Reebok's Billion Dollar Pivot w/ Joseph William Foster

You’ve all heard of REEBOK. Many of you own one or more pairs of Reeboks. But how many of you know the fascinating story behind the brand? Reebok’s history and how the company evolved over the past several decades has both been a MARATHON and a HUNDRED-YARD DASH at times. Through it all, there is one man who has been there from the beginning. This week’s guest, the legendary JOE FOSTER, has got 60 YEARS of experience he’s going to share, so step up to the starting line and get ready for a run like you’ve never heard before. Running shoes and running companies are both in the Foster family genes. Joe’s grandfather, also Joseph W. Foster, pioneered the spiked running shoe and gained worldwide notoriety making those shoes under the brand J. W. Foster & Sons Ltd. The best athletes of the early 20th century used them to set numerous WORLD RECORDS and earn a slew of OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS. From those successes, Joe and his late brother Jeff launched Reebok in the UK in 1958. It took another 20 years to crack the U. S. market, but Reebok did at the height of a fitness craze. The results were ASTOUNDING. In five years, Reebok grew ONE HUNDRED TIMES OVER, from a £9m to a £900m business. When Joe left the day-to-day operations in 1990, Reebok and Reebok International were worth a combined $3 BILLION. Joe remains an ambassador and speaker, and recently published an autobiography of his journey launching Reebok, called "Shoe Maker: The untold story of the British family firm that became a global brand". You’re going to enjoy hearing a lot of INSIDER STORIES about how Reebok grew EXPONENTIALLY but you’ll also hear how Joe and his brother dealt with years and years of REJECTIONS before breaking through. Reebok understood the importance of INFLUENCERS early on, and Joe reveals how Reebok leveraged those relationships as a key element of the company’s GROWTH STRATEGY. One of the most important things Joe talks about is how to FIND BALANCE as a family man and an entrepreneur. If you’ve struggled with this, pay close attention to how Joe has managed to find that DELICATE SWEET SPOT that’s a common problem for lots of success-driven people. Joe wraps up things with some FUN advice for entrepreneurs. Just like wearing the best shoes on the planet is an important part of WINNING THE RACE, you need to download the best advice on the planet if you want to win whatever race you’re in. And an hour spent listening to Joe Foster will definitely give you the COMPETITIVE EDGE you need. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig.

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  On October 2nd.

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  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

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  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

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  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:36Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Mileage Show.

• 1:40Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the show, everybody. Today, I have a chance to talk with a living legend, all the way from Manchester, England. And I have to tell you, in his 86, nearly 87 years on this planet, his knowledge and expertise as an entrepreneur and building one of the biggest global brands of all time is almost unprecedented. And to have the opportunity to sit down with somebody like this today and share his wisdom with you is a complete honor. So my guest today is the founder of Reebok. Joe Foster, welcome to the show. Ed, what a great introduction. Thank you very much. Well, I just, I read this whole book, cover to cover. And Joe's book is called Shoemaker. And kind of playoff of a little bit of, I think, what Phil wrote, but the untold story

• 2:23Ed Mylett?

  of the British family firm that became a global brand. So let's get into that story. And let's get into lessons for entrepreneurs because we, we could go six hours on this. The interesting part of your story is it doesn't actually really begin with your story. It kind of begins with your grandfather. But your family's been in this business, so to speak, back into the late 1800s. So tell us a little bit about your grandfather and sort of the revolutionary that he was and some of the lessons learned from him.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  When I started working at the Foster family, we didn't really talk that much about grandfather. It's only when we left the Foster family and we started Reebok, we started to research a lot more. But he was a genius. He really was. In 1895, the age of 15, the age of 15, what he called invented or he pioneered the spike running shoe.

• 3:12Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Is a matter of opinion. But he got the idea from his grandfather. So I was going back even further. He used to go down to his grandfather. It was a cobbler. But not only did he repair street shoes, he also repaired cricket boots. And cricket boots had spikes in at that time. So my grandfather Joe was a sort of an average runner, member of the Bolton Primrose Harriers, and sort of finished halfway down the field, thought, maybe if I put spikes in my shoes, get a bit more grip, maybe I'll do better. And he did. He came a very, very unlikely second. And I wouldn't say the first race, but because he had to perfect his shoes. But he came a very unlikely second. And his teammates

• 3:54Speaker 03

  were looking at him and looking, thinking, you know, what's this? Is he cheating?

