E099 - What it Really Takes to Build a Billion-Dollar Brand (Founder of Reebok)

31:05Yeah. And they dealt with everything. Because if you consider it, we were in two trades. We were in the shoe trade to make shoes, but we're in the sports trade as far as selling the product. So it wasn't like going through, if you can think of going back, you used to have shoe shops. You still do have a few shoe shops. Yeah. left a few retailers on the high street. Not many of those left anymore. They mainly all know part of something else.

31:38So what was the question again? The competitors like Adidas. The competitors, yeah. So Adidas and Puma and Nike, they were going through the sports retailers. But we still held the sway because, you know, we went selling at athletic meetings as well. Slowly, they were making headway, but we owned the UK market. And the question was, what do you do next? Do we go to Europe and expand our territory, or do we expand our offering instead of just athletics? We'd already gone into rugby. We owned Rugby League. We owned Rugby League, and that was because it was the north of England sport. And really, what we said to ourselves, and we called it white space.

32:29Where do we go for the white space? Where's the space that we can go to that people like Nike and Adidas, they don't either know about or they can't find it? And that was like orienteering, cross-country running, felt running, and rugby league. These were areas that we could expand our business. So we owned those. We still couldn't go into soccer. because the big boys were in there and they had access to that and we didn't have the money. So the question was, since we can't go into the big sport, which is soccer or football, I call it soccer because I've been to America too many times. Yeah, you trade it.

33:10And you can't talk about football in America because it's a different game, totally different game. So what we're doing, we go to Europe, about 28 languages, different cultures, or do we go to America? So I thought, yeah, we'll go to America. Family doll. Sit around the table. We haven't enough money, Joe. You can't go to America. We can't send you. How can we do that? Okay, we can't do that. What was it that you needed financially to be in America? Financially, I think you needed a presence. You've got to get there. And what happened in America was the NSGA show, the National Sporting Goods Association of America, every year they had the sporting goods in Chicago in February.

33:59The total opposite of what we're on today is freezing. In February, it's absolutely minus zero. But that's where they have it. But the family were much against the idea of me going to this show. However, another stroke of luck. We used to subscribe to a magazine called Eurosport. And in this magazine, the government, the British government were advertising. They wanted the sports people, sports manufacturers to export. And in this, it was, we will supply you with a stand, a booth at the NSGA show. We'll pay for your return, and we'll pay 50 % of your hotel expenses whilst you're there. The family didn't have any problems.

34:45you can go. It's cheaper for me to be out there back in the UK. So the first one was 1968 and I went with a friend, a friend called Bob Brigham. I don't know if you know what, Ellis Brigham? Ellis Brigham, outdoor ski and outdoor. They have about six or seven stores, one in Manchester and as part of developing what we did, we were making a rock climbing boot for Brigham from Bob Brigham. So he decided he would come out. So we made the trip together. And I don't know why we did it. We took a ticket for two weeks because a two-week return flight to America was cheaper than taking sort of three or four-day flights.

35:32So we did that. And we went out, right? And we went out a bit early. Went into New York and saw a few things there. And Bob went to the outdoor stores because that's what he was looking at. I went to the sports stores. Was this your first time in America? First time in America, 1968, yeah. What did you think? Well, you know, we went to New York. So what do you think of New York? You've seen it so many times. It wasn't on television we've seen it, but in films, everybody's seen it. So it's exactly what you've seen. There are no real surprises, except that, you know, when you're talking to the guys out there and the language is a bit different and things are a bit different, We used to, Tad's Steak Bar, we went there every night for the evening, Tad's Steak Bar,$1.50 for a big steak and a Idaho potato.

36:22It was a great experience. A learning experience was absolutely incredible. Then we moved on to Chicago. I didn't sell anything. Bob sold a few pair of boots. That was okay. Nobody wanted to import. That was the problem. and they say well when you get a distributor over here and you know when we can go somewhere local you know we'd love your product yeah yeah okay so i'm in 1968 if someone wanted to buy one of your shoes from america 1968 how long what would the process be and how long would it take for the consumer to actually get the shoe well it wouldn't take that long because as a manufacturer We also were a distributor in the UK, so we had a stock, and Mr.

37:09Underwood has a pair of shoes. And I don't know if you've heard of Frank Shorter. Frank Shorter is one of the best American runners at the time. He actually came and bought a pair of shoes. And there was another guy, I just forget his name now. But we did get people who were really into athletics, knew the scene in the UK because they would travel being international athletes. They would buy shoes. and so but you're selling one or two you know we wanted to do volume yeah and we wouldn't get volume unless we had a distributor so 1968 i actually got into america in 1979 11 years yeah and people say how did you keep staying i was having fun it was good you know it was great okay And I had six failures.

37:59I had six people who said, yeah, I'll be your distributor. And they all failed. And they all failed until in 1978. And I'm not going to get you. Did they fail or did the agreement just not? Well, they failed mainly because they couldn't sell the product. It was like they had to stop the product. Okay. So how much? Because if the product wasn't there, they couldn't sell it. So pushing the way into the market was difficult. So they paid up front for a batch, it got sent over, and then it was there? Okay, yeah. Well, in those days, you used a letter of credit. Because people either paid you in advance or had a letter of credit.

38:40Letter of credit meant that, yeah, it was guaranteed. Their bank would guarantee you got the money. Okay. Although in the UK, they did have a credit guarantee system whereby if an overseas buyer let you down, they would pay, I think it was about 90 % of the cost. So you could have some sort of guarantee there or some sort of insurance on that. But mainly it was all done by a letter of credit. I'm going to say it failed because I think number one is they were not influential enough themselves in the market. And probably number two, they didn't have enough money. And we didn't have enough money to send them lots of stuff and own the distribution.

39:29So those failed. However, late 60s and all the way through the 70s, a magazine called Runner's World grew at the same time as running in America. It was Bob Anderson. He was in Los Altos, near Los Angeles. And he became so influential. So many millions of runners were actually running there. That magazine used to say where the next races were, who won the races. They'd list everybody in the race. You could list 1 ,000 names. You could pick your own name. So everybody who was out there just doing any running bought Runner's World. And Bob Anderson, I mean, he started off as a single page. Now he was a 60, 70-page, full-color, brilliant magazine.

