It was an uncontrolled brand. The NFL deal also opened the door to other leagues. By , Fireman had deals with all four major sports leagues. Reebok was trying to carve a path to become the third major global sports brand. It was poised instead to be acquired by Adidas, and with the sale also went the dream of becoming that third global sports brand, spoken in the same breath as Nike and Adidas. Now, did he do it by himself? Absolutely not. He brought out the best from employees by pushing them to go further, do more.
And for a lot of us at Reebok, he got your attention in a way that was challenging. Certainly, he helped scale Reebok to its peak. But no one is flawless. I think later on, he was less about building the brand and more about just maintaining the sales.
But all in: a brilliant man. He built a company that once rivaled Nike — and some still wonder if it could be that strong contender now, under the right circumstances.
If Reebok had found its own Herbert Hainer, could it have done the same? Incidentally, struggling to find a leader to replace himself is what led Fireman into negotiations with Adidas. Had he found someone suited to the task, the conversation around Reebok may be different today.
At the time, Foster was thrilled by the fact that Adidas knew they existed. Adidas declined to comment for this story. Nike was getting bigger, and bringing Adidas and Reebok together seemed to be a good way to combat that.
Fireman had already tried finding a successor, to no avail. Finding an acquisition partner was another good option. Smart men and women make foolish decisions sometimes. The leadership teams talked for seven months about how to make the merger work, Fireman said, but once the deal was done, those plans were largely forgotten. Over the years, Reebok lost its licenses with the major sports leagues: Adidas took over its deal with the NBA and the NFL was handed over to a host of other brands.
But smart men and women make foolish decisions sometimes. The importance of losing the sports licenses varies depending on who you ask. To Smith, what they really lost was brand visibility. To Litchfield and Fireman, though, it meant a lot — and it was symbolic of the larger movement of Reebok out of the sports market.
One of the first things that Adidas did was they came in and pulled basketball — and the NBA was a big deal to us. But the loss of sports licenses was the least of the issues in the acquisition. By far the largest was that Adidas and Reebok directly competed with each other. Thus, Reebok got pushed into fitness and training, the latter of which has been on the decline for years, according to Powell.
Powell believes Reebok has also been purposefully held back from opportunities in the retro space since Adidas has had success there. Marketing to the same consumer meant battling over the same market share. For someone to gain share, somebody else has to lose. As with other things, the sale provides a chance to change that, and allow more dedicated attention to Reebok. They determined to take those assets and build Adidas. The brand had other problems, though. Sales fell in , and before rallying back to levels by Questions around its core identity — what Reebok stood for — began to plague the company as it looked to build itself into more of a sports generalist, so much so that Litchfield left Reebok in The lack of a strong brand identity was made worse by the company changing the style of shoes frequently, and trying to expand into multiple different categories at once.
Poser recalls being a buyer at a major sports retailer when Reebok put out a premium running shoe — it sold well, but then the company changed the last a tool used to shape footwear for the shoe the following year and returning customers no longer fit in it. They were both huge stars of the day, and helped Reebok become associated with the basketball space.
And giant men need really supportive footwear, which tends to make [the shoes] kind of ugly. In the early s, Reebok made another bet by getting into the relatively untapped market for sneaker lines made with musicians. The brand partnered with Jay-Z to launch the S.
Carter in , and the same year debuted the G-Unit line with 50 Cent though the larger G-Unit launch came in Reebok was one of the first to think of creating products with major artists. We dreamed it up. The shoes did well for Reebok, but the company may have ultimately been too early to the music movement, according to Smith.
Drops with celebrities today are helped along by social media and the internet, and Reebok launched into the space about a decade before the strategy became widespread. Nor was Reebok wrong to partner with top basketball stars on sneaker lines. Whereas Nike is dogmatic about keeping supply just behind demand, Reebok flooded the market when its shoes did well, causing once-coveted shoes to be widely available. Supply and demand problems plagued not only the Iverson shoes, but also the S.
Carter and the G-Unit, according to multiple sources. With the S. Carter, Reebok dropped an initial pairs, then 5, when those sold out, then 50,, according to Powell. And it took them 35 years to do that.
It worked. As a competitor, I was always impressed with that. I never wanted to be Nike, I was good with Reebok being Reebok, and we had our own way. But when we focused on our stuff, particularly the product creation side, we had a small team, and we did a lot of stuff — and it was pretty impactful.
They stripped away the guts of what it stood for. How good can you do from that? A return to its core identity. According to Litchfield, it was working. The reality was that Reebok exited its deals with major sports leagues and pivoted to focus on a much smaller fitness market. And pinning Reebok into that small market killed the opportunity for meaningful growth.
Basketball is a possibility once more, but perhaps not right away. But to Litchfield, the sale is a chance for Reebok to rediscover its identity. Fireman regrets not expanding quickly enough in some segments. Reebok should have gone harder into the Asian market, according to Fireman, and the company should have pushed into the soccer space when Nike did.
When Fireman sold to Adidas, he thought he was selling Reebok to a competitor that would continue that growth and expansion. Do I regret that the management of Adidas fundamentally destroyed it? Would I not sell? And I took it. To Litchfield, fingers can only be pointed at Adidas for so long. The reason? But he told Retail Dive earlier this summer that he was hopeful about the pending sale, in large part because Reebok would finally be separate from its big brother and erstwhile rival.
Will ABG be a better corporate owner? But what Reebok probably needs, more than anything, is the opportunity to get back on its own two feet again. Jon Chesto can be reached at jon. Follow him on Twitter jonchesto.
Boston Globe video. In theory, the deal gave the united companies the might to take on Nike in the valuable US market. Yet 15 years and multiple false starts later, Adidas is putting Reebok up for sale.
It realized the two companies could better reach their potential apart than together, it said in a statement that sounded like the announcement of a Hollywood divorce. The decision was arguably overdue. It will now leave the task to another owner who has yet to be announced. Five years later, he bought out the British parent company paywall and Reebok became American. The brand gained incredible momentum throughout the s as its shoes became the fitness and fashion sneakers of choice for many US shoppers.
But its sales were already starting to flag. That year, it recorded its first drop in earnings. The shoe was a mega-hit and gave new energy to the brand. It introduced new cushioning platforms, such as its DMX Series sneakers.
The company appeared to have strayed too far from its core categories and was losing relevance in the eyes of shoppers. Its market share continued to slide , and by , its image was suffering from its reliance on mass retailers such as Sears and JCPenney. The brand was straining to keep its cool, even as it tried to address the issue.
It won a big licensing contract with the National Football league in , and signed rappers Jay-Z and 50 Cent to shoe deals in The company may not have been keeping pace with its competitors, but Adidas saw the potential for a turnaround. At the time, Adidas was strong on its home turf in Europe but had been struggling to gain a foothold in the US.
Reebok would in theory allow it to do that. It had a solid roster of athletes and musicians, and still controlled a healthy portion of the American market.
After the deal, however, nothing much happened.
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