• 3:58Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  You know? So he wasn't a big lad. So I suppose really he chose the, the route of making everybody shoes instead of.

• 4:09Ed Mylett?

  And the making of everybody's shoes part is, this is the revolutionary, you know, you, everyone knows about Reebok and it becomes this global brand. But you go all the way back, there were secrets with your grandfather, which was, he was really the first guy to kind of get the Michael Jordans of that time, the athletes to endorse and wear his product, which was genius, right? So tell us who he made shoes for. This is crazy.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:32Ed Mylett?

  He's really the first ever branding guy.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  His, his first pair of shoes that were successful was a guy called Alf Schrub. And Alf Schrub in 1904, so my grandfather's business had sort of grown up from 1895, when he was a 15 year old youngster. And by 1904, he was well known. And he, he obviously gave these shoes to Alf Schrub. Alf Schrub broke three world records in one event in Glasgow, in a one hour event. And during that one hour event, he broke three world records. By 1908, grandfather had gold medals at the Olympics. And I think that was in London. And, and of course, unfortunately for him, and this, this sort of second decade, we had World War One. Nobody wanted to run his shoes, so they started repairing army boots.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  And there's a story in there about the army boots and the mud of Flanders and whatever. But probably his biggest achievement, if you've heard of Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire is a film that immortalizes three athletes, Eric Little, Harold Abrams and Lord Burghley. They all won gold medals during the 1920s. And in this film, they're all immortalized in Chariots of Fire, which is, and he made their shoes. So he made lots and lots of shoes for the athletes, but he knew, he was an influencer. He knew where the influencers were. Yeah. In those days, we talk now about influencers a lot, but can you think about it? Back down there in the early 20th century, he is giving his shoes and he is getting the results.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  He even gave shoes to reporters. People who would report on events and they would try. So, so they would then say, oh, Foster shoes. Yes, I've tried the Marner. So it was wonderful. And one of it, he used to advertise, you know, right now we have social media. It's crazy. You know, what we can do these days is absolutely incredible. But all he could do was advertise in sort of local newspapers and whatever. And one of his advertisements in, I think it's called the Sportsman, was if you don't think that J D Foster's shoes are the best shoes you've ever worn, best bike shoes you've ever worn, we'll give you a hundred pounds. Now, a hundred pounds in those days, we'll say that at four times, that's about $400. Today, it's about $40,000.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  I mean, it really is an incredible amount that he was, he was talking about. But, you know, that was Joe Foster.

• 6:53Ed Mylett?

  Can I ask you a question about that? I'm just curious is your thoughts on it because it's, it's pretty revolutionary, guys. You go all the way back, because we go to Reebok and we know Reebok and Adidas and Nike are fighting over getting the right person to wear their shoe and all that. His grandfather, who he's named after, even more ironically, is the guy who really started it. So he didn't just make a revolutionary product, because so many of you entrepreneurs, listeners, you have this great product. And one of the things Joe says in the book, I'll mess up the phraseology, but it stuck with me, was this point, which that's not good enough just to have a good product. It has to get recognized. And so I think a lot of these entrepreneurs that are out there, I just think, hey, I'm going to win because my product's better than everybody else's. But what would you say to an entrepreneur now with social media, with, you know, all the, how do you think it's important

• 7:37Ed Mylett?

  to get influencers helping you in your product now, or other methods of getting recognition and acknowledgement? I often say, Joe, business used to be who you know. And I think nowadays, it's more who knows you in business is almost more important. Do you agree with that?

• 7:53Speaker 03

  Well, I agree with the, the idea of that, yes. But whichever way, you know, we used to think about this many, many years ago. How do you get your product out there? Can you do it? I had one friend who, who thought that value for money was the way to do these things. So everybody go, something at a better price. But no, it's influencers. You put them on the feet of the right people, and those people, they're the ones that spread the news. It's the same today, and it works. Okay, we've moved a little bit into sort of music and entertainment as against performance.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  And probably, well certainly in my grandfather's day, it was performance. So he would do this at athletic meetings, go to athletics meetings. And the amount of advertising he could do was quite limited because it was only newspaper. So people had to pick up the newspaper and read it. Uh, so the biggest influence was the reporting of athletes who won all these events, won gold medals. And I would say by the end of the nineteen twenties, probably my grandfather, Joe Foster, had won probably athletes in his shoes, had won probably more gold medals than any other brand at all.