40:15And we were advertising in there. So we got a few orders, again, people who would risk it and send the mail order. So we got that. And by 1976, 77, he was doing so well. Bob Anderson thought he could tell everybody which was the best shoe to buy, which he did. They got this shoe edition. And of course, that first one was Nike. Yeah. Well, this was all right, but Nike couldn't handle the sales. Phil Knight, all of a sudden, millions, because you're the number one shoe, and the Americans love a number one of anything, right? So millions wanted to buy the shoe. He's buying the shoes in from Asia, from Japan.

41:02They couldn't meet. They couldn't up the production. That was it. Second year, it was somebody else that Bob Anderson put as the number one shoe. Same thing happened because everybody's bringing the shoes in from Asia. Third year, he changed it. And he said, look, we're going to give ratings, star ratings. Five stars, those will be your best shoes. So five stars at the top, four, three, two, one, down. We thought, oh, we can make a five-star shoe. We're sure we could make a five-star shoe. Yeah. And so we had to get our shoes out there to, yeah, it was California where they did the testing. I don't know what test they did, but whatever it was, it didn't really matter.

41:50We knew Nike would probably come out on top because they did more advertising. And so we sent them three shoes. We sent them Aztec, which was the trainer. That would be the volume. Midas was a road racing shoe. And Inca, we called it our gold range. Inca was a spike. So we sent those out. And the edition was due to come out in August of 79. And by that time, running was so big. And I went across. It was February 79. Again, the show was in Chicago. I'm at the show. And so many people now wanted to sell running shoes. And Kmart, I don't know if you've heard of Kmart, a big Kmart. Their salesman came on and said, Mr.

42:40Foster, I'd like to buy 20 ,000 pairs of shoes. Yes, okay. 20 ,000 pairs of shoes. He said, but we need a better price. Now, fortunately, because we were going for these five-star ratings, I knew that if we got orders from America our small factory would not be able to cope like that 20 ,000 would have taken in the UK, in north of England still the factory the factory was in Bury in north of England in the small factory so we met up with an agent for South Korea in London and he had samples he was looking at samples but a guy from KMAR said we need a better price and I knew that meant he wants an Asia product and that's fine.

43:27Okay, so he went off and I met up with a guy called Paul Fireman. Paul Fireman had a business, Boston Camping. He was in the outdoor business, Boston Camping. But Paul had been running this business with his brother and his brother-in-law. And they'd been like a goldfish bowl. They'd been going around doing the same trade for five, six, seven, eight years, whatever it was. He was obviously pretty well fed up of, he wanted to break out. So, and he said, Joe, love to be your distributor, but now you've gone for five stars. We're definitely, if you get five stars, we're in. So there's a bit of sort of, if you didn't, we're not.

44:12If you did, we're in. Meanwhile, Kmart wanted the 20 ,000 pairs. So after the show, I think it was May, I went back out to America went to see Kmart and I mean they had a big warehouse there full of desks and people they were all buyers because Kmart big wholesale in there and so I talked to this guy called Biasati and he said yeah we won the 20 ,000 and he wanted this better price which I still haven't got a better price but I knew I could get I knew I could get the price that he needed. So that's good. And I'm thinking, I'll go into Kmart. They'll give me enough space here as much as this desktop.

45:01And that's got to make so much money. And I thought, if it doesn't make that much money, that will my first 20 ,000-book order and my last little bit. I'll be out. So I left Detroit, here in Detroit. I went to Boston to meet with Paul Feynman. and they had this small, nice small outfit Boston camping, this is just about my size he won't want 20 ,000 and whatever, it'll be a small small order, we can work and we can build brilliant okay so along came, I decided to go with Paul, Paul Feynman and along came the end of July, because the August magazine always comes out last week in the month earlier.

45:50And they didn't have distribution of the magazine in the UK. So I phoned Paul. Eventually got through to him and said, Paul, can you get down to a local kiosk and see if the magazine's out, see how we did with the five stars? Took him at least an hour to get back to me. And then he got back. He said, Joe, he said, you've done it. You got five stars. Not just the one, all three got five stars. And for me, that was it. Now we got into America. The difference was now they wanted us. As they can try to push. For 11 years, we tried to push. 11 years of trying. Now they wanted us. And that was a beginning.

46:31We got to America. So that was probably one of our best days. Yeah. In America now. I mean, how did that feel? After 10, 11 years of trying. It felt damn good. It felt damn good. I mean, that was the justification. I was like, well, yeah, we've done it. Because many times my wife, my first wife, I said, why don't you go and get a proper job? We were struggling. And when you're struggling, it's the same. And I could understand that. Why don't you go and get a proper job? But no, we made it. We got into America. So that was the number one. Okay, now we're two years into America, doing nicely, products, selling.

47:21In fact, he did actually put an order in for 20 ,000 birds because that was the sort of orders he was getting now, 20 ,000 birds. And Korea wasn't on. At a moment in time, Korea had not come online. We'd seen samples. That was great. We could do it. But I don't know if I heard of Barter. No. Bata are still the biggest shoe company in the world. Okay. But they're mainly now in Latin America and India. They used to be on every high street in the UK. B-A-T-A, Bata. And a friend of mine, he was working with Bata, and he said, look, if you can't manufacture them all, we'll do it for you. So they actually made the shoes.

48:04They actually made the 20 ,000 pairs. The trouble is, at that point, The trade had begun to use a cushioned material called EVA. And whilst Barter was that big, they had their own rubber company. So they made their own rubber. But they hadn't made any EVA. But they said, oh, it's all right. We can do that. They made their own EVA, which was instead of it being rubber that we know from trees, it was plastic rubber. and all these shoes were made and went direct from Barter, which was in Tilbury, out to America. I get this phone call from Paul. He said, Joe, these shoes, there's something different.

48:47Well, time and motion, being a big factory, they looked at our shoe and our shoe had quite an aggressive look at the front. They'd rounded that off because the machinists need to go around there faster. So they applied time and motion to the design. So the design wasn't right. Not many people would have really picked up on that, but the design was wrong. Then shoes started coming back. The EVA had collapsed. And it was about 20 % were coming back. The EVA is collapsing. And when I went to Barter and said, what's happened? What's this? They did their tests on this. and said, well, unfortunately, some of these sheets, we didn't cure it for long enough.

