How New Balance Went From Dad Shoes To Cultural Icon

0:01Fifteen years ago, New Balance had a real challenge. It made some of the best shoes in the world. It had a century of history behind it. And yet, for a generation of consumers, it was known for one thing, the dad shoe.

0:22Today, New Balance is worn by Olympic champions, NBA stars, fashion insiders, and some of the most influential names in sneaker culture. So how did a brand go from being the shoe your dad wore to one of the coolest brands in the world? The surprising answer is New Balance didn't really reinvent itself. It just figured out how to become more of itself. I sat down with New Balance CMO and brand president Chris Davis and Complex Associate Editor Matt Welty to find out just how it happened. I'm Linda Boff, and you're listening to A Different Take.

1:07Matt has covered the sneakerverse for well over a decade but has been a sneakerhead it sounds like for his whole life. What was your first impression of New Balance? How did it evolve? Talk about that a little. I think for a lot of people in my age group one of their first introductions to New New Balance is the 574 sneaker. It's one of their, probably one of their best selling shoes, probably their best selling shoe of all time.

1:35Back in the early 2000s, Foot Locker had a special that they used to run. It was a two for 89 deal. And the 574 was like a staple of that. So people would get two pairs of sneakers for 90 bucks, you know, which was a deal at the time. So I think a lot of people were introduced to New Balance through that shoe. You know, it's the classic gray New Balance. It's the emoji on your phone. I don't think it gets more iconic than that when you're talking about the brand. But I think it also, it's funny because it runs like parallel to New Balance being this like high quality brand at the same time. Their shoe, the 990, which first released in 1982 was$100.

2:18It was the first$100 sneaker. And I was actually just looking it up before I came here. if you spent a hundred dollars in 1982 it's three hundred and forty six dollars in today's money and I think that that's where you know a lot of people talk about the term dad shoe Stephen Smith who's a longtime designer who worked at New Balance in the past and designed some of those shoes he said but there's something comforting about a dad and there's something wealth about a father so it's like why wouldn't the shoe be something that's expensive and high quality so the traits kind of like mirrored each other with the brand ethos a little bit I think.

2:59The shoes being so expensive made them like a status symbol. You talk about places like the DMV area around Washington DC and you know like a lot of guys who were hustlers at the time New Balance became a really staple shoe for them. One, they were out all day on their feet doing whatever they were doing. And two, the sneakers were super expensive. So to have those shoes on your feet, you know, in that area, I think it kind of built like the culture around New Balance that maybe they've been able to tap into. It's funny, I was actually talking to someone, this guy Till Yagla, who used to work at New Balance way back in the day.

3:36In the 90s, early 2000s, there was this weird connection between nationalists in europe and new balance because they saw the n on the side of the shoe and they thought it meant nat they were like it was like their like secret hat tip to each other so he goes i need to like find a way to like shed that image so they started doing these limited collaborations with sneaker boutiques in europe um soul box sneakers and stuff crooked crooked tongues and it brought like a new energy and a new look to New Balance because people just think gray suede New Balance and then you see a pair of New Balances that are have a purple toe on them and you're like wow purple suede sneakers I didn't really think of New Balance in that sense and I feel like that's what really opened them up to the new sneakerhead market like initially this is like 2005 2006 and it built like a really core community around it because the stuff was so limited and you had to really trade and hunt the shoes down and and make connections with people.

4:37And I feel like that collector community is what kind of fostered, to an extent, where New Balance is at now. And that may be the first clue in the story. New Balance didn't have to create a culture around the brand from scratch. There were already people who understood what made it special. The challenge was figuring out how to let more people in without losing those people who already loved the brand. They had like a kind of like core collector community for a long time, but it was a very niche thing. It was cool, but it was very, very small and like very nerdy. I think it was 2011. They did a collaboration with a store called Concepts in Boston called The Kennedy, which was based off of JFK's connection to Hyannis and all of that.

5:28And they made it like a nautical themed shoe. And I remember that being like the first New Balance where it was on all the sneaker blogs People are like, how do I hunt this down? How do I get this? If you look at someone like Steve Jobs Who championed the New Balance and I was talking to my friend Rob Stewart who was a New Balance fanatic and he goes Look at Steve Jobs. The guy has great taste You know, he pretty much invented Apple and if he co-signs the shoe then he knows what he's talking about, right? Maybe like 2017, 2018, you had chunkier shoes get popular. Balenciaga made the shoe, the Triple S, that was like a monster.

6:02Fila had a big shoe called the Disruptor that was chunky. And New Balance had their chunky 990 sneakers. And I think that it kind of hit just like the right moment. And they were able to tap into that authenticity that they had created before.

6:21They had done this like salmon colored pair of 990s that were super limited and my boss at the time Joe LaPuma has this show Sneaker Shopping. A lot of people know him in the sneaker space and that was like the first time he saw me wearing those shoes and he wasn't like a New Balance guy and he's like I need those sneakers. He posted them on his Instagram and Macklemore hit him up and was like I need those sneakers and Macklemore wasn't a New Balance guy either and I hit up New Balance being like, hey, like Macklemore wants these shoes. And they're like, we sold them all. I'm sorry. And like, nothing we can do.

