The Spirit (And Cost) Of Entrepreneurship, With Joe Foster.

Foreign. You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Welcome to Business Lunch. I'm Darren Clark, the producer of the show. And today we have the honor of hearing from the founder of Reebok, Joe Foster. Following the family heritage back in 1895, Joe's grandfather, Joseph W. Foster, pioneered the spiked running shoe and famously made shoes for the world's best, best athletes. In this conversation, Joe talks candidly about the need for passion and undivided attention when it comes to entrepreneurship and the toll it can take on your family and personal life. If you sometimes feel like people around you are holding you back, you'll be inspired by Joe's experience. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. And here's Roland.

Hey, everybody. Roland Frazier here. Want to welcome you to this episode of Business Lunch with my very special guest, Joe Foster, who founded Reebok. And Joe, welcome to the show. Very happy to have you here today.

It's a pleasure, Roland. Thank you for the invitation. It's very nice. Thank you.

I had the opportunity to read your book and really, really enjoyed it. And I recommend, by the way, everybody, it's a little hard to find if you Google so because there's so many shoemakers out there, but the title of the book is Shoemaker. So if you're googling, do Shoemaker book Amazon or Shoemaker book Joe Foster. And you'll find it super easily. I know when I first started looking it was, it was a little hard to find, but it's absolutely wonderful read and a beautiful story. So I recommend anybody that's listening should definitely get it and, and check it out. Also, it's not currently available in an audiobook format in the United States. It is in the uk, but not, not yet. Joe, do you know if they're, are they planning on getting that released here in the States?

Well, it's, it's some. It's probably, probably a month or so ago, but I have had somebody who has received the audio version in the state.

Interesting. So it's on Amazon. I wasn't, I wasn't able to get it, but hopefully they'll, they'll work that out and maybe it's just me making. Making a mistake.

Yeah.

That said, I was really like, right at the beginning. You come from, I believe, five of Shoemaker.

It does go way back. It does indeed. Yes. I guess it's in the DNA because, yes, we go back to. Well, my grandfather really first came to the forefront in 1895. So that's my grandfather. So we've got three generations and then his grandfather. That's where he got his idea from.

Yeah, which is, which is pretty crazy. And that was really interesting too, that you're your. And was it your great great grandfather then that invented the cleat for football, for soccer?

No, no, no. My great great grandfather, or my father's grandfather was indeed a cobbler. He just used to repair street shoes. But also apart from repairing street shoes, he did sports shoes as well. And really what he did in those days was cricket boots, because cricket was there before soccer, believe it or not.

Right, okay, okay.

He used to repair cricket boots. And cricket boots did have spikes in the bottom. And I'm pretty sure that my grandfather said to his grandfather, why have you got spikes in the bottom of these shoes? And the obvious answer was to give them grip so they don't slip when they're batting. They're bowling, they're fielding, they don't grip. And I think my Franto Aldego's idea then, well, he was a runner. He wasn't a very good runner. Sort of midway down the field when he was out there running with his low fly nanny club and so making himself a pair of shoes, he thought, I could probably get one up here on the guys. And he did. He came a very unlikely second in the first race that he had with his spikes on. And he wasn't a big lad, so we do suspect that maybe he was a bit bullied into saying, look, if you're going to wear those, you got to make us some shoes as well.

Ah, I love it. I love it. You mentioned one thing you said was there's only room for one love when your heart is fully invested in your passion. I would love to hear your, your thoughts behind that because it's, it's something that I think every business person wrestles with.

Yeah, I think it is. And I think what you, you've read the book. We had to change our name and we, we changed it to Reebok, and Reebok had to go to the registrar and we, we said to the guys, look, we found the name Reebok. Small South African gazelle. We can't have Mercury, but we want this one and we need this because apart from all these other names we've given you, we have to be in love with this. It has to be our passion. I don't think you can go eight hours a day with something, whatever it is, and with me, it's a company with people who Want to work at something, you can't do that unless you're in love, unless you have a passion, unless you really. Because it doesn't give you back all that much at times. At times it gives you a lot of pain, a lot of heartache. So you've got to be in love. And when we say, well, one passion. Yes. And I guess this cuts across whatever family life you do have. And I think what is important, probably what I learned from this is that it's better having a partner who is really with you.

Yes.

Your partner should be really part of that as well. Because if there is anything. If you're going to make choices at times, sometimes when you're running a business, you cannot make a choice of should I or shouldn't I? It's got to be. It's got to be done for the business. You can't put it to one side. And I don't suppose you can put a family relationship to one side, but maybe that's easier than the company sometimes, right? Yes. But you have to be in love. If you. Not everybody is successful. But I think if you want to give yourself a really good chance of making it, you have to. Your attention has to be undivided. You've got to give it that attention and that love. So I think it is. It can be a strain on a family. It can indeed. Really. At the very end, before I left, we had 10 years of absolutely fantastic times. My wife could come. Well, she could come with me anytime, but she didn't like to travel. When we got to the pro celebrities and Hollywood and you got all the celebs there, she loved that. So that was probably the compensation after having years of me saying how I won't be here next week, I'm going to America or I'm going somewhere else, I'm flying away. So, yeah, I think that dedication is. You've got to have total devotion to a company, I believe, to really make it work. And just the family side of it, I think if you're lucky and both of you can enjoy the pleasure of. Really? That's good. If you can do that.

Yeah, absolutely. So you also mentioned something a few times that I thought was really interesting. You said that you grew up in a world of the remarkably average, quote unquote. And you said it, that it was better. Like aspiring to be better was something that was kind of looked down on. And they always said, know your place, don't rock the boat, that kind of stuff.

And.

And you mentioned that a few times along with there's kind of a philosophy, as you were coming up, of birth, work, death. And I'd love for you to. To chat just a minute about that and how. Because you were different from that, you had a. A different ethos and I'd love to kind of, you know, how was that and is that still the case? Do you see, as you. As you hang out? And is it still in Bolton where you are?

