Shoemaker

The Untold Story of the British Family Firm that Became a Global Brand

Joe Foster

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781471194047
• eBook ISBN: 9781471194030
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Biographies
• Index: Business

The remarkable story of how Joe Foster developed Reebok into one of the world's most famous sports brands, having started from a small factory in Bolton.

Since the late 19th century, the Foster family had been hand-making running shoes, supplying the likes of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams - later immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire - as well as providing boots to most Football League clubs. But a family feud between Foster's father and uncle about the direction of their business led to Joe and his brother Jeff setting up a new company, inspired by the success of Adidas and Puma, and so Reebok was born.

At first, money was so short that Joe and his wife had to live in their rundown factory, while the machinery that made the shoes was placed around the edge of the floor, because it was so weak it could have collapsed if they'd been positioned in the middle. But, from this inauspicious start, a major new player in the sports equipment field began to emerge, inspired by Joe's marketing vision. By the 1980s, Reebok had become a global phenomenon, when they were the first to latch onto the potential of the aerobics craze inspired by Jane Fonda. Soon, Reeboks were being seen on Hollywood red carpets and even in the film Aliens, where Sigourney Weaver wore a pair of Reebok Alien Stompers. 

Like the international bestseller Shoe Dog, by Nike's Phil Knight, Shoemaker is a powerful tale of triumph against all the odds, revealing the challenges and sacrifices that go into creating a world-beating brand; it is also the story of how a small local business can transform itself, with the right products and the right vision, into something much, much bigger. 

CHAPTER 1 Some People Run to Win

I have a confession. Two confessions, in fact. The first is, I don’t like running. The second is that I’m a lousy shoemaker. By that, I mean it’s not where my particular set of skills lies. There, it’s out there. I feel better now.

Though for a book about the founder of Reebok, a book titled Shoemaker, you might be confused. Hopefully, you’re also a little intrigued. You should be. My story, the Reebok story, is not a standard business tale about how I worked hard, hunched over a shoe last for thirty-five years. Nor is it a linear journey along a well-thought-out path, or a tale of how I risked millions and came out smelling of shiny leather. It is a book about motivation and the importance of gripping onto an opportunity when Lady Luck presents it.

But there’s more to it than that. A lot more. Like every success story, there’s been a sacrifice, a muddy pay-off for the glitter and gold that comes with industrial celebrity. There’s only room for one love when your heart is fully invested in your passion.

Somebody once said, ‘You can’t get to the top without standing on a few heads,’ or something like that. But that wasn’t my way, at least I like to think it wasn’t. There were no people harmed in the making of this business, and subsequently this book, although I could be wrong, of course.

I was brought up in a world of the remarkably average, where aspiring to be better was frowned upon. It was an era of ‘know your place’, ‘don’t rock the boat’, and other edicts injected into the masses to keep society in order. And it was also a time when old-fashioned values were in place, when people were generally kind to their neighbours, their elders and even to their peers.

Decency was paramount, my mum had always instilled that in me, alongside respect for others. But in my mind, contrary to societal expectations, so was growth and improvement through challenging myself, and it was on these foundations that my (eventual) success in industry was founded.

The path to that success wasn’t straight, nor was it defined. A lot of it was based on decisions that were made on the hoof. Many of those decisions were reactive rather than proactive, but always with the same aim in mind: to sell more shoes than the day before.

It seems to have worked, though it took thirty-one years to grow from a start-up to the world’s number one sports brand. Perhaps if I had made different decisions it would have arrived sooner, but I know for sure that, without the long and meandering journey, I wouldn’t have been prepared for the destination.

At the end of the day, many things needed to fall into place as I steered the Reebok ship along a path to success. Some of it was my doing, some of it was that of others. Some of it I’d like to call business acumen, but most of it was not. It was more a matter of good fortune, a dogged determination (some would say obsessive), and an ability to think creatively to turn misfortune into opportunity.

It was also about the importance of timing. Any brand that goes from zero to hero relies on good timing. And where better to start talking about timing than when the starter gun went off.

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Some people run to beat others. I ran to beat myself.

Bang!