6:52And I felt like that was really the first moment where I'm like, okay, people from the outside are starting to pay attention to this. Even if it was just like minor, I saw shoes that like, not like you got made fun of for wearing New Balance, but everyone else was wearing Jordan and Nike. And then all of a sudden, the people who only wore Jordan and Nike were like, hey, what's this New Balance thing that's going on? This is a very different kind of turning point. New Balance wasn't trying to buy attention. People were starting to ask for something they couldn't get. And when people who'd never considered themselves New Balance customers started asking, what's going on with this brand?

7:33That was the signal that something had changed. But culture alone doesn't explain a transformation this big. There had to be a dedicated strategy behind it. Chris, you are the architect, in my view, of this transformation of New Balance. So I want you to take a moment and tell us the story of the New Balance brand, the from and the to, from your perspective. First I'll say we have a ton of great team members that played a role in this architectural process. It's never about one person. But actually 10 years ago, this September, is when we began our brand transformation process. And at that point in time, we were kind of in a stagnant zone of growing four to six percent per year.

8:24We were driving a lot of lower funnel storytelling, product transaction stories, and ensuring that we were essentially hitting numbers and growing our revenue by increasing pairs and units sold of footwear and apparel. We knew that in order to be a world-class athletic brand we needed to change our offense and do something drastically different. What we decided to do was transform New Balance from a great product company to a world-class brand. And that wasn't really a transformation process, it was more about a revelation process. It was about revealing our brand truth. And at that point in time we were very much viewed as a running and a lifestyle company, but we knew that we were so much more than that.

9:09What we knew is that we were a brand with heritage, not a heritage brand. A heritage brand relies on its past, but a brand with heritage honors its past while simultaneously, relentlessly innovates into the future. We knew we had to evolve in a brand-led fashion to be a world-class athletic brand. And we really rooted ourselves in two simple truths that were difficult to execute, but easy to repeat and easy to permeate throughout the entirety of the organization. The first simple truth is that the death of great brands in sports, in retail, and fashion lies in the notion of stagnation. So what that basically means is if you're standing still, you're moving backwards.

9:50If you don't have the ability to disrupt yourself, that you ultimately will be disrupted by the competition. The second major truth lies in the idea of that revelation is that all of our marketing, all of our products, all of our storytelling, all of our partnerships had to be a reflection of our values as a brand and our personality as a brand. And that was kind of the nucleus of where we started. And through many internal and external interviews, we wanted to go back to the idea of what made New Balance so successful in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. And it was really being the ultimate challenger brand, not only in our industry, but in any industry.

10:28It was about having a tongue-in-cheek way of communicating. It was about being the intelligent choice. And here's where the story takes an unexpected turn. If you're trying to change how people see your brand, the obvious move is to distance yourself from the thing they didn't like about you. New Balance did almost the opposite. They didn't run away from the dad's shoe. They leaned into it because the brand realized that being comfortable with who you are can be much more powerful than trying to convince people you're something you're not. What we believe is cool are just enduring attributes of our brand that are timeless.

11:10Tell me a few of them. Yes, craft. We believe that there's always a place for craftsmanship in the world, whether it's enduring quality, whether it's comfort, whether it's fit or superior made product. Like we wanted to own craftsmanship. We're the only major athletic footwear manufacturer that makes shoes in the United States and United Kingdom. Like that is a brand beacon for us. Like being able to tell that story in a beautifully crafted way was so important to our success. Another component was we wanted to expand our consumer base without alienating existing consumers. The idea of owning the color gray is something that we've been since 1975, 1980.

11:54We have owned the color gray. The color gray is universal. It applies to anything. It applies to dads in Ohio, but it also applies to supermodels in London. And addressing that elephant in the room and owning that dad shoe mindset and construct and making that cool through collaborations, through unique storytelling outlets, finding the people who really value that was so critical to our success. Leading with values and doing things the right way. The New Balance Foundation has been around for 30 years. We've given over$150 million to charity. A lot of that is fighting childhood obesity. We've always been like a tongue-in-cheek brand that's not afraid to make fun of itself.

12:36And like showing that level of self-awareness and being able to make fun of ourselves, I think provides a sense of authenticity and humility that people crave from brands. Owning those things that otherwise wouldn't be considered sexy or cool 10 years ago, but making them part of culture in a way that was humble, relevant, and timeless.

13:04I feel like they definitely made a concerted effort to be like, we need to do something new but I also feel like at the same time they're not just gonna let anyone come in and just do whatever they want to the shoes they definitely play to their heritage but they're not so absorbed by it I mean it's like going to your parents or grandparents house and you know they still cook some of the ethnic food that you grew up with but then you also have of hamburgers and hot dogs, et cetera, on the table, but you have like a reminder of where your family came from, but it's not the whole identity of who you are at this point.

13:46I feel like that's kind of the story of New Balance to some degree. So maybe the real New Balance story isn't about becoming cool. It's about becoming unmistakably New Balance. But a brand can't do that by itself. It needs people who can bring that identity to life, people who aren't simply paid to wear the product but who actually believe in what the brand is building and that's where New Balance's approach to athletes gets really interesting because in the next episode we're going to look at why New Balance chose fewer athletes built deeper relationships with them and turn the traditional endorsement model into something that it looks a whole lot more like a long-term partnership.

14:34I'm Linda Boff, and you're listening to A Different Take.