49:35So it hadn't properly cured, and so that was sort of wrong. Did you notice a difference in the quality when it was being manufactured in the UK versus in Asia? Oh, when we got Asia. We hadn't got Asia's product at that time. They were just producing the shoe that we produced. And one of the biggest problems that I had, and it's sad and unfortunate, is that just as I got into America, before we got this product from Barta, my brother died. He became ill. He got cancer of the stomach, and he died. So I was left. He looked after the factory. Yeah. Because our arrangement was, we didn't want to be like my uncle and my father, where they just at each other's throats.

50:19So Geoffrey said, look, I'll look after the factory. Yeah. You look after everything else. So we looked after the factory, and I was doing marketing, sales, whatever. whatever's necessary to build the company. And now we're going to have this production in Tilbury. Jeff would have gone down there. He would have seen that. He would have helped to stop that happening. But he wasn't there. So we had to rely upon their own people looking after quality. So now we've got all this product in America. Paul Fireman hates flying, but he had to come across. We had to go to the factory, and we didn't pay the factory.

51:01And we said, you can't send them back because you can't sell this product. So all that Fireman did is anything that came back, he just threw away and just exchanged. That kept us alive. I mean, in a sense, it worked for us, in a sense, because it kept us alive until the Korean production came online. And once that came online, it was brilliant. Was that probably the most difficult period that you faced? Yeah, probably was. I mean, we'd had a scare earlier because once we'd grown to a certain size, this friend who was in Barter, he was in a different company making football boots, Lawrence, and he said, why don't we do your distribution?

51:43And that would free up our cash flow, brilliant, and allow me a lot more time to look at overseas market. and that worked all right until the owner of the factory, Lawrence he decided to retire and put his son-in-law in charge my friend and the son-in-law just did not hit it off because my friend was head of sales so he had left and he'd gone to barter but that company Lawrence well, the guy just didn't know what to do he just didn't run the company at all and my friend Shaq he'd taken all the sales staff so they had no sales and within six months I went out of business and they were our distributors they had so much of our product and they weren't paying for it I had to get a big van and go down to the factory and load everything up and bring it back and had the bank known what was going on I think we would have been in serious, serious trouble but we decided at that point we decided that well we have to sell this product what do we do So we went around to schools and saw the PE teachers and the gym, and we gave them a deal at half price, half retail price.

52:57I don't know how many thousands. We had a few thousand pairs of shoes. So within a 30, 40-mile radius of where we were, we went to every school. And within, I think it was in three months, we'd sold all the shoes. And even half price on the shoe was better than what we were getting from Lawrence. So that was a bad time. We had to cut our staff down by 50 % to get through it. Oh, wow. But then again, the guy who'd gone to Barter, he said, look, we want 200 pairs of shoes a month. So he gave me an order. And three or four other people who knew our problem gave us orders for different brands to make them 200 or 300 pairs.

53:37So these were sort of difficult times. And I guess with the American one, whilst it was a bad time, You're thinking, but it did work for us because money was tight and it was always a difficult area to work in. But we got through that. And it was during that time, orders in America were just increasing, just increasing. And poor fireman, just like us, he couldn't cope with the finance that was needed. So he knew a rubber, what was it called? The finance to just place more orders. Yeah. If you get an expanding business, until it gets to a certain size, you need a lot of money to make it happen.

54:28So Paul was looking for this money. And I mean, there's a story about that as well. We went to a company called Manow. Manow, they were a sourcing agent. They were an agent. They were in New York. And they were sourcing from Asia. And they'd actually been approached by Nike. And Nike had approached them to finance their business. Phil Knight had gone. And we're in with this guy, Manovich he's called, Manu. And he said, well, I'm not going to support you. I'm not going to go with you because I turned Nike down. and Nike of course had now grown massive and he said I don't want to be known as the guy that turned down Nike and then went to Reebok and failed so he turned down two winners because Reebok really really took off but threw somebody in Boston I think it was Built Right they were a rubber company in Boston Paul knew the guy who was the owner who also knew Stephen Rubin.

55:45I don't know if you've heard of Stephen Rubin. You've heard of Pentland. If you haven't heard of Pentland, you've heard of JD Sports. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pentland owned JD Sports. They bought JD Sports. And Pentland, one of their companies, was also a sourcing company out of Korea. So, because we wanted money, we had to give some equity to the guy, and he gave it was a credit line. Okay. And that credit, that's all we needed. Yeah. A credit line. Because at that point, it was all 100 % yours. Yeah. Yeah. But we needed a credit line. So he had to come into the business and that started the growth, which was incredible.

56:28Yeah. We started. But we talk about white space. And the biggest white space that we actually moved into is when we were growing in America. Really nice. We had a guy in Los Angeles called Arnold Martinez. And his wife, Frankie, she's going to these fitness classes. And coming back with her friends, they're full of it. And I always said, Frankie, what are you doing? And she said, we're doing aerobics. What? What's aerobics? Oh. She said, we're actually exercising to music. And it's great. Right. Arnold went to the next class. saw the instructor in a pair of sneakers half the class in sneakers the other half barefoot he had a lightbulb moment and he thought why don't we make a shoe specifically for aerobics specifically for women on a woman's last and make it out of glove leather so it's beautiful and comfortable That was his idea he's in Los Angeles Feynman's in Boston he overnighted to Boston at this point was it only men's you were selling or was it mixed?

57:40no it's mixed because athletics and running is mixed it's yeah there were no such things as women's you made them small and you made them pink maybe that was it that was a women's shoe however Ahil goes up to see Paul Feynman and tells him the story look aerobics it's going to be something big it's great than nobody else. Nobody in America really knew much about it. It was happening in Los Angeles. And Paul said to Arnhold, Luke Arnhold, we're a running company. Why do we need to be making shoes for girls to dance in? You know, well, but, you know, and he said to Arnhold, keep your eye on it, you know, and if it starts with something we should get involved in, we will do.

58:26Arnhold wasn't happy. Went round to the back door, had a word with Steve Liggett, It was our product man. And persuaded him to get 200 pairs of samples of a nice shoe, all white, with the Union jack on, in glove leather. He got them. Got them down to Los Angeles, gave them to the instructors, and things started to move, really grow. And then when Jane Fonda went out and bought a pair and used them in her videos, that was it. We exploded. We exploded. It wasn't all straightforward because you shouldn't use, as we were using it, glove leather for shoes. They were just breaking apart. After a month, they break apart.