Bolton is very different these days, in those days, but that's due to immigration and all. Things change as well. Now I think we've got to go back to the 1950s. I mean, we're talking some 70 years, we're talking a long time. And this is. This is World War II was finished. We're coming out of it. Everybody, you know, we all had one enemy and that's getting through the enemy. So we were all together, people were very friendly. We didn't have automation, we didn't have things, we didn't have computers, you know, we didn't have mobile phones. In fact, you were very lucky if you had a telephone in your home, Right? So you live with the community and that. That community. Somehow you lived in that way. You. As it happened, we did national service when I was 18. And you developed a social sort of gathering people together up till that point. And then you went away for two years. Suddenly what you knew was normal, wasn't normal. You know, Mother wasn't there making a bed, doing your washing, making your food. So you, you know, all of a sudden you were looking after yourself and the mind changes. What do we do? I think if we hadn't had national service, I probably would have been still amongst the. Yes, you grow up, you do your job, you do whatever. And in those days there were plenty of jobs, manual jobs. Things physically. Now things have changed. You know, we're all automated with. Everything's becoming technology and the technology is taken over, taking away from that life. So way back then, yes. And for me, I probably was a bit rebellious, probably didn't particularly quite want to fit into that. I wanted to do something different. And of course, you slide into almost different. So you don't like the idea. When we came back from national service and we saw our company, it is like stepping back all of a sudden we're stepping back a generation. We've seen a company still making shoes that would make it in the 1930s. But my brother, he'd been in Germany and in Germany, you'd seen Adidas, Puma, he'd seen what they were doing. So when we came back we just couldn't sort of sit there and take on the same role. I said to father, look, you know, we need to do something. We need to modernize the company. But since he spent more time fighting his brother and confusing with him, this wasn't good for the company. The company was going nowhere. And so every time I said, look, we need to do something, he would just say, look, when Bill's gone and I'm gone, this company will be yours. I said, number one, we don't want you to go. That's not the intention. We don't want you to go. But the problem is this company will have gone before you go, and we need to change. Didn't work. Didn't work. Three years we tried. Didn't work. That's when we left the company.

Is there any advice that you would give someone? Because you had a really unique experience in that you got to see your father and his brother trying to have, well, literally having a family business. And then your grandmother, I think, was Marie Mariah.

She was called Mariah Mariah. Okay.

Your grandmother kind of holding them together. Then she. When she's gone, they just kind of have at it really, you know, very soon after her passing. But you grew up with that. And you also grew up with, you know, don't. Don't use the Blake. Don't use that machine. That's the one that's expensive and finicky and, you know, kind of being held back a little bit, which goes back to the. Don't rock the boat, know your place and all that. Then you go on the service and you come back and you're working with your brother again, and you're living together in the fact and your new factory, ultimately, as you get started. So you had a lot of family in there. And it sounds like throughout that time, even when you were working with your brother at Mercury Pre Reebok, that there were people saying, you know, why are you doing that? And don't do that. And so you had this. This driving force to move ahead, which I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast have. And you have a lot of people who are, I'm going to say, holding you back and put it in air quotes, because I think that they have your best interest at heart. Ultimately, I don't think it's a malicious. I think it's just, you know, hey, let's be happy with what we've got kind of thing. But. But having faced all that through all there, would you say there's any particular advice that you would have for somebody and how to deal with that and. And still stay motivated and move towards your dreams but minimize the collateral damage in the family.

Well, I can really sympathize what you say and I can really feel that. I understand that and it does come across in the book because yes, when you, when you start to push against something, say, well, this isn't right. You know, you push and there's some people who are just so happy, just no, no, the status quo, you know, everything's okay. We are setting up our. Okay, you've moved away from the family business. You set up your own business. But yes, I did get that resistance from my wife. I wouldn't say from my brother. Rather than him resist anything. He just didn't oppose anything. He was more. He loved the idea of working in the factory. He'd grown up. He spent four years down with the family business, working in the factory and he loved that. He didn't want to be bothered with marketing or sales or advertising or growth. He just liked to work in the fact. So he was the least resistance. But of course the women, the wives, they were a bit more vociferous. They would say a few more things and of course. And I think my brother probably put up with a lot more than I understand from his side. So I always felt when the opportunity to go to America. Look, I can go to America. It's this. We've got this opportunity. Why do you want to do that? Well, look, that's the market. We have to do something. We can't stay here. We'll just go nowhere. We need to move. Why do we need to move forward? We've got a nice little business series. And I think I realized very early on that you can't stand still. Your business has to progress. If it plateaus, it goes down. You have to have that drive. If there is no drive, that it is just a job. But you will end up. We would have ended up just like the family business, J.W. foster's. And funnily enough, my grandfather must have had that drive. Yes, he had a tremendous drive. He knew how to influence people. Way way back there, the early 1900s, he would give his shoes to leading athlete and that would influence other athletes because they would win. He used to advertise amazing advertising. Used to just small little things in newspapers, in sporting newspapers. And there was one. But if you don't believe that Foster's running shoes are the best shoes you've ever worn will give you £100 in those days, that was a lot of money. It was also very cheeky to say that you do that, but that was the sort of man he was. And he got so many athletes to wear his shoes. You'll have read it. Chariots of Fire, which was a great film in his day, was about 3. Three Olympic athletes that all earned gold medals in the 20s, British athletes. But Joe Foster, my grandfather, has actually made their shoes. So he made those shoes, and they got those gold medals way, way in front of anybody else. He was influenced. So I think he had that drive. And I think for me, that must have been the inheritance. It probably skipped a generation and came to me because I needed to push, and I could feel that resistance. And you see that a lot.