I closed my eyes but saw no darkness, only a clear path laid out. A narrow track devoured with every step.

I heard my dad shout, ‘Come on, Joe, push-push-push,’ the nicotine-grated encouragement fading with every stretch of sinew. I pushed, dug deep, but not for him. Even at that age, I knew his encouragement was more to do with the bets he had placed on me than any pride in his seven-year-old son.

I wasn’t particularly bothered about winning… though I greatly preferred it to losing. The prizes for coming first in my category hardly acted as an incentive. Not many seven- to ten-year-olds will put an extra spring in their step for a piece of cutlery or an ugly ceramic farm animal.

The act of running was hard work, tiring, uncomfortable. Running to win meant pushing your lungs to the point of explosion, forcing your heart to beat so hard it floods your brain with extra blood until you’re desperate for your head to pop to alleviate the excruciating throbbing in your temples. No, running hurts, especially if you want to run faster than the fastest. The physical challenge held no attraction. So why did I do it? I had other motivations.

Coming first meant attention from my dad, a scarce commodity in the Foster household. Conversely, losing meant being ignored. But that was nothing new. It was the default setting in our Victorian terraced home on Hereford Road, north of the town-centre chimneys that choked the Bolton skies.

I wasn’t born particularly athletic; in fact, I was more weed than flourishing plant – shy, introverted and gangly. But I always knew that if I wanted something badly enough, I alone had the power to achieve it; others weren’t going to just give it to me.

I longed for praise from my dad, devoured any crumbs of pride he occasionally threw to me, the middle one of three sons. I taught myself how to get him to scatter a few, principally by winning him money when I raced. But even that wasn’t guaranteed.

I devised other ways to seek pleasure out of the monthly athletics events he thrust me into. And gradually, instead of seeking gratification through Dad’s praise, I sought it elsewhere, from the pride of knowing that I had done everything I could to maximise my performance, for myself, whether I won or not.

I would never be considered among the best athletes in the world, or the UK, or even Lancashire, for that matter. For that, you needed a genetic advantage. You had to have been born with the DNA of a runner. I hadn’t. But looking back, I had been born with the DNA of an ‘improver’. I could figure out how to do things better, faster, the best way that you could, always looking for slight improvements, things that would give you a minuscule advantage, even at the age of seven.

So, while I couldn’t move my whole body faster than the others, I could focus on the poise of my head, the swing of my arms, the gait of my legs, the angle of my soles as they hit the ground, my breathing. The sum of each tweak was enough to gain a few yards on my competitors. But the rest of my physiology, I couldn’t change. Which only left the tools of the trade. And there I had another advantage.

I was from a family of shoemakers. Not an advantage in itself, admittedly, but this was no ordinary shoemaking family. This was J. W. Foster & Sons, makers of hand-sewn sports shoes. And when red-faced rivals watched me accepting my winner’s trophy – a shiny spoon, a pot pig, or a dull-as-ditchwater reference book – and wondered how this scrawny mite had beaten the best runners in their athletics club, I would brace myself for the inevitable claims of ‘cheat, cheat’ as their gaze fell to my feet.

While the other boys ran in regular, flat-soled plimsolls, I wore spiked running shoes specifically designed and constructed for the precise conditions of that particular race meeting. I was perhaps the youngest ‘athlete’ in the country to wear customised running footwear. But before you start jumping to conclusions and thinking I was from a privileged background, my parents affording every advantage they could lay their hands on, let me explain.

Race shoes apart, I was like every other boy from a typical working-class family in the 1940s, appreciative of the small clutch of toys and games in our possession. But when it came to athletics, I had one distinct ancestral advantage – my grandad had invented the spiked running shoe. So I guess before the Reebok story really starts, a little historical catch-up is necessary.

Like many towns in the northwest of England, Bolton thrived in the boom of the cotton industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It became a standout example of innovation and rapid growth when, in 1779, Bolton industrialist Samuel Crompton invented the ‘spinning mule’, a machine used to spin cotton faster and more efficiently than handheld tools, thus reducing the number of mill workers needed and weaving more profit for the mill owners.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century my grandad, also called Joe Foster, became a purveyor of invention almost by accident. As a fifteen-year-old, he had two main interests in his life: running in his local athletics club, the Bolton Primrose Harriers, and repairing shoes and boots in his bedroom above his dad’s confectionery shop. The latter pursuit he was good at; the running, like me, not so much.