59:10Fortunately, we were in America. We were in Los Angeles. The girls didn't care. They meant to have to buy another pair. They loved them so much. It was so comfortable. We got it right. We started using something like garment leather. But from that moment when, say, Jim Fonda went out, and this was really growing, We were a$9 million company. Small, nice,$9 million. Four years later, we were a$900 million company. Wow. That growth was absolutely incredible. And that took us past Nike, past Adidas, and became the number one global sports football company. At that point in time when it was, it hit the$900 million mark, what was the breakdown of the sales like what was making up the majority of the sales back then well by that time we were 90 % aerobics because the aerobics just went out into America and then globally we just went global and of course I can remember sitting around the table and we're all saying what are we and we're a woman's company yeah we're a woman's company.

1:00:25Are we a sports work company? And what do we do? So we had to make a positive effort to get into in America in particular because it's where we now started to grow our name, get into basketball, get into American football and, you know, in other words, become a rounded sports company. And we started to make men's shoes then. And it got in. But because we had so much traction, it was quite easy. And we soon grew from there to almost 4 billion. Quick interruption, guys. Have you noticed how a lot of guests that I've been speaking to on this podcast have taken the leap and built something meaningful for themselves?

1:01:04They didn't just think about it or make excuses. They took a risk and they made it happen. I don't want to hear about why you can't do it and why your situation is different. It's exactly why I have created the digital playbook for you. This is a step-by-step guide to you building your online presence, your social media following, and ultimately monetizing that following so you can live a life of freedom, both financially and geographically. Did it have a brand sort of image? Like when you were, before it took off and before it got into aerobics, how did you define the Reebok brand? Well, the Reebok brand was in athletics, in running, and was starting to become good and known, well-known, but not known throughout America.

1:01:55We were just that small brand, male, and we were not tainted. One of the reasons that Adidas and Nike didn't catch on is because they were team, they were male, they were sweaty, and when Reebok turned to become a woman's company, nobody really saw us as anything else. We were suddenly this nice, clean company and this union jack, but it was a white shoe with just a Union Jack on and Reebok. And so our image grew at that time to be what we'd become, Reebok. Until then, we were just another running brand. Quite nice, but not known. So it was an advantage in one way. Well, this is it. We talk about luck.

1:02:39And people say, no, no, no, you make your own luck. Yeah, but you need to be, you know. There's a series of events which are lucky. to be just in America, able to do what we did, but being small. So we were not known for anything but what we became. Yeah. And at that point, when a chunk of the sales, the large majority of the sales are coming from the aerobics, I guess it would be very easy to just be like, okay, well, Reebok is now an aerobics brand. Yes. That was the problem. Yeah. That probably wasn't the vision which you had for the company, but it just kind of happened. But then how did you then branch out from that to then getting into all these different sports?

1:03:26Well, all of a sudden we had the money. Yeah. We had the money. And when you've got the money, you can do a lot of things. Plus the fact that what we'd brought to the athletic shoe business was soft leather. So that soft leather, we moved into tennis. And we have a story about that too. The tennis shoes were soft. You don't have to break them in because most of the tennis shoes to that date were made in quite normal shoe leather. So you had to wear it a few times before you wore it in. And Feynman put an advert in the tennis magazine, and it was if you don't believe that Reebok tennis shoes are the best shoes you've ever bought, will give you your money back and will give you kind of balls.

1:04:17And the strap line was Reebok puts the balls on the line. Yeah. So, and that, the sales just went. And he bought a couple of cases of tennis balls because he thought he might get a lot of shoes back. He actually gave away half of the case. That was it. That's all he got back. So the advertising, the promotion was good. and that brought soft leather into the general sports scene. So then he started getting football boots, which was soft, and tennis, we got well into tennis. It was just a matter of moving into these sports. Then, of course, we moved into basketball. I don't know if you've heard of Shaquille O 'Neal.

1:04:57Oh, yeah. He was my favourite basketball player when I was growing up, yeah. Well, he was a big boy in Reebok. Yeah. What size shoe was he? 22. Yeah. Yeah. 22. Yeah, big, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, Shaq's part of the new business now that's own Reebok. Okay. Which is authentic brands in America, ABG. He owns 50 % of the company. He's a smart businessman. He is a smart businessman because he's got big chicken as well, which is a bit like barbecue chicken shops. So he's good, yeah. Yeah. how did you find the I don't know the transition from being a fairly successful company to then being this 900 million dollar company like were you enjoying it as much or did you feel like you had less say in decision making and doing what it is that you wanted to do because now everybody else was kind of well I was concentrating on global yeah and in those days I was traveling an awful lot setting up the global distribution you know because I said to Paul Paul, look after America.

1:06:07Whatever you do, just do it for America. Don't do it for anybody else because everybody else comes to have a look. Everybody else wants what you've got. Don't take your mind off that. Don't take your eye off the ball. Keep it going here. Leave the rest of me. I'll do the rest of the world, which I did. I did the rest of the world, put all the distribution on, which we were the biggest distributors at that time globally. We were making something like five to six, seven million pairs of shoes a month. and distributing them around the world. And if you think, each shoe had a Union Jack on. The Union Jack flag was on the box lid.

1:06:47So we were selling three times, that 15, 20 million flags, if you like, around globally every month, which is great. I'll tell you how we started using this flag because we used the Starcrest, which was, I don't know if you've seen the Starcrest, it's on the Tonga Bevery of the Reebok shoes. And Paul said, in a meeting early in the days, and Paul said, Joe, he said, can we use the Union Jack? He said, because the Starcrest looks very much like the Union Jack, but it's going to cost us millions to get people to see or recognize the Starcrest, whereas everybody knows the Union Jack. He said, everybody in America knows the Union Jack.

1:07:31I said, really? and that was it. So we started Union Jack, and in those early days, we didn't have any point of sales, POS. We didn't have any, but the dealers, the retailers, started to stack the boxes up like a pyramid and put a shoe on each of these pyramids on the way up and with the flag on the top of the box, the flags being out. And that caught on throughout America. It's amazing what that did. That was also one of the things that sort of helped the brand develop. And how long did you stay in the company for? Well, I decided when we were nearly four billion and I was becoming an ambassador.