You see the skipping of a generation a lot. Practiced law for several years and had a lot of entrepreneurial clients. And it's funny, I don't know why, but it seems like that sometimes there is that maybe the generation that is innovative and creates the opportunity then kind of accidentally hamstrings their kids, because their kids are in the shadow of that entrepreneur. And then they're trying to carry on what that person did, so they don't really get a chance to innovate as much themselves. And then the next generation sees all the mistakes and all the places that it's being held back and says, let's do this right. It's kind of interesting.

Yeah, it is interesting. And the odd thing about that is that we didn't know Jeff and myself. We left the company and we started off with Reebok, but we must have been 10 years down the road with Reebok before we decided, let's look back in our history. Why did Grandfather do this? And it's only when we started with the time we got, people could work on this. They look back, and we found out so much more about our grandfather and the history than we knew at the time when we left. So it was intuition, intuitive, that we had to move. And we found all this out. And this is what I look back and I think, wow, Grandfather, he was quite a genius in his way. He invented those first spikes, or he certainly was a pioneer right at the beginning of spike footwear. And take some, do it. And you're thinking back then, I'm saying, now we don't have computers, or we didn't have computers. We didn't have mobile phones. And when I was traveling in the early days, I didn't have a credit card. I had to have a bunch of American Express travelers checks. Traveler's checks. And so what did My grandfather have much less than that. They didn't have a telephone at all. So your communication was by letter. And we do have a letter that he wrote in the 1920s to an athlete who was. Probably lived about 30 miles away. And grandfather used to get the athletes to join Bolton Harriers. So he had a big team, a good team. And when one left or didn't want to do something, they had to write a letter and say, you know, we need to talk, but try to keep him on. Yeah, but how do you know? And this is only 20, 30 miles. So he needed that. No, he must have had that enthusiasm, which, you know, it's like he must have been a pushing man. I need to do this.

So the cheeky ad you said that he had. I know that you. One of your ads ended up something about Reebok is putting our balls on the line with the tennis. Going into the tennis market, which turned out to be really, really a good thing. Was that modeled based on that old. Like, did that come about as from thinking about that old ad for the guarantee of £100 that your granddad did?

Well, by the time that ad came out, I mean, many of the stories I had been talking to people, many stories people have picked up. So it may well be they picked up. But that was Paul Feynman. Paul Feynman decided that we'll put our balls on the. And he came to me, he said, joe, he said, I don't know if you're right doing this, but I bought two cases of tennis balls.

That's awesome. I love it.

Two cases. And I said, well, don't worry, Paul. I'm pretty sure that you'll be okay. And in fact, he was. I think. I think they actually gave away half a case of tennis ball. That's all.

That's probably just people trying to see if they actually could get tennis balls. That's funny. So your granddad and you didn't really wonderful job of using influencers. And way before the current craze of influencers and all of these micro audiences that social media has created that exist now. And I'd love to just hear your thoughts on. Because there is an influencer economy now and a maker economy, they call it. What do you see similar now as to back then? And if you were launching now, if you were launching Reebok and you had some of the ideas that you had back then, how would you use influencers in the current market?

Well, we talk about influencers and I talk about my grandfather using influencers. And to Be honest, the sports business, we've had depressions, recessions throughout my life. There have been maybe half a dozen times when things have happened either caused by bankers, something has caused a recession. The sports industry has never gotten that. In fact, this is the worst recession we've had for the sports industry. Covid. Covid has been the worst thing for the sports industry ever. Otherwise, the sports industry has been growing, growing, growing, growing. So it's never had to worry about, well, what's caused the problem. So we talk now about influencers. And when Jeff and I decided to leave, we decided that we would go into the athletic shoe business because that we could move into the soccer business. Haggardus were already using Influencer. They were paying people, they were putting money in shoes. And so they were using. And we looked at it and said, what can we do that's different? And you know, it's not. There's nothing different. Influence is the way. I know a good friend of mine who had a rather sizable sports shoe business and he was saying, look what we're going to do, we're going to sell VFM value for money. They're going to sell value for money. And I said, Shaq said, who's going to pick up on that? You know, who's going to. What does that mean, value for money? Well, yeah, we're going to get good prices, perfect product. And whatever, it failed, it failed because people can't relate to VFM value for money. The expect value for money is something that. But then again, they don't even look.

At that when they see not a differentiator right there. Because like you said, they expect that to be everywhere.

That's right. So when they see athletes wearing a certain product, everybody wants to use that product. If this man can score goals wearing this or he can do whatever he can do, I want to prayer of that. And of course, ever since I could say probably in the early 60s, sport has been influenced in street. In my grandfather's day, sport was influenced in sport. Other sportsmen then in the 50s and 60s, it started to come onto street. We used to see youngsters wearing a replica shirt, a replica shirt with Adidas down or whatever. So this is the influence. And that influence has grown and grown and grown. And now it's fashion, sport and fashion, you can't take them apart. And it's the sport, the fashion, the influence. And it's done. Whatever the influence, whatever it's gone to, we see influencers now who are not even in sport, they're in music, they're in whatever it is. But we're the product. We have opportunities to see the product now. We have television. We have all these different ways of seeing it. And it hasn't changed except in a way, the influences of work, where we picked them from, how they are there.

So when you picked. When you were picking people who were influencers to give shoes to. I know that was one of the strategies early on, particularly in aerobics, when Angel Martinez was going around and kind of under the. Under the radar, trying to see if there was a market for a women's aerobic shoe. And then ultimately you got Denise Austin, who I think was a paid endorser, and then Jane Fonda, who was not paid or at least not initially. How would you approach those now? Because you were like, even back in the days with the Wanderers, all the way up into major franchises, how do you get your foot in that door for somebody that's trying to figure that out?

Well, I guess the bottom line is money. These days, in particular, before the money came about, given a product, people were so happy to receive. I was amazed. I was amazed at how many personalities would be just delighted to be given a pair of shoes. Absolutely delighted. Yeah. You know, this is wonderful. In those days, it wasn't money. It was to be given something as they just happened to go and buy it. Just the gift. I think for me, in the other days, that was it. Oh, yeah, they'd love to have something given. They almost felt valued. They felt valued because you wanted to give them something. And that has grown now to be the heart of a business now is how you can focus on how much money you can put into something. And then when you put your money into it, you've got to make sure that people see it. So then you've got to create the advertising to say, well, look, so and so is wearing my shoe. You don't say that, but your advertising says it. I remember one of the days we. We were running was really becoming big. And we used to have marathons all through Europe. So there'd be the Brussels Marathon, the Munich Marathon, London Marathon. And it struck me that what we needed is people to see Reebok. And so I set up Reebok Racing Club and Reebok Racing Club because whilst everybody belonged to some sort of club or other, the race, when they were doing marathons, they were not representing the club, they were individuals. So we. And we used to sell the Racing Club shirt and vest. Nice, nice blue and grey. It looked nice with Reebok Racing Club across. And we Used to give them to our leading athletes. And we used to say in these. In these marathons, we knew that maybe there's half a dozen, maybe a dozen potential winners of these marathons. They were getting expensive. They were becoming. But we said to our athletes, right, you're good enough to be leading this race for at least half a race. Get up to the front. Here's the kit. Get to the front. And the television's always on the front. Reebok Racing Club. Reebok. And we used to have half a dozen there. Okay. By three quarters of the race, they're gone. But we had three quarters. We had an hour and a half of Reebok in front of the television.

Brilliant. I love that. What a great strategy.

So, I mean, those are examples of how do you get people to see your brand?

So did you ever make a. I know you're a badminton enthusiast. Are you still playing at all?

No. Okay. Having a hip and a knee. A new hip and a new knee and shoulders are a bit. Not quite working. We don't. It doesn't work the same now.

Do you ever make or think of making a badminton shoe?

Well, surprisingly enough, the really badminton shoes in those days, and I think they still are, they're made by vulcanization. The way we constructed our shoes in the early days was to have a stick on process where you do the upper. You rough it up to get some adhesive in there. You put adhesive on the sole and then you put. But badminton, to a lesser extent, tennis, mainly badminton. There's a lot of drag so that when you're going side to side, you're going backwards and forwards and your foot is dragging. So you used to drag the sole off. It would just drag the Sol off if it was vulcanized, just like a plimsol or whatever, then that vulcanizing just made it, welded it as one piece. So that was great for badminton. And yes, I used to use Asics.

Okay.

They produced a vulcanized shoe. I think actually Reebok have produced a vulcanized shoe, but I'm not too well aware of that.

That came out of Tiger, is that correct?

That's right. Well, I mean, I guess the company is Onitsuka. Onitsuka. They had their brand name as Tiger and then they moved to Asics. But Onitsuka is the brand. Yes. That was Phil Knight's first, I remember.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

He brought the Tiger into the country. Yes.

Mentioned that when you needed staff and couldn't afford it, you ran a classified advert in the Bury Times newspaper and got an apprentice. Is an apprentice a paid position over there?

Yes, yes, it's a paid position, but it's quite relatively low pay because they come in to learn the business. So I think the apprentice system, it did work for a number of years, but then of course, trade unions sort of said, no, this is just cheap labor.

We have interns over here now and they can be paid or unpaid. Do they use those in the UK still?

Yes, it's the same system now. The system has grown where you now bring interns into the company and if they prove good, then fine, you take them on and become a really paid employee. But yes, yeah, interns are now the latest.

I love it. And then you mentioned, kind of a recurring theme through every business that I've encountered is cash flow. And you said that, you know, relatively early on you realized that you needed to get involved with the bank and you had this guy Stoppard, who you guys called Stoppart, which I love. How would you say now you can look back over having lots of experience across a lot of different ways to get funding. Now, if you were looking to advise someone who was kind of up and coming and is having these cash flow challenges now, what would you suggest that they do? Should they go get a traditional bank relationship? Should they do something else? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think whatever business you're running, you do need. You do need a bank relationship and you can use that for as much as possible. But the bank has. They have limitations and the bank manager these days can't really make the decisions he made in my time. In my time he made a decision. He almost became part of your business. He didn't have to go higher and higher. Right now it's a simple job that he doesn't make the decisions, he's there just to administer the decisions. So you've got to go right to the top, which is not many people can even get there. Decisions are made so that the bank manager doesn't have to make a decision, but he's there because you need a turnover, cash, you need things coming in, so you need that. But I mean, right now there's all sorts of things. If you've got a nice influential company, you're doing something different, you're excited and you've got to be excited. Even when you see your bank manager, you've got some good you're doing. This is really fantastic. Look, I've got this idea. You've got to lay it out, it's got to be there. So now, crowdfunding. Yes. And there are a lot of people. There are a lot of ways out there. There is a lot of money.

And you guys used friends and family, too. You had Gene's uncle, I think, right, that supplied an initial loan early on.

Yeah, that was early on. I don't think these days that friends and family are probably the way you would do it now. I think now you would do crowdfunding. There are so many different ways. And you can go and people can get you money. That's where you may have to give part of your company. And I think that eventually it's got to be part of your plan. You know, initially, you're making Reebok, Reebok running shoes. We're doing this. This is our company. It's great. But Reebok is growing. We're making it grow. It's doing better and better. But if it's going to go from this to this, we need bigger. We need something. We got Stephen Rubin. Stephen Rubin, of course, he. He's a British company and they make lots of money. He's got lots of different companies. And his main company at that time for us was Asco, that was Associated Shoe, and they were actually in the Far East. They were sourcing products in the Far east. So they knew where to go, what to do, and they used to bring the product around to the uk. And he saw Paul Fireman as a way of expanding Ascol. Yeah, look, Paul, you sent some of your guys into these big people, you know, whatever, and we'll do them a shoe. And Paul refused to do that.

I love that. I thought that was really smart. I also thought it was smart that you, for a while, while you were representing Reebok, you also took on two other lines. One was, I think, a dart flight, and another just so you could earn money, but also get into the stores and walk around and see. And I see that again and again, too. Is that. That really getting out in the field and getting to know the market and the competition, like, you saw that a lot of stores in, I think it was in London were owned by. Or maybe it was throughout the uk, were owned by former footballers that really focused almost exclusively on football. And you're like, we're not in that sport, but I'm out there in the stores seeing that that's all they really care about. So we should think about, you know, looking at that is. Is that something you would recommend people do is really kind of get themselves out into the field at a very deep level, closer to the customer which in this case wasn't necessarily the shoe buyer. It was the buyer of shoes to sell to the shoe buyer.

Right, right, right. I think it's absolutely important. It is. Probably one of the most important things is to really know your business apart from the product. The one thing. I wasn't a good salesman. You know, I'm not a good salesman. Okay, I could sell myself a bit, but I'm not a good salesman. A lot of my friends were superb salesmen. They could go there and they could sell the product. But I needed to go into the sports stores. They were the ones that should be selling our product, should be taking our product in and stocking it. And so I did take on a couple of other items which were quite interesting. I learned an awful lot from that. It got in certain places. It actually got me through the door to have these other products. But I would bring out Reebok and they'd look at me and say, reebok? Who's Reebok? So, well, I could tell them what Reebok was. I could go through chaplain verse and tell them everything about my product. And then he'd look at me quite a lot. Look, I've got Adidas, I've got Dunlop. Why do I need Reebok? Wow. Very important question. Why do I need Reebok? I realized he didn't need Reebok. I needed to make him need Reebok. He didn't need it. I needed him. And it was. It was then that I realized me going around now selling shoes. I've learned enough. I've learned enough that this is not how I'm going to expand the business and expanding the business to better my. My customers were athletes. We used to go to athletes. We used to go to the events, and we'd have a cross country or running event, and we would open the car doors and we would sell out to the car. People would buy. And these were my customers. And so we had. In the uk, we had the three A's, the Amateur Athletic association, they produced a book, a handbook. In that handbook were over 200, maybe 300 names of the secretaries and their address.

Oh, nice.

I could get to every club. So I wrote to every club. I offered them 15%. They could either keep the 15% or use it for club funds, do whatever. And if somebody in club would like to be an agent, he could be our agent, and he would get 15%. I got 150, maybe 175 agents, really agents. And in fact, I think about 20 or 30 of those agents eventually became retail shops. They eventually set up retail operation, but that just gave us our name. All of a sudden we were selling more running shoes than anybody else and we were winning races and the same thing, once you start winning races. We were giving the shoes to the right people. So that part of the business. But of course compared to something like football, soccer, small business, Adidas has got it by then. We needed something else. That's when America came into view. I needed America. In every university, every college, there's coach and coach was God, you could get a scholarship and that meant we could get our product in if we could get to the coaches. Right.

And it was kind of interesting. So you spotted and really capitalized on the trend of running and then aerobics and then tennis. When you decided to move into tennis, because I know you got 20% of the market in just two years, which is pretty amazing. And that I guess tennis was an already pretty well existing market and had a dominant player, but you had innovated the leather and that was the. Would you say that was the main thing that allowed you to get in there was that innovation in the. The non break in period for the shoes or. Because that's pretty impressive to go into something that's been going for so long and then capture so much of the market so quickly.

Well, of course that was a storyline that gave us the. That opened the door. This is why we're here for Reebok. Reebok started this aerobic scene. They needed a very soft leather. They started with. With glove leather. It didn't work, but we overcame that. We then got a nice soft leather. Now wouldn't this work for tennis? Of course it would, yeah. All these people are wearing shoes and they're agony, you know, for six months. It's difficult. You're getting blisters, you're getting problems. And then the shoes worn in and nearly worn out at the same time. Yeah. So this soft leather was. Yes. You know, it's a bit like grandfather saying, if you don't think that Fosters are the best running shoes you've ever had. This was the same thing. The most comfortable tennis shoes you've ever had.

Okay.

And in fact they were the most comfortable tennis shoes anybody ever had. But then on top of that, what you have to do then is to decide you need players. So it's back to putting these shoes onto players. And once you've got the shoes on players as well and the advertising rolling, then it's like the ad with the tennis balls. They're the Most comfortable shoes you've ever had. One or two things that work in that way. But you've got to spend the money, you've got to focus on that market and show that you are a player. Then of course, one of the best things that we did was also, it almost reminds me of the Reebok Running Club is we had a guy called, he was a designer and he designed this tennis shirt with stripes across the top, colored stripes. And two of those stripes went right up and round the back. And so when you're looking at the back and they were too called Fleck and Seguzo. I don't know if you remember Fleck and Seguzo. They really became the top of the doubles game.

Okay.

What used to happen is that athletes, tennis players would all be signed up to either Nike, Adidas, maybe Reebok as well. But we also had a guy who said, look, not all these players are signed up, not all these players have got added. And so why don't you, for a small amount of money, supply them all? Anybody who's not sign up, just give them all the kits. And we did. And I remember Wimbledon at one time that you couldn't move without seeing this Reebok shirt. And that was incredible. And I think it's finding opportunities like that that just give you that edge that again, take you forward. So that was a great time for getting into tennis. And we got well into tennis. Yeah, it was good. And I think we got to the French. I think it was French French Open that we both men and women, we got both men and women on one year. So Changi, that was it. Changi. Yeah. So, yeah, tennis was a good place for us to be into.

So throughout the book and it seems the Reebok career, you did a really great job of building these small independent sellers by reaching out to agents and clubs and all of those sorts of things. And then when you cut the deal with, I think it was, was it Lawrence, was the company that you cut that first deal with for distribution?

Yes. Yeah, Lawrence, yes.

And you had to terminate all of those individual people. I see the benefits of both if you were doing that today. Now, obviously Lawrence, you had challenges with because, you know, somebody died and the son in law or whoever took over and didn't, you know, didn't run the business well. But assuming that you had a really good distributor and you had that opportunity again, would you go distributor or would you keep your individual people? How would you play that?

Well, I think it was part of the process. I think we knew that to really get bode and to really be a company, our individual agents, we would have had to move over to one side anyway. We had to move them into some. Either a Reebok retail something that, I mean, right now, right now we're talking about sales and everything's online now. So what we did then, now it's natural. This is what's happening now. You don't have to worry about it. In those days, the retailer would come and say, you're selling direct to an athlete. My job is to stock your shoes and to sell them. And I say, yeah, it is your job to stock them, but you're not stocking them. So that's why we're selling. And they say, well, well look, if you give up, we'll stock your shoes or if you give up selling. And I'd say, well, I'm sorry, we're not giving up selling. And we didn't. And the retail still came. When we went to have a distributor then it was different because that distributor, they distributed soccer shoes and everything. So they were dealing with the retail trade. And so that was their business. That's when I knew that if I, if I've got somebody there, I could then look to America. I could, I could look at these other ideas. It gave me the opportunity, rather than running around doing the small business all the time. It gave me the time, it gave me that time to look and to look.

So if you're advising, let's say you're mentoring somebody that's an up and comer in any business and they've got this little network that they build and they get this opportunity and the distributor says, hey, you got to let all those folks go. Do you think that's probably a good call to take that because you have to do that to make that move or not?

Well, I think we've moved. We're no longer in the mid 20th century. We're now quarter of our way through the 21st century. We have this, we have computers, you know, we have social media, we have online selling. If somebody wanted to come and say, okay, you know, you want to go global, can I help? And I would say, okay, if you want to buy this part of the business or if you want to work this, we'll work out how you can make your percentage out of it. And you know, we'd work out some sort of deal, but you wouldn't stop doing what we were doing because that now is what's happening. People want more direct contact with the manufacturer. They want to feel Part of it now, going back 50 years, people were happy to understand Adidas was a name, Reebok was a name, and Nike became a name, and they were happy for that. But now people want to belong to the company. They feel more associated, and it's this. It's bringing us closer. You're in California, I'm in France. We're six hours difference in time, and we're way 5,000, 6,000 miles away. And yet it's as though you were sitting next to me on this table. We have a chat.

The only thing that's missing is the wine.

Well, we're from 10 minutes away from that.

All right, I like that.

We'll get the wine. But, you know, we can chat quite easily these days because it has become a friendly way of contacting people. I know we go back maybe 30 years when we first started to do a few sort of face to face. Okay. You know, but we'll. We'll have a meeting with somebody and we'll do it. But it was always embarrassing. It never really seemed to happen.

Yeah, I remember the early. I remember the early web conference things.

That were so bad, but that was it. They were called conferences. These are discussions. These are chats. We're just having a chat. They were. You tried to put half a dozen people around one table and somewhere else to be half a dozen people, and it just didn't work. You have to be one on one. And I think that that came in gradually and eventually. Now with podcasting, it's one on one. Okay. You can have somebody come in. We can have half a dozen people, and people can ask. But really we're doing one on one now, and it's much more comfortable.

It is.

This is. This is good.

So culturally, one of the things that I saw again and again, that one of the first times you observed it was in New York, I think, or Chicago, where you said people had cigarettes and they were these long 100 millimeter cigarettes, and they would smoke a little tiny bit of it and then let it go. And it was funny because you're like, I'm smoking the whole thing. And then by the end of it, you're like. But one of the things that you mentioned a few times, and I think you said that you really felt it helped you with aerobics when you guys first launched the glove leather shoe and they would tear that. You were. You were thinking, if it was in Europe, people would not. People would be like, this is horrible, and they'd never buy again. But in America, there's More of a kind of a throwaway culture. And they were like, okay, that's cool, you know, or it's more forgiving, generally. Just, you know, hey, they tore. I'm going to buy a new pair because I like them. It's totally okay. We like the wrinkles. It doesn't have to be perfect. Is that still the case? Or, like, over the years, did you find that one or other of those cultures moved or are they still kind of similar? What are your thoughts on that?

It's still the same.

It's still the same. Okay.

I think that what I certainly learned is that the American psychology, the American way of looking at life, is okay. If we like it, we like it. You know, we're not going to become picky. A lot of places around the world are very picky if it doesn't work. They like to find problems, whereas I found in America, they just like to find answers. You know, it was like, you know, so it falls apart. So what? Yeah. And the girls that used to buy, luckily we're down in Los Angeles, where probably there's more disposable income down in Los Angeles and down in California than maybe the Midwest or the middle parts of America. But it's like, where are the influences? You're either in the Northeast or you're in the Southwest. Those are the big, big, big areas of, say, not only people, but also attitudes in America. And certainly it's a much more relaxed town in the Southwest, California. It's warm, you know, we enjoy it. It's good. And the girls just love those shoes. And the mentality was, so they fell apart in four or six, you know, we'll send them back and we got a new pair. That's okay. Or we'll just go and buy a new pair. They had disposable income, and they also had this. Something new, this feel. And then they wanted this. You know, they knew of Adidas, they knew of Nike. Male Sweaty. Yeah, Reebok was young, something different, and just for them. So the women wanted it. They didn't want to throw it away. They didn't want to say, no, no, no, you know, we don't like the idea. And Adidas and Nike were both stood up. They didn't even look at aerobics. It's going to be a fad. It'll be over with in a very short time. So they just stood back, and then this nice soft leather came out. So. And I think it still happens today.

So if you were launching, then, ideally, if you could launch anywhere, you Know, with, we have in software this, this concept of MVP minimum, minimum viable product. The, you know, it's horrible, it's going to be awful. But what they've learned in software is people, early adopters don't care. They're like, we'll put up with that because we like getting to be part of helping shape it. And then you kind of gradually get it, you iterate into getting it right. Would you say if you were starting now, maybe US market would be a good place both because you said disposable income in the book and this, this culture of acceptance of, hey, we get it, it's not yet, right, but we want it now and then you get it right before you go into these other territories. Is that kind of how you would play it these days?

That's how I was still playing. Yes, I would do that because I still think that that energy, that difference, that, that freewheeling way of life more. We're not restricted by whatever. I think certainly in Europe people have been brought up to the restrictions. You know, you, you do it this way and you don't. But I mean, right now we'll just take for an example a vaccine program. The vaccine program in Europe is totally shot at. They can't do it because they can't get together. Nobody can say, okay, let's just do it right. Fortunately in the UK they've learned an awful lot. And the UK said we're going to do it, the UK did it. And this seems to put somewhat the European nose out of joint in some way. And so they're not seeming to get it together. Like, you know, Europe is a lot of independent nations. And I think these individual nations, when I was trying to, you know, do we go to Europe, it's a big market, or do we go to America? Well, in America they speak the same language. That helps. In Europe, not only was it language but also culture, cultural differences between Latin Europe and southern northern Europe. So all those things, and I mean, in my opinion, the UK should still be in the eu, should still depart. But the eu, but the EU should not be the political organization it is. We should all be traveling together, working together, living together, enjoying that and not think of the politics. So people are trying to do things and make people change. And you know, you should, over time we will all live together. We'll all become coffee colored maybe, I don't know. But the thing is we living together allow that the minute you put restrictions in. And so we have that problem now in Europe they have this problem with, well, we can't use that vaccine for this. We can't use this. And. Oh, we've not got some. You have. And I think they're sitting on about four and a half million vaccinations that they've not used yet because you can't get the organization together. They proved how bad they are as a group becoming organized. And this is, this is. I think it's going to make them think quite a lot. I think the idea of the EU is good, but I think they should take 100 years before they even think of the politics. Yeah, let's live together. Let's enjoy life together. Certain things, yes, you know, security and things like that you need to work with. But when we talk about America, the next one is Japan.

Yeah.

Because Japan does look to America and take. And I think they're also a little more easier at accepting things now than they ever were. And so, you know, for me it was, once we get into America, this just flows out.

Yeah.

And if it works in America, it'll work everywhere. Yeah, you need a little bit of tweaking here and tweaking there. But yes, if I was setting up the place and I would look at California, I think you're sat right in the area and I think social media now is really coming blowing up in California. Okay. We talk to people in the Northeast, we talk to people around America, but really what we have found is that more people down in the Southwest want to talk, want to say this is a new medium where we're going to take this.

Yeah, right.

Covid is brought problems, but so many advantages.

So if you're, if you have a brand in America, so you don't have to come into this market because you're already here, when do you think is the right time to go international? Because I know you develop pretty much all of the, certainly the early to mid life of Reebok international relationships. You went out, found the distributors, went set the whole thing up, had a separate office in Bolton for, you know, for dealing with them and everything. When's the right time? How do you know?

I mean, I think the thing is that you don't really need to worry about it because the rest of the world comes to America. Okay. The NSGA show we used to go to in Chicago.

Yeah.

When I used to fly in, I'd be on one of the planes that would be coming in and 90% of the people on that plane from me were from Europe or from even the uk so everybody came to the NSGA Show. Everybody wanted to see what was going on in America. And even if you were German or wherever you bring you a product as well, it was the biggest, the biggest international sporting goods fair. And I think that's what happens to, well, probably other products as well. If it's doing well in America, it will do well. Yeah. You say I went around. I did. I put on about 30 other countries. But mine wasn't the task of having to knock on doors. Do you want to sell Reebok? No. They were knocking on my door because we'd done what we did in America. They were knocking on my door, can we sell Reebok? And it was just a matter of choosing the best. So the speed at which we managed to get globally was controlled by two things. One is the amount of time I could spend being able to go around and talk and discuss and work it out with them. The other one was how much product we could make because demand on product would depend as to whether we could supply those markets. That became my biggest problem towards before I retired is, I'm sorry, the demand is such we can't meet your. We can't meet your numbers for another two weeks or three weeks. I think if anybody really makes it well in America, they won't need to worry about the rest of the world. The rest of the world will come to the doorstep. Okay, not everybody does that, but I'm sure that Elon Musk is doing that now. I'm sure that his cars now are being. People are coming saying, can we be your distributor?

Right, for sure, yeah. Okay, Just a couple more questions and then I'll let you go to wine time. One is, so ultimately I know you sold and then Adidas purchased, I believe, Reebok for 3.5 billion. And now I see in the filings for Adidas in last year, they're saying that they're writing down the value to a billion. But I know that there were, throughout the 2000s, there were exclusive 10 year contracts with NBA, NFL, NHL, all of these sports leagues. What do you think happened to the value of Reebok? Was it that Adidas basically said, we just want to get that competitor off the market and we're going to go into those channels and ultimately that's it or some other thing. What do you think what happened and what would you do if you were in there right now trying to turn things around and bring it back to where it was?

Well, I mean, first of all, we got to say, why did editors buy Reebok? I think the answer was quite clear. They wanted to advance Adidas on the USA market, and they saw Reebok had been very successful and got all these things in place. So if we buy Reebok, we can probably transfer some of those assets. If you paid 3.5 billion, you'd do that. I'm sorry. I played the money. I'm entitled to do it. So that's what they did. And let's face it, it did well for Adidas. Adidas have grown tremendously, I think, at about a $20 billion company now approaching, if not even more. Whereas Reebok, of course. I mean, Reebok, you know, I'm not saying they purposely did anything bad for Reebok. It's just that they did what they did for Adidas and grew Adidas. And so there has been sort of this story, which is between Adidas saying, well, you know, we're trying to improve Reebok, but really, you know, they're really walking on the same pavement. You know, it's the same ground. They're trying to move Reebok into different ground. They changed the styling of the name. They changed. They changed to the Delta now.

