Company Overview

Though the name Reebok seems to scream “’80s!” it has the longest history of any major shoe manufacturer. Reebok traces its origins to a spiked running shoe created in the late 1800s. J. W. Foster’s shoe was so popular that he created a company, named after himself, to market it. In the late 1950s, two of his grandsons founded a sister company, named Reebok, which later absorbed the original company. Things got interesting in 1979, when an American named Paul Fireman took notice of Reebok and set himself up as the North American distributor. Reebok USA soon found a niche in the exploding aerobic-footwear market, and grew quickly throughout the 1980s. The company got on the step aerobics bandwagon early and created a product line around that fitness craze. By the early ’90s, Reebok felt ready to move in on Nike’s preeminence in the sports market, and signed up Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, and Venus Williams as sponsors. The company lost much of its market share in the ’90s, however, and by decade’s end had announced layoffs of 20 percent of its staff. Soon after, Reebok got into the uniform business, providing uniforms to the NBA and the WNBA, as well as the NFL. In 2002, it unveiled Rbk, an attempt to woo the urban market with a fashion-conscious approach, with rapper Jay-Z as one of the pitchmen. In 2004, the company purchased the Canadian-based Hockey Co., in an effort to expand its uniform and equipment business, and in 2005, it announced an ambitious celebrity-driven ad campaign entitled “I Am What I Am.” In 2006, Germany’s Adidas acquired Reebok in a deal worth about $3.8 billion.