1:08:18I was just flying around, waving a flag, meeting people. I'd fly a business at first class. I'd arrive and be picked up by a limousine go to the best hotels we dine at the best restaurants and I'm saying what am I doing this for? Why now? What's happening? What was the actual purpose of that? Well I mean that's what happens you just go to see all the distributors that I put on they were happy to come see and go see the numbers and whatever what they were doing how you could help them and it did help in many ways because if you can go back, we'll take Spain, for instance. Spain back in the 70s and sort of up to the 80s, and even in the 80s, there were a seaside resort.

1:09:09People went on holiday. There wasn't much that went on inside Spain. So Spain wanted to make swimsuits, swimwear, Reebok. And I said, okay, you can do that. Paul was sort of saying, why are we doing this? I said, look, Paul, this is their business. This is where their trade is. You know, if they don't have enough product. And then America decided, oh, we're going to make some product. Now, we want this to be global. Everybody would. And so they tried this global thing. And everybody, we all came into America, sat around, and they had a nice show, beautiful stuff. And the Europeans are quite happy.

1:09:50Yeah, that's good. and Paul said, okay guys, place your orders. I said, Paul, what do you want? They need to test that product on their market. They need to have samples and they need to, no, no, we can't do that. We're making it now. Some placed orders, but they're so small and Paul is saying to me, why is this? I said, Paul, leave it with me. These guys, they have their own product. We've got, you know, they have their own Rebot product And it'll take some time before they can buy what you're buying and what you're making. I don't think Paul understood that whilst you can think globally, you've got to act local.

1:10:31You've got to do the things that work locally. And eventually we got that through. But it's amazing. But by the time 1990 come along, the N89, and I'd be flying around the world. And I'm saying, what am I doing here? What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? And I decided to step back. Yeah. I don't think it's retiring because that phone never stopped ringing. Well, yeah. Yeah. But I did step back. And in those days, we still didn't have computers. We still didn't have smartphones. And I just retired and decided, okay, I didn't retire. I decided I would step back. Go to Tenerife, get some sunshine, relax.

1:11:15and then we got computers. Then we got smartphones. Then we got Google. Then we got Wikipedia. And then this started saying, this is how Reebok started. This is Reebok. And the stories were out there. And I stuck that for a couple of years. And then I thought, I've just got to write a book. I've just got to put the story straight. And that's what got to the book. So I imagine there would probably be so many rumors going around, so many inaccurate tales of what actually happened. You're like, I've got to set things straight. The story is like, okay, Joe Foster started his company in 1895 and his grandsons changed its name in 1958 to Reebok.

1:12:03And I know there's a whole story there. Everything's in there, there's a whole story. But it is amazing. But then when I wrote the book, we're getting calls from universities, from London Business School, and they started saying, we'd like to talk to you. I said, well, okay, what about your book? We know it's a business book. So many things that you did, so many lessons in there that people can learn if they read this book. So from then on, we've just been touring. For three years now, we've just been going around to different places. telling the story. Do you notice much of a difference when you did step back in terms of how the company was performing?

1:12:51I did notice a difference and unfortunately, a few people left the company. I think Paul was brilliant, absolutely brilliant because he got the money in, he got the connections and he made that happen. But I think he stayed too long. I didn't. I got out because you need young blood, you need a young idea. I think Paul stayed too long. And at that point, The talent, which had grown with the company, decided to go either do their own thing or different places. And at that point, at a certain point, he sold it to Adidas. Yeah. And once it was sold to Adidas, Adidas, all they wanted was the connections because Reebok was so big in America.

1:13:30They wanted those connections, but they didn't really want Reebok. So Reebok went down. Yeah, that's such a shame, that. But it is a shame. But, you know, I now travel and I go to lots of places, and particularly in America, meeting guys mid-50s. Oh, I remember Reebok in the mid-80s. And Pump. When Pump came out. And Pump was after my day. But they remember Pump. It was so expensive, those shoes. We couldn't afford them. And parents wouldn't buy them. I had to go to get a job. So they went and had to go to a job and bought these shoes. But they all loved the Reebok. so many people who come and say oh my first pair I ever had was Reebok yeah yeah so it's great and now I just say now there's probably good chances on its way back yeah with Shaq being now bringing it back into into basketball mm-hmm I was trying to find like an an up-to-date accurate share or a market share of who's buying the shoes like how much how much dominance they have.

1:14:36Obviously, Nike is usually the one that has most of the market. Nike is the biggest, yeah, followed by Adidas. Yeah. But then there's a whole raft of people. There's an emergence of these new ones. That's right. On, Under Armour, you name it. And On is very popular these days. But it's hard to know whether we were performance. And Nike and Adidas, Puma, all performance. Yeah. And this is the performance driven. There's such a lot of shoes now which are just street-driven. Yeah. They just look alike and they work. But it works. Sketchers works. Yeah. Not because they've got any influence as well.

1:15:15They do. They have Kane now as football. They're starting to understand if they want to go even deeper and better. They've got to. Exposure. And that's why I say to Reebok right now, right? Right now, Reebok, you need exposure. You need to get in those moles. get the brand exposed because everybody know they're wearing something i'm surprised how well crocs are doing because we looked back on crocs 10 years ago i said oh no terrible but now they're out there well yeah i will never be wearing a pair of crocs but i've tried them and they are very comfortable and i know a lot of people that do wear them so it's kind of weird what can become popular, like even the Yeezys, they became very popular.

1:16:05Very popular, but it relied upon him. And of course, he put his foot in it, did the wrong thing, but not that he was. He's money enough to not worry about that. Yeah, so I got out of Reebok and just started playing around. We're working now with a guy called Ben Weiss in America, which is an incredible guy. I don't know if you've heard of Sintelay or if you've heard of the shoe. He got this shoe which is AI designed, 3D printed, and you get the size from scanning your phone with your phone. Okay. So you take a picture of your phone? Yeah, yeah. And you take it next to an A4 size of paper. So the A4 size paper is the reference, and when you take your scan, they can get all the measurements they need off that and they just make you a pair.

1:17:01But they're made 3D. The only problem is it will never be a volume because one machine makes one shoe in a day. Yeah. So you've got to have two machines going for one pair of shoes. I think people were using Zanderfeld when they were German and I think they have about 200 machines so they can make what we're doing. But how many? Only 55. Well, they need to get 200. But they have a lot of machines, and so they're working on them. But this guy, because he's worked on a thing where we're changing history. This is history because nobody has produced an AI shoe and 3D printed it and made it commercially available.

1:17:46So the publicity he's got is incredible. he got in Nasdaq have an electronic board in Times Square and he got his shoe sent to lay on there 10 minutes didn't pay didn't pay for it Nasdaq put it up there because it was something we've been on Fox News in fact where were we when we went on Fox News in Bangkok it was 3 o 'clock in the morning we had to get up because live on Fox News so he's got this and we've got so many, so much news now that it's incredible. And now he's working on his next shoe, which is going to be a sock shoe, and that he will be able to do in volume. But he's so good, and that's probably really when people say, well, what's the difference?

1:18:35Well, it now takes me back to when we started Reebok, the excitement, the disappointments, the things it had to do, and you went through. And I think the most important thing that you learn, or we learn, with Reebok, we had to change our name. Four years into our company, Adidas sent us a letter complaining that our two stripes and the T-bar that we had, well, before that, it infringed the three stripes. So, again, we didn't have money to go and say, no, no, we want to fight. Again, not only didn't have money, we had the sense to say, no, let's change. So we changed. And what we learn from this, we changed our name, we changed our silhouette, we got a better name, we got a better silhouette.

1:19:22The challenges are opportunities. And if you look at them as opportunities, people ask now, what do you think what's going on politically in America? A lot of opportunities. Just look for the opportunities. Don't sit down and worry about the problem. It's a problem. You've got to change to it and think about it. How can we make this better? So I think that's the one thing that when people talk about it, look for the opportunities. Don't look for the problems. There's plenty of problems around, plenty of challenges. But if you look at it in the right way, you move, you've got opportunities. You'll find something that nobody else has got.

1:20:01What opportunities do you see in the shoe market today? Well, obviously things are going to change. It won't move to America. So you know it's not going to move there. And where is it going to move? Be ready. Are you talking about a production? Production, yes. Sales are sales. The only thing that will affect sales is if price gets too high. However, you can put 200 % on most of the product coming from China and it'll still be cheaper than you can make it in America. So how much would, at this point in time today, how much does a typical pair of trainers cost? Like the actual cost. Actual cost, or where it could be anything from$12 to$25, depending on its production.

1:20:49But that's about it. Top wag,$25. Yeah. And if that was to be made in America, how would you be talking about all that? Oh, yeah. The problem, not the reason the price it won't be made in America, the time to get that set up in America. Where would you set it up? Where is the population, the employment that would work on those products? How many people in America would sit down, women sit down on sewing machines? In fact, they're just getting rid of all those people. They're moving them out. They don't want the people. So who's going to sit down and do that? It takes that long time to do it. These things don't happen.

1:21:33and you know the term of a you know an american term is uh four years and they won't be there in four years so you've got to move somewhere else if you're going to move you've got to move somewhere you could do something else and there will be opportunities out there well it makes you think for how long will the population or some of the population of the people that live in china want to do something like this. What if they, you know, they all start making a little bit more money and they decide, hang on, I don't want to be making shoes all day. It might have to go somewhere else and find... Yeah, but I mean, if you're thinking of populations and we'll say populations that don't have a rich background or earnings possibility, then you can go anywhere in Asia.

1:22:21You can end up in Africa if you want. Right now, I think there's going to be a big move towards India. Okay, yeah. iPhone are moving to India. Yeah. They're going to do it. Even iPhone, no. A lot of what they're doing is making a statement. How much of a move they make has to be learned yet because it will take them years to get into India to really move and to get factories, to get that quality. I mean, you need so much quality to make a lot of these iPhones and technology. You need factories that are really, you know, there's no dust, nothing. They're really clean. They've absolutely got to be perfect.

1:23:03It's quite difficult for India. Well, that's it. You think about it, you know, that sort of discipline, it takes years. So the most likely thing is that there will be some arrangement between America and China and the rest. that probably what will happen, yes, prices will go up, but the people who are going to feel the prices going up are the Americans. There are people in America who get a bit worried about what's going to happen. But there's got to be some agreement. You can't expect industry to move at that pace. It doesn't move at that pace. It can't move at that pace. It's totally impossible.

1:23:46But it's going to be interesting. And I think there are a lot of opportunities. I also think that disruption is not a bad thing. Oh, no. Yeah, it's not a bad thing. People get too complacent, too easy. Disruption, move things around a bit and let's reset. So I think a reset is a good idea, good idea. The execution has not been good. Yeah. Did you think when E-Bock was doing its best, did you ever get those moments of complacency, do you feel? I think what happens is that people get to the top of the mountain and can't see the next mountain. Where do we go from here? Everything from here is down.

1:24:23It's like, and this is where the guy Arnold Martinez who saw aerobics, you need people like that. Someone who can see through walls a bit, just have a bit of an inkling of we can move over to something. I think Reebok had four years where they didn't have to sell anything and you get out of the habit of how do we go and sell a product they were chasing so much to get the product sales were just coming in and the biggest problem was we can't starve the market, we've got to try and fight and keep it going particularly in America, they didn't want to starve America, so many countries around the world, put orders in and just never got the product.

1:25:10Yeah. Because it was diverted. We diverted to America just to make sure we keep the Americans going. And it worked. Yeah. You know, that worked. It's... We were so big in America. Well, I guess it's such a competitive industry as well, shoes in America with all the other brands. Yes. You can't really afford to get complacent because someone's going to take your space. And if you do get complacent, it's not that you can say, oh, I'm not going to be complacent tomorrow. Yeah. No. It takes you again. It takes you time to move that through the companies, to get it back into wanting to win. That was one of the things.

1:25:48It was a good thing about being in sports at that time is that you were very obvious that you were winning. And so you build that culture, that winning culture. that said, yeah, and everybody's so happy because you're growing, you're scaling your company, you're doing new things. Things happen all the time. So because people say, what did you look for when you're employing people? I said, really, I didn't have to look for anything. They came, and they were so enthusiastic that they were part of it. Yeah, they just liked the brand. Yeah, they felt part of the brand. Yeah. And I think that's what your job is.

1:26:25if you're leading the company, everybody's got to be honest. They've all got to feel that they own that brand, that they're part of it. And if you do that, you'll go. But of course, like you say, you can get complacent. You can get to the point where maybe you lose that thrill, whatever it is. That's why I think you've got to bring people in who can start again, really keep pushing. You can't keep the same old people at the top. You've got to be ready to bring something new, new ideas, new thinking. But what did you think of the Michael Jordan and Nike deal? That's brilliant. Whichever way you're looking, just do it.

1:27:04What a line. Just do it. They're picked up on certain things, which really you've got to, you remember them. Did Reebok ever reach out to him? I would say there was more of a face-off. I think it was more, I know that Phil Knight got a bit upset when Reebok overtook them. Yeah. They got to that point that Reebok overtook them and Nike were facing, they got too much. In fact, it worked for Reebok because we were chasing production. How do you get more production? You know, we were needing millions and all the factories are full. So how do you get more? Well, you get more if somebody hits the wall.

1:27:44Nike hit the wall, came out of about three or four factories because they had to. They got too much inventory. Reebok went straight in. So all these things and those little bits of luck at the right time work. Yeah. Because if you don't get them, you fail. Yeah. And people don't know failures as much as what success is, but what makes a success? And it's all these things. It's an interesting business, a very interesting business, a sports football business. I think I've read an article somewhere where now there's more of these huge athletes who instead of doing these ambassadorships or brand deals with these big companies, they're actually now looking to create their own brand.

1:28:32yeah they create their own brand or they own or they go and buy a brand because they earn so much money like Shaq now is he's 50 % of ABG, ABG have bought the brand, ABG are licensing not, they're only licensing the brand so they're licensed to different people we started manufacturing and selling and whatever, now it's different I would say the shoe game is more complex than clothing would I be right in saying that? You'd be very right in saying that because clothing is, first thing, it's a flat. It doesn't have three dimensions, whereas a shoe is three dimensions. So you've got to make three dimensions.

1:29:12So it's much more complex. And also there's so many variations on materials. In apparel, if you have two materials in one item, that's about it. Something which stretches and otherwise it's just a fabric. whereas in shoes you've got rubber you've got um you can have steel we can have a shank which is steel in certain uh things but there's so many different things yeah for me the to this day i still appreciate comfort more than anything it's actually funny how there's so many of these designer shoes which i've bought in the past which are pretty expensive yeah and i just get blisters all over my feet.

1:29:57Right. Whereas if I just get like a nice cheaper pair of shoes, it's just the most comfortable thing. I mean, that's it. We all believe in brand and we all are impressed and we all want to impress by wearing a brand. And that's what sells them. They make it so that there's something exclusive. You're buying into that exclusivity. It's not just apparel, it's not footwear, it's cars, you name it. Brand is something which we indoctrinated into thinking that, yeah, if it's that brand, it must be good. Or we are showing off, we can afford that brand. Yeah. Whatever it is. But simple comfort, you can't beat it, especially if you're performing.

1:30:48Yeah. You've got to have that comfort and you've got to have that performance. and but right now they're commodities and footwear is big big big you think for the for Reebok to really get back on the scene again it's just a matter of getting the shoes worn by the right people it helps it costs it costs yes it helps if they could do something different it's hard to see them being able to do something different I think most brands need a story and the good thing about Reebok is it has a story and if it wants to use that story it can do and that story includes the J.D. W. Foster brand I think it goes all the way back and my grandfather supplied the shoes to Eric Little and Harold Abrahams they won the medals in 1924 just 100 years last year was the Olympics were in Paris 1924 the Olympics were in Paris 100 years between they won their shoes in my grandfather's they won their gold medals in my grandfather's shoes and that is chariots of fire immortalized that so there's that connection you can talk so much about the connections between Reebok and its history and I think for me I would start using that.

1:32:20I would start really working on how can we go back into the history and when we were really making it and bring it to today. But it all depends. I've not found Americans very good at using history. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are looking to build a brand but they don't really have much of a story? Well, the thing is if you don't have much of a story, you've got to start thinking of how do we create a story, How do we create one? Where are we going to? What are we driving? It's like, we'll go back to Ben. Ben created a bit of history, which got a lot of publicity because the first company to do AI, 3D, and scan your phone, this is history.

1:33:06Amazingly, he got 20, 30, 40 big people on the US today on the front page. Yeah. So you get your name out there. You've got to keep pumping your name out there. And then that history, it is looking for something. That'd be different. Challenging something. Even saying something that is a bit sort of questionable. But you've got to get people listening to you. How much of a necessity do you think it is for an individual or company owner to have a personal brand? Yeah. to have success with their company. Because there's some people who they prefer to be more low-key, you know, behind the curtains, just working on the business, making it work versus there's people out there who are very much all over social media.

1:34:02They have a big personal brand, and that has helped them to build this company, which they've decided to build for themselves. Yeah, I think a lot of companies, you can look at a lot of companies, you know, you look at Ford and out Henry Ford, and you can look at Adidas and Adidas, Adolf, call him Adolf if he wants, Adidasler. And he was a name. Phil Knight was a name. There's a lot of things and you can look at it. And it's what drives them drives the company. So they've got to be seen to be driven by something. And if you can get that. Today you need a bit of luck because you need to be able to pick on something then before it's really a success, you've got to be able to sort of say, well, I'm going to try this.

1:34:52And then if it becomes success, great. Again, depends on if you've got money. If you've got money, you get visibility. Yeah. And if you can get visibility, that is a good thing. And now you look at the malls. For me, the malls are working fantastic because that's when you see all the brands. we just come back from Bangkok and the malls are bigger in Bangkok than they are here and they have all the big names every designer brand you can think of is there you're talking about the shopping malls the shopping malls, yes have you been to the Dubai mall? yes it's a pretty big mall oh it's a pretty big mall but it's not on Bangkok's level oh yeah, you could say that one but you know, they have more no one's just Dubai malls they've got five, six different malls all's big Yeah.

1:35:43You've got one of the malls has a Rolls Royce in it. They've got a stand for Rolls Royce. And you've got Ferraris in there. You've got all the cars in the malls. Yeah. And you think, you know, this is Bangkok. This is not Dubai. This is not London. But everything's in there. And the malls are full of people. Yeah. So it's just visibility these days. Visibility is such a big thing. Yeah. people to be able to see it and see it and see it. I think we used to call it OTS, opportunities to see. Yeah, that's so important to get that vision that you see it. And then of course, I don't think there's any way you can get away from influencers.