What Grandad Joe did have, though, was an inventive mind. Fed up with being a backmarker in every race, he figured he would combine his two skill sets to see if he could get to the finishing line quicker.

Grandad Joe likely learned his cobbling skills through visiting his grandfather Sam’s shoe workshop in Nottingham. Sam reputedly repaired the soles for lots of local sportsmen, and Joe had maybe seen the spiked cricket boots that his grandad had made to give them more grip. Perhaps a seed had been planted then, that this means of extra grip could be applied in other sports.

As it was, in his bedroom at 90 Dean Road, my grandad Joe set about designing a pair of spiked running shoes for himself.

In 1895, to test their effectiveness, he decided to try them out at his local athletics club, in a middle-distance track event. The night before his first race, the shoes were still not finished. He had hand-sewn only one of the clumps – the added outer sole on the front of the shoe from which the spikes protrude. Working by candlelight late into the night, he had neither the visibility nor the patience to sew the clump onto the other shoe. Racked with frustration, he simply hammered it on with nails.

His fellow racers were both intrigued and amused. What right did this quiet, unassuming runner have to think he could be different from them? Did he really need to cheat to win? And how on earth would these ugly, and mismatched, shoes give him an advantage over standard plimsolls? Some laughed, some sneered, but as Joe readied himself at the starting line, he believed those to his left and right would soon be in awe when he left them in his wake.

As the starting gun went off, Joe’s spikes dug into the cinder track, giving him a perfect kick-off into his stride, his feet lifting light in shoes that felt barely there. By the first bend, he was already several yards in front. As his body leaned into the bend, where the others’ plimsolls would lose microseconds with tiny movements sidewards, Joe’s spikes forced all motion forwards.

With virtually no cushioning, Joe could feel his feet locking onto the track as soon as his toes touched the surface, propelling him forwards fractions of a second quicker than the rubber-soled feet of his competitors. The gain in traction was minute with each step, but the sum total was enough to continue widening the distance between him and the chasing crowd.

Carrying less weight on his feet and experiencing more straight-line efficiency, Joe could feel the physical advantage. It was slight, but it was there, and as he reached the halfway point he recognised he still had reserves of energy. His lungs weren’t trying to suck in air as desperately as in previous races; his legs were not as leaden as usual. Maybe it was psychological, he thought as he began his last lap. Perhaps it was just a placebo.

He just had time to decide it was probably a combination when he felt a strange sensation in his right foot. The ground didn’t feel as even. It felt like he was running over pebbles. Then it felt like he was running over glass, every step sending agonising needles of pain through the ball of his foot and up his leg, telling his brain to ease the pressure. Finally, he felt something give way. He stumbled over an invisible rock, his bare toes grazing against the coarse cinders.

As he tried to resume the pace, he looked behind to see the second- and third-place runners catching him up. But, even more worrying, in between him and the challengers he spotted the dusty, spiked clump from his right pump lying on the track like a dead rat. With his balance thrown and every step a burning agony, he slowed to a limp, dejected as the chasing pack caught up, each one giving him a desultory smack on the back of his head as they passed.

Joe finished second to last. He snatched off what was left of his running pumps and hobbled home, where he tossed the pumps into a cupboard under the stairs and slammed the door on them. The humiliation he felt at that moment suffocated any desire to seek improvement on the race track again. But Joe was made of sterner stuff.

This gut-wrenching experience was just a reminder that there are no short cuts. His next pair wouldn’t let him down and, for the next few months, he worked again on the design, making the shoes lighter and softer until he had what he considered the finished product – the perfect, lightweight running pumps. This time he would give them an outing on solo test runs to make sure there would be no repeat of his initial embarrassment.

When he tried them in a race, he didn’t win but came a very unlikely second. Now his clubmates weren’t laughing. Now they all wanted a pair of these new wonder shoes, and Joe had no choice but to oblige.