• 9:02Ed Mylett?

  That's incredible.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, which was an incredible story. And had we not been reasonably successful with Reebok, uh, nobody would have known of Joe Foster, J. D. Foster and Sons back down there in the early twentieth century.

• 9:18Ed Mylett?

  I think what's incredible about you is you've had this incredible career with the struggles and the ups and downs. I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, all of the stories from when he was working with his father and his brother to breaking away to years and years on the road to, you guys, we'll talk about this in a little bit, living in the factory with his wife to save money. And the factory is so shaky, he's got to put all the equipment on the side of the floor so the damn floor doesn't fall in on him. All these struggles that, and I think it's so important, Joe, people hear this because most entrepreneurs listening to this, if they are an entrepreneur or want to be one, they're in the struggle phase. And I think oftentimes I think that struggle phase means I'm not cut out for this. Yet your struggle phase was amazing. I just want to, I found the quote, by the way, on, in the book, I just found it.

• 10:03Ed Mylett?

  On the part about recognition, you said, genius doesn't just rely on creativity, invention and production. It also needs recognition. Without being recognized, you can't be perceived as a genius. With his spiked running shoe, granddad Joe had created a brand new product and he employed many ways to let people know about it, which you guys have all just heard. Let's just fast forward, you're in business with your dad. So there's a lot of people and your brother, there's a lot of people who are in business with their family right now.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Right, yes.

• 10:30Ed Mylett?

  And this is your father, so I'm sure at the time you loved him and admired him. But what did you see in your dad that you knew was going to spell disaster for the company you guys had at the time that you, you knew wasn't in you? What, what was the difference between you and your dad, do you think?

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Well, I, I think the biggest problem was that grandfather died nineteen thirty-three. He was only fifty, I think fifty-four years old, a young man. And so his, his two sons inherited the business. His two sons, um, there were six years between them. And for whatever reason, I don't know, even to today, they just did not get on together. We had to leave the business and do national service. National service, um, existed for about twenty years after World War Two. And we come back, so we're able to sit there and we're able to say, stand our own corner now and say, this business is dying. What are you doing? You know, you've got to get together, you two. You know, let's build a business. Let's do something. No, didn't happen.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  It was nineteen fifty eight. Uh, we had had enough. We'd tried to get my father to say, look, if you won't get together with Bill, why don't you join us and we'll set up a different company?

• 11:42Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  And we can, we can move forward. But no, in fact, I can remember very well him saying, when I've gone and your uncle's gone, this company is yours. You do what you want with it. Oh, I'm saying, Dad, we don't want you to go. Number one, we don't want you to go. But this company will be dead long before you are.

• 12:02Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  And, uh, no, but it just didn't make any difference.

• 12:09Ed Mylett?

  Chapter seven is called Mercury Rises. So you start the business. I'd like this lesson to be taught to people. Can you tell them what you had to do first, sacrifice wise, in order to even start this business? Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs go, yeah, I've left and you know, I'm still nine to five. I still can keep my house. I can keep my cars. I can keep all my expenses. We can still go out to dinner on the weekend. And I'm like, well, that's not what I did. I moved into an apartment that was terrible. I tried to put every dollar I had into my business. I didn't go out anymore on the weekends. And I go all the way back to the birth of Reebok. Take them through what you did just to start sacrifice wise.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Jeff and myself, we didn't have much money in, in those days. And it was a question that if we were going to do something, we need, we had to go in there one hundred percent. It would have to be a big, but it was also the, the fact that if you're going to do something, you've got to do something you love. You've got to be really in love with it. You've got to create a family. And if you do that, that's a hundred percent. It doesn't matter time. It's not nine till five. It's twenty four seven. It's everything. If you need it, you need it. And it does cause, can cause problems with your, your family, your actual wife and your children. That can cause problems because you, you develop a family. Reebok became a family. And a lot of people actually come into the family. But you have to be in love. And as you said, Mercury rises. Why Mercury? Because we left in nineteen fifty

• 13:29Speaker 03

  eight. I remember telling my father, we're leaving, and that was quite traumatic in its way. It uh, he didn't believe, but uh. Tried to stab you. Well, I don't think he tried to stab me, but he, he, he picked up the letter opener. And he, he, he came towards me. But instead of sort of trying to stab me, he gave me the letter opener and said, stab me. Stab me now. Kill me now. And uh. Wow. Yeah. Oh, like I say, I look there. