailers are left with shoes now you can't sell because all of a sudden a million people want this new shoe. This only happened on two seasons. The third season, somebody got up to Bob Anderson or maybe realized things were wrong. He changed from saying this is number one, this is number two. He changed his star ratings. Okay, so five star, four star, three star, two star, five star. That meant that four shoes could be up in there. I knew we could make a five star shoe. I knew that. Yeah. Yeah, we did. So it was late in the 70s. We were going and we produced Aztec. Aztec was shoot that. I knew we were going to get five stars. So in 1978, we, we trial this. These shoes. In fact, we made a range. It was called the gold range. Aztec was the trainer. Inca was a spike shoe. And Midas was a racing shoe, road racing shoe. We tried them out Edmonton, got a lot of gold medals, did really well. By February 1979, here we are back to Chicago got the stand. Right, we're ready now. Along came Kmart. You'll know, Kmart. Big, big retailers all around the country. And running was growing so much that they wanted some run issues. And they said, look, we'd like to order 25,000 purse.

That's about six months work for our small factory. Okay? Well, we knew very well that if we got a five star shoe, which is what we were looking for, we knew we'd have to have more production. Just like Phil Knight needed more production when he became a number one. You didn't know about. Need more production. Well, my friend who'd been at the company that went out of business, he'd gone to Barter and set up sports, a sports shoe division in Barter. Look, Joel, we'll help you. We'll make your shoes. We can do it. We've got the production facility and everything. Fantastic. But then came out and said, but we want a better price. Okay, Barter could do a better price. They could shave a few shillings, a few bits and pieces, a few pence, but they couldn't get down to the price that came on wanted. But again, we knew this was all happening the far East. We had to go to South Korea and we were working with some people in South Korea already. So we had both of these things covered. Okay? Volume would go up massively. Price had to come down massively. So we're working on this. So again with February in 79 and Paul Fireman, he came. Paul Fireman was from Boston. He was an outdoor wholesaler. Tents, fishing lines, fishing lines, all the sort of bits and pieces. But I could tell from his sort of, his approach, he was fed up with this. He was running this company with his brother and his brother in law and they'd been going around the same circle probably 10, 15 years. Paul wasn't an old man, but he certainly was looking decidedly like, I need to get out of this almost rat race. And he said, I'd love to be your agent, John, but you know, we're going to need a five star shoe really to get that hook. Because that would be the hook. If we got a five star shoe, we would, people would want our shoe. We wouldn't need to try push it. No, there would be that million people who wanted one of our shoes. Fantastic. I said, look, Paul, come along. This Aztec, this is a five star shoe. He said, how do you know? I said, look, believe me, I know. I will pause it. Right, fine, fine. But you know, I can't commit until we've actually got five Stars. I said, okay, okay. And I'd gone backwards and forwards from February to. Was the August issue out the last week in July, I'd been backwards and forwards. Last week in July, I picked the phone up and phoned Paul. It was a little early for him because day five, I was different and it was only just gone midday in the uk, so I must have got him out of bed. And I said, paul, why don't you just nip down to the local kiosk? They must have the August edition now on there. Okay. An hour later he came back. Joe Aster. We got five stars.

Wow.

Fantastic. That's it. We're in. We've got the market, he said, but not only that, Hinker and Midas in their categories, they got five stars as well.

Fantastic.

So here we are, we just launched in America with three five star shoes. That was, that was the break. We got it. We found the hook and we got in there. A lot of luck, a lot of good timing. But you know, it's like with your luck and it's like with anything opportunities, sometimes they just sit by and you don't even notice. Sometimes they've gone, you know. So we were fortunate we managed it. The only regret I have at this point is that just as we got that Jeff, who was an athlete, always used to do two. He overtrained, he overdid everything and he was always sick at the end of it and he became ill and he died with stomach cancer. Jeff had just looked after the factory. That's all he wanted. It was, you know, he was a bit older than me and he loved the factory. He just. And he said, joe, we do everything else, which is what I did. Everything else was mine, which was the marketing, the selling, even designing, because I did design the Aztec shoe. And he just loved being in the factory. I mean, the timing was absolutely ridiculous because at that time he should have gone down to Bata to take the shoes and make sure they did the shoes right. He would have then gone out to Korea, to the Koreans and made sure they did them right. But unfortunately that wasn't to be. And Barter got the shoes wrong.

Bata Shoemakers. And so they looked at the shoe and ours was a very aggressive design with a square sort of thought where the lacing is. It was square and aggressive looking. What they did is they got the time and motion people and they made it round and they took away that design. And Paul, when Paul got them in America, said, joe, there's something wrong with these shoes. What is it? But he says, I don't know, I can't, I can't tell. But they just don't look the same.

The other big problem was that baton so big they had their own rubber factory. Now instead of it being normal rubber, we'd move to eva, which is a plastic, but it's much lighter, so much lighter. And everybody was moving to that, but they had their own rubber factory so they made their own eva. The problem is they hadn't made our experience enough and some of the, some of the production was under cured, which meant that when you put pressure on it, instead of it springing back, it collapsed.

Oh, no.

As it happened, Paul never paid for the 20,000 pearls he made. It made 20,000 purse. But he said, look, I'm not paying for these because I have to replace every one that collapses and what have you done to this design?

And in a way that helped in a way for Paul because he didn't have to pay for those. So it got his business going. But then we had to go to the Far East. And the Far east, they don't give you credit line, you need a letter of credit. You have to either have the money or your bank has to be able to say, yeah, we'll pay. So somebody has to sign, they're going to pay. That gave a big problem in how do you finance this? Because we were growing, we're growing nice. How do you finance it? Fortunately, Stephen Rubin, who is in the uk, you probably know him as JD Sports, he had a lot of, I think he's Lacoste as well. He has a lot of little brands but his main, one of his interests was Asco. And Asco, they were a sourcing company. In other words, they sourced the company out in Korea and they were selling them to all the big retail shops. They could make them lower price than you get them locally in the uk. So that was his job.

And he came in and he funded it. He didn't fund it with money, he funded it with a credit line. So you've got 60 days and Paul took about 90 days, something like that. So all these shoes are coming in. Stephen got a bit worried when we got about 20 million. The debt was about 20 million.

But then we were turning money over really great and the running market was doing really nicely. But, you know, again, this was just the quirk of time. What happened. Ronnie was doing well. We had a technical rep down in Los Angeles, Angel Martinez, and he was technical rep going into the stores and persuading them that when the salesmen come in. They need to buy these shoes because they're this, they're this. And this is our five star product, you name it. Okay, so he's there in Los Angeles and his wife Frankie, she's going to these aerobic classes and she's coming back. They're just full of it. Her and her girlfriends were coming back and we're chattering. Wait, wait, what's going on here? Oh, just going this aerobic class. What's that? Well, it's, it's exercise to music. Ah, great. Really love it. Fantastic. So I said, look, I'm going to come down and have a look what's going on here, you know, must I see it? Look at this. He did. Next time down, watch it. What did he find? The instructor, she was wearing a pair of trainers. Half the class were wearing trainers. The other half bare feet.

Idea. Why don't we just make these girls specifically a glove leather upper and a nice cushion sole. White but beautiful. With just a Reebok on there and the Union Jack, which was just that bit of color. Why not? Off he goes up to see Paul Feynman. Paul, Paul. Oh, something's going on down in la. This, this aerobics, it's fantastic. Paul said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

We'Re doing great. We're running, you know, our great salesman. We're now covering the country, we've got reps, we've got sales and it's going nicely. You know, we're playing around with, you know, whatever these girls are doing down in la. Let's leave it alone for a while. Didn't put an off. Arnold went round to the back door and had a word with the production people. They said, look, guys, just make me 200 purse. And they did. He got his 200 purse. He went back down to LA with his 200, gave them to the instructors because this was growing quite big and a lot of the lead in sort of women that were doing it and it was in la, so that was great. And wow. I loved them. However, they made with glove leather. Love leather. You can pick it up and you just tear it. Oh.

There needs a lot of support if you're going to use it for shoes. And what happens after, what, a month, six weeks? The sides were breaking out and they were ripping out. Well, had that happened in a lot of places, that would have been good night. We would go out of that business. Not in America. Not in Los Angeles, California. No, no, they love the shoes so much. Just went out and bought another pair. That was it. And then what happens we got Jane Fonda in those days that was doing workout videos and she bought. She bought the shoes to work doing her workout videos. It just exploded. Everybody. They didn't know Reebok was a smallish company growing nicely and running, so only runners knew the rest. They didn't know it, but they knew Adidas, they knew Nike, Adidas and Nike. They're male, they're sweaty. No.

So that moment then, when Jane Fonda starts kind of sporting the shoes and people see such a, you know, mainstream person using them, was that. Was that like a massive inflection point for you then?

Well, the whole thing was. I mean, she wore them because all the girls in la, they weren't just. They weren't just wearing them for the aerobics. They were so comfortable. They were going to work. They were going out in these shoes. If, when they got to work, they take the freestyles off and they put on the heels, you know, if they had to work with high heels, they put the heels on there. So. But no walking around doing things. They wore this beautiful shoe. They wore a Freestyle Reebok, and it became a woman's company at that moment. It became a woman's company because it exploded incredibly. You know, we grew to a $9 million company over that sort of first 12, 18 months, whatever. Once, once we got into aerobics, it went from 9 to 30 million within a year, from 30 million to 90 million the next year, from 90 million to 300 million and 100 million to 900 million. Fantastic. That growth. How do you keep it up? I remember sitting with Paul and Paul said, look.

We can't deliver here. We can't live with this. He said, I know how to stop this, but I haven't a clue how to start it again.

So we didn't stop it.

And finance didn't become the problem then. The thing was rolling so much financing, it wasn't the problem. The problem was how do you grow from $300.

Million to $900 million? How do you get the product?

You're tripling the amount of product. You're trying to do that factories can't do that.

Again, a little bit of fortune in Nike. Nike had been growing endlessly. They just hit a wall.

They had to pull out of two or three factories because the sales had just slumped just at the time when we needed the factories. So we went into those factories and that's how really Reebok managed to get into that almost one billion dollar size of company within four or five years is incredible. By the time we got to just short of $4 billion.

I decided it was time for me to go because now we had so many accountants, so many lawyers, so many people were just running these categories that, you know, that challenge. That challenge had gone. Yeah, that was no longer there. The thrill of doing it, sometimes the agonies. But that challenge wasn't there anymore. Time for me to leave. But I keep on saying it's a bit like the eagles in Hotel California. You can check out, but you could never leave.

It's such a.

It's been such a pleasure to speak to you today, and so fascinating. I mean, when I'm just listening to this story and, you know, just to pull out some really special things and highlight it for, you know, people. People listening, watching. And, you know, by the way, again, you have to grab a book, you know, the copy of the book Shoemaker, because this goes. Joe's giving us a taster here. But, you know, it goes into a lot more detail in the book. But, you know, there's this. There's this frugality in the beginning, right? Just making things work with. With not having anything, but you just made it work. There's this.

Being knocked down repeatedly. For example, when you're trying to get into the US Market and you said six different times trying to distribute to that market, and it's not working. There's strategically placing your products with the right.