That was horrible. Thank God they changed back.

Right. This is what I think they realized in the end is that. And it's two years ago, maybe it's over two years ago now when they came back to the Reebok mototactura lettering with the dropped R, and of course, it came back to the vector, and now they've pushed everything else and said, no, no, no. And, you know, why did you want to change it in the first place? Did you think you could change that and change the company? Maybe. Maybe by changing the view, whatever the silhouettes of the brand, maybe if they change that, they could change the company and make it go down this area. They knew that Reebok had grown out of fitness or grown out of this woman's aerobics. So I think they've tried to pigeonhole Reebok down that area. And when you try and take something and put it in a different area, why, you know, it's not working. So I think that when Adidas had gained what they gained from buying Reebok, at that point, they should have probably disposed of Reebok instead of trying to make it into something else. So we come now to what are Reebok going to do now? Well, Reebok have a tremendous legacy.

Yes.

Tremendous legacy. And it's. How do you really make that legacy work? How do you come in and massage that people? I would say people over 40, maybe 45 years of age have all worn a pair of Reebok or nearly all worn a pair of Reebok. We know a lot of people did. They now have the money to buy a pair of Reebok again. So how do we get to them? And I think this is. Whoever comes in has got to look at and focus and say, let's try to look at these. Okay. Most people go for the 16 to 30 year old. Yeah, yeah. You can. You can say, well, how do we get to those? But look, a lot of our people are here. Yeah, let's try and focus on them. How do we. How do we get to them? Plus, again, it's a decision. Are we going to be a sports brand? Because we did really well in basketball and in tennis. So instead of trying to go everywhere that's concentrate. Shaka. Neil, he's still around. He wanted to buy the company. And there's another couple of guys who would like to be in. And you've got Iverson there, who is still a legend. I think he's working on the Legends and going in there and saying to these people, look, we can still produce this and you'd love a pair of our shoes. You'd love to walk about in a pair. Because we're now street, we're now fashion. So it's taking them and making the fashion feel for it that. Oh, yeah, we love Reebok. I love it.

Thank you. That's. That's really cool. So the last one is really kind of a post Reebok question. So I know that you said that in the book that you left and you went into property development and property management and you had a hobby of gardening. So can you tell us about what happened after the book or is there going to be a second book that is the follow up for kind of everything that happened after, or can you bring us up to speed from the end of the book to now?

Well, you never know what may come in the future. That's the one thing. As far as I'm concerned right now, it's the book. I'd like the book to grow and become a number one bestseller and possibly help Reebok to sort of regain a bit of that nostalgia, that bit of, oh, yes, Reebok can become a number one again. Okay, get the book up there. Why not? You know, it's easier to buy a book than it is to buy a shoe. Something like $15. You can get the Reebok book and read all about it. So, yes, it's a bit like the eagles And Hotel California, we've rebound, you know, I could check out. I could never leave. I love it. And. And that's been. Been the history is that. Okay, I went, I played with a few things, but really it was. Joel, what did we do then? What happened here? And because Reebok grew so rapidly, the Internal revenue were always interested in how did it grow. Why is that brand. And you know, the Reebok brand is still owned in the uk. It's a UK company. Okay. I didn't just own the company, but the brand is owned by the company in the UK And Internal Revenue, we're always interested in why. Why is that brand still there when you know. Which was. So I kept going backwards and forwards and different things on different reasons. And as the company grew, I became more sort of involved with going to the pro celebrity deals. They were all out there. So it was always been sort of brought in at various times. Everything else has been sitting back and enjoying it. Plus we're in France now because without Covid, we would be in our car and I'd be meeting up with Umberto Colombo or Richard Lidsel or.

He would still be. Still be doing that.

I'd still be doing that. Okay. These guys, they grew up with me with Rebate. They were my distribution.

Yeah.

I mean. And it's nice. I think we've actually got almost a date fixed now for driving down to. To Italy.

Oh, great.

To my pleasure. Just hired of Milan Verese and going up Sacramente, which is a very nice little mountain outside of Vereci where you can sit nice warm and have a nice bottle of wine. We can overlook the lakes and just enjoy.

I love it. Well, I would love if you would hang around for just a minute. I'm going to sign off for the interview and thank you so much. What is the best way for people to get a hold of the book or to find out more about you? Are there any resources that are good? What's the best way for people who would be interested in learning more to learn more other than obviously go buy the book? Yeah.

What could you learn more? I think buying the book is important and if they want to buy the book, it should be on Amazon. You say there's some problems? Maybe. I don't know. We'll check with our.

Only with the audio. I got the Kindle. I ended up getting the Kindle, no problem.

You end up getting Kindle? Yeah, but the book should be there. It was a bit delayed because the publisher that we have, although it's Simon and Schuster. It's a London office, the London office of Duna. But it should be available on that. And I think if anybody wants to sort of set up the business. Yes, read the book. I think maybe, maybe you'll see my part. And you know, this is not to tell you how to run your business. This just tells you how we did it and maybe little bits in there that you can use today.

But I found there to be tremendous lessons, I really did. And if we had another hour, I would love to go into that. We don't. But so that's, you know, read the book because you will be missing out if you don't.

Okay. But today, technology, whatever and wherever you are, whatever product, it's technology. Really get into the technology and make sure that you use it the most because this now gives you the opportunity to really bring your product out to the nation or wherever you are. Certainly. And California. Good place to be. Usa. Good place to be.

Love it. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate having you here.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Roland. Brilliant. You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening. Foreign.

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