1:36:30Influencers used to be simply athletics or sports people. Then it moved, and Reebok helped this, it moved to music. now it's moved like this everything Rick Ross had a deal with Reebok didn't he who? Rick Ross a rapper but then I think he said something stupid in one of his raps and then they dropped him yeah well that is the that's the danger with anybody who's an influencer yeah they can just say something which just goes against what it's better to say nothing I guess the only thing a brand can do is just be like you're dropped we have no affiliation with you anymore. That's it, yeah. And yeah, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity.

1:37:16What do you think of the state of the UK at the moment? I don't know how often you go back there, but I feel like unfortunately there's not much of an entrepreneurial spirit there. They're not exactly creating an environment for people to want to try new things and start businesses and, I don't know, get people motivated to do it. I mean, we could do with some disruption. We could do that. And whilst we are all socialists because we don't like people sort of who can't do something, you want to help them. I think you can get too socialist. You get to the point where you're doing too much and where all the activity is that way.

1:37:54And so nobody's got enough money now to look after everything that everybody wants. There's not enough money. If you think of the UK, and you can go back a couple hundred years, we had an empire. So if we needed it, we went out and dug it up and brought it back. If we needed anything, we had an empire. Now, if you look at the really rich or the countries which are doing so well, they usually have a lot of space. Or they're very conservative. They're very much in control. Look at Dubai. It's in control. If you want to step out of line, yeah, go. You know, if you want to be looked after, you don't come here.

1:38:34You come here to do things. And that's why a lot of Brits are coming, a lot of Americans are coming to do things. Whereas in the UK, there's not enough money to pay everybody for all the social things that they would like to do. But there's not enough land. There's not enough, you know, we've got a bit of oil in the North Sea. Now nobody wants oil because they're trying to get us all to do. but if you just need the space here they've got the climate they've got everything they plus they've got that control yeah but what i've noticed about this place is that there are a lot of people coming here immigrating here but the the type of people that are coming here are willing to work like they're like okay i want to go and do something i want to make something of myself and then there's kind of like a you know a threshold point that you need to meet in order to actually survive here.

1:39:27It's not exactly cheap. No. Whereas a lot of people who are going to the UK, I mean, I'm not an expert at this, but I don't feel like there's a lot of people coming into the UK that are actually like, okay, I want to do something. I want to contribute. I want to make something of myself. They're just like, oh, I just want to take. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm not an expert on these things and I don't get involved in politics. Sex, politics, and religion, keep away from those things. Yeah, yeah. Just keep away from them. But when it comes to business, You need the incentive. I can go back to when reading the Eurosport, and there was a government inviting us to export.

1:40:05They were giving us the incentive. I don't know what those incentives are anymore or whether they can be afforded. I don't know. And things go in cycles. Well, they don't really go in cycles. They really go upwards or downwards. And it's different. And I think the UK, we have a lot of history and a lot of history that built the world. A lot of that is there. But it is history. It's moved on. And a lot of, I mean, we saw Reebok. Eventually, it's owned in America. You look at football in England now, and the teams are doing well owned by Americans. That's it. Wrexham just won three promotions in a row.

1:40:50And they're not putting a lot of money in, but there's Americans in it. Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds, that's right. So you need – it's hard to say, but we need a lot more American energy in the UK. Yeah, yeah. We don't have that energy that's done. You need – I talk about Ben Wise in Florida, and he's got that energy. He can get where Walter can get. You know, he's absolutely determined. But in the UK, we don't have that. The same energy. Yeah. I wonder what can be done to turn that around. I feel like it's got something to do with the education system amongst a whole load of other things. But again, I'm not an expert.

1:41:33I don't know what's... Well, yeah, I'm with you. But it's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM. Yeah. I do agree with that, that you should teach people how to live, not how people have lived. I mean, history is okay if you want to learn about that. But geography, yes, we're good. Learn a bit. But really, I think we should be science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is all part of that. But keep it in that way. Absolutely. I think a lot of people have the same thought, that education really does need to be rethought as to how our kids, what they learn. and there's lots of people can go into academic I mean I think one of the problems with education in the UK is it started to make it comprehensive which means everybody gets shoved into the same and no people are different so they should make different places for people to go to mine was engineering I went into engineering education which was fine to learn because you could use that I could use that when we had to to build a new factory.

1:42:48I was okay there. I'd do electrics. I'd do plumbing and whatever. You know, we were happy to do a lot of work ourselves. Now there's probably too many people who really don't want to. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, you hear stories of kids on buses saying, you know, oh, just say you're anxious, you've got anxiety, and you can do what you want. Yeah. kids learn very quickly how to you know to wish things yeah and how to avoid the hard work that's right yeah they learn very quickly whereas you've got to get that encouragement the enthusiasm that well if you do this look what we can do so incentives yes I mean I'm sure you have a lot of advice which you could give to aspiring entrepreneurs or existing entrepreneurs but is there a single piece of advice that stands out to you?

1:43:42The biggest piece of advice for me is have fun. If you're not having fun, and in today's world, you've got to know the technology. You've really got to be able to work with technology. But essentially, it's have fun. Yeah, I would agree with that. And where can people find you? You've got your social media channels, you've got your books. This is just one of a few, I believe. Yes. Where can people find us, Julie? Instagram. Instagram. what do you make of social media like because you've obviously come from a time when it didn't exist i know it's just weird how the world is now the biggest problem i find with social media is what to believe yes yeah you know what is genuine what is honest because ai is getting good as well now like it'll be hard to say yeah ai is getting really good i find it fascinating i think i think the fact that it's there is great.

1:44:39You know, that we need this sort of changes. Again, it's disruption, and AI will disrupt. We had this AI design shoe, and they say, is that going to take over designers? No. That's going to help designers who can give you maybe 10 iterations of what they've got. Put it on AI, and you've got 100. It's always going to help. It's not going to take it away. No. I think just learn how to use it to your advantage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of jobs that may be, I won't say at risk, but at help. Doctors, for instance. I think medicine's going to be a big advantage. Yeah. We're going to go with AI.

1:45:22Yeah. That's going to be good because a lot of things are very similar. It's just a matter of getting enough people to diagnose and do whatever. Yeah. But designing or designing is still with people. Amazing. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate your time and sharing your stories. I know you have a lot more to tell, but if you want to find out more, check out the books. Thank you very much. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.