Several months later, after Joe had delivered his final pair, rival athletics clubs didn’t take long to notice that Joe’s club, Bolton Primrose Harriers, were becoming the team to beat. It took even less time for them to work out why, and then, unsurprisingly, more orders for Joe Foster’s running shoes were placed.

Before long, at every race meeting, Joe was surrounded by other runners hounding him to make them a pair. As word spread further, Joe began to spend less time on the race track and more time in his bedroom hand-sewing shoes to satisfy the queues that had started to form outside his door.

In 1900, four years after the first-ever modern Olympic Games had been held in Athens, demand for Joe’s shoes forced him to expand. He created J. W. Foster (Athletic Shoes) and moved into new premises at what was soon to become known as the ‘Olympic Works’ at 57 Deane Road in Bolton, next to the Horse and Vulcan pub.

The latest requests were for one-off designs, custom shoes based on the running style of a particular athlete, or shoes tailor-made for a particular track, even shoes optimised for just one specific race. In no time at all, J. W. Foster had become the shoemaker for hand-sewn specialist running pumps. If you wanted the best, no matter where you were based in the UK, Joe was your man.

Never in his wildest dreams could this Bolton cobbler have imagined that just four years later, in 1904, his running pumps would be instrumental in breaking three world records in one race.

CHAPTER 2 First World Records

On a grey November day in 1904, the rain slewed across the crowds huddled on the terraces of Glasgow’s Ibrox Park stadium. The fat, grey clouds had sucked any colour and excitement from the athletics meeting. Legions of dedicated friends and family members looked on, collars upturned, quietly cursing the Scottish weather.

When a short, stocky figure stepped onto the race track the murmurs grew louder, the rainstorm forgotten. All eyes were on one man – amateur middle- and long-distance runner, Alfred Shrubb.

Alfred took his place at the starting line, smoothed down his glorious handlebar moustache and glanced at the crowd. He didn’t look like a world-beater poised next to the field of taller, more athletic-looking runners. If he felt the pressure, he didn’t show it, but he knew what was expected of him.

Stories of his superhuman speed had bolstered his reputation to that of quasi-legend. Tales of his running feats were repeated at race meets over and over; of Alfred having to compete against horses, or run solo against relay teams, as there was no single human on the planet capable of keeping up with him.

Alfred didn’t disappoint. He never did. Like all other race days, he quickly tore away from the pack, leaving them trailing far behind. On that day he broke the 6-mile record, the 10-mile record, and then set another world best by covering 11 miles and 1,137 yards in one hour. And he did it all in Foster’s shoes.

Grandad regularly attended events to give out his shoes not just to athletes, but to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Chapter 1: Some People Run to Win
• Chapter 2: First World Records
• Chapter 3: Lessons in Survival
• Chapter 4: Taking My Place
• Chapter 5: The Beginning of the End
• Chapter 6: The Showdown
• Chapter 7: Mercury Rises
• Chapter 8: It’s All About the People
• Chapter 9: Changing Names
• Chapter 10: A Challenge
• Chapter 11: A Spell on the Road
• Chapter 12: Time to Move
• Chapter 13: America on My Mind
• Chapter 14: An Opening to the World
• Chapter 15: A Near-Death Experience
• Chapter 16: New Openings
• Chapter 17: A Key to America?
• Chapter 18: Dad, Death and a New Distributor
• Chapter 19: Back to Square One
• Chapter 20: Fated
• Chapter 21: Finding Fireman
• Chapter 22: The Waiting Game
• Chapter 23: Hong Kong and Beyond
• Chapter 24: Back to Boston
• Chapter 25: My Brother Jeff
• Chapter 26: A Major Fault
• Chapter 27: Our Angel
• Chapter 28: Keeping Up
• Chapter 29: Changes Afoot
• Chapter 30: Dealing With the Rest
• Chapter 31: Reebok Goes Celebrity
• Chapter 32: A Clash of Cultures
• Chapter 33: A Rollercoaster Ride
• Chapter 34: Death, and a Rebirth
• Chapter 35: A Founder’s Role
• Afterword: Who and What Made a Difference
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Copyright