Joe Foster, co-founder of Reebok, discusses with David Lin, anchor for Kitco News, the founding of the company, Adidas' acquisition, and now sale, of Reebok, and the future of footwear.
Kitco news special coverage of the future. Blockchain summit is brought to you by cook finance, a revolution in deep by asset management.
We're here with a living legend. Joe Foster is the co-founder of Reebok. Welcome to the show, Joe. It's an absolute honor. Thank you for the invitation, Joe. Um, everyone knows who you are. Everyone knows the products that you created in the legacy. Tell us about the history, starting from the founding of your company, where, where you, where you all started?
Well, it's a long story, but we'll try and keep it nice and neat. It really goes back to my grandfather. My grandfather started JD. We foster them songs, which became a very famous, a running shoe company. I think the shoe company way back in 1895. And he had the world records and gold medals from the Olympics right in the first decade of the 20th.
So it was a ride back then, of course, the second decade where world war one, no shoes made 1920s. That was his, that was really his belly Paul because, uh, you know, cherish fire. We're still in the chariots of fire film. Machar's if I, uh, Harold Abrams, uh, Eric Liddell, um, glory, Berlin, they all won gold medals and they were immortalized in this film.
I can get lists. You'll know that you cherish and fire by van go, but he made the shoe. Unfortunately, my grandfather died in 1933. I wasn't born until 1935, but I was born on his birthday, which meant I had his name. Certainly grandmother said, no, he's broken his name with him. So my grandfather was always, if I'm Joel, what was footwear like in the thirties before you found it?
Well, he invented a spike and, uh, for that the method was called Toon shoe. We made it inside out. You turned it around and right now w w w we have machinery to do all, this was all hands-off. Yeah, everything was on sewn together, but they were very famous and, uh, I think he's in the, uh, Olympic games, foster supplied, every athlete with the shoes.
Wow. But if you can think back to 1920s, Olympics was just track and field. Yeah. So you didn't have the enormous amount of athletes that we have today, but they're supplied, uh, all the, all the athletes that Andrew and we actually have paperwork that proves that so well, that's it. So that was my grandfather.
And what was the, what was your vision when you co-founded the company? Well, Moving forward. Of course, and I was very young at 30 when the world war two started when I was four years old, we have six years of a world war and I am 10. When education comes back and we get back into life. My 17 I'd have some college.
Join the footwear company, Jade fosters by 18. I had to do national service. So I only got one year in the company. I went to Webb my brother as well. It was older than me, but we went to the same time. We came back after two years and we found a failing company. We were looking after them. Well, my grandfather started, they just continued, but they hadn't continued.
So, uh, we came back and we looked at the company and we're trying to get my uncle and my father were not then running the company. We're trying to get them to understand that you've got to move on. Jeff had went to Germany, who'd seen, uh, I did this and Puma and he was saying, well, you know, they've moved, it's different.
We couldn't get them to change. Um, so three years later, we actually went to college to learn a lot more about foot work and. I think it was later, we had left the company we had to, and we set up mercury sports, football, biggest problems of football. We will work to that. You aim to fix while we're there.
Huh? I don't think there was a problem with the footwear. I think you have to move on, you move on from hand. So it, and so it means that you can probably make sleepers a day or if you want volume, you've got to change your ideas and your thinking. What'd you say Reebok was, uh, intricately, I guess, involved in the aesthetic changes of footwear in the last seven.
Well, I mean, certain things we did. Yeah. We disrupted the market, but that was later, you know? Yeah. We have to start from basics. And that is when do you start with football or soccer, whichever way you want to look at it was now the property of additives, then they'd come in. So when we left, we had running, we are in athletics, which is great, but not a big company.
What is the most, in your opinion, what is the most important factor? For designing a shoe for athletes, what do they care most about, but design issue for athletes. And I was, first of all, his weight, you know, it needs to be lightweight. And we are over the years, this is, has gone life at MITRE because of the technology, the Bravos and different.
Uh, so when we started off, we were not much different than Jed with fosters, except we used machinery and we could get more volume, but the most important thing for us is marketing and that's getting into the athletes. And we did that. We really got to the athletes, we became part of, uh, athletics. And so we could talk to them.
What's good for you and talk to them. That that helps us design shoes that they wanted. Right. So not being a shoe maker, design the shoe. No. What do you want? What makes of what we will need this? And so we, we, we changed that and we became known as athletically, but the market in the UK plastics small, and I'm looking across the Atlantic and the America, every college, every university coach.
And, uh, you could go to university with a sport scholarship. Yeah. There's one university in the UK. That's loft, bruh. And that's the only college you could go to for sports. So I wanted to get to America 1968, I'm reading a magazine. And then this is an advertisement from the government, the British government.
We want you to export. Okay. I we'll pay for you a stand at the NSDA show in Chicago in February, and we'll pay your return offer and we'll pay half of your hotel bills. You don't refuse that. Then I'm off to Chicago. Then in 1968, I had a great show. Nobody wants it. They all wanted to buy the shoes, but so where are we getting them from?
And I'm saying England, and they're saying is new England? No, no, not at all possible all the time. Oh, that was too difficult. Right? 1968, by the time I got into the American market, it was 19 17, 9, 11 years. It took me because I'm trying to push to get a distributor, but what we needed, we needed the hook, you know, in America is what was the hook?
Well in the seventies, lucky for us running from being almost nothing became a large category. Everybody started. And maybe by 1975, but something like 40 million Americans buying shoes and going out there running runner's world was out with a fuel that Joe, what do you think is the next evolution in footwear is actually evolution.
Uh, that's a difficult one. I think you should ask the youngsters because I w we did what we did and that well, the demo. What if you were to pull consumers today? What do you think they want today? That was very different from let's say when you first started the company, were there, are there major differences in terms of the demographic uses use cases?
We've seen that a company like Nike, I did this Reebok where fashion company. This is where the volume comes from. So what the athletes want. Yes. There's, it's driven by technology. We've seen that Nike produced a shoe that, uh, kept conduct orgy. He mentioned the two hours. And so this is just influencing people, but the athletes, yeah, you can.
Possibly improve. I mean, but we don't see much improvement. What we do see is a softness lightness. This has gone straight. So the company is not really dependent on fascia. How, how do you feel about, uh, ADI desperate Formance over the last, uh, since the acquisition, the last 15 years, did they move in the direction that you would have wanted?
Well, obviously not. I, but you know, if you pay any of the $4 billion for a company, I guess you're entitled to do whatever you want because it's yours. So they, they did it well, they needed to do for. Then do rebook any good, you know? And, uh, and so Reebok has shrunk from a 4 billion to 2 billion company, but there's a change coming that's right.
What's that change? Well, I did as a sounding or the greatest sales where they with. And ABG. We, we, we have Shigella secular Neal and Shaq loves the brand final question before I let you go. What are you wearing today? Oh, I'm wearing classics. They come home. What else? Absolutely. Absolutely honored to have you on their show.
I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you for watching Keiko news. Kitco news special coverage of the future. Blockchain summit is brought to you by cook finance, a revolution in deep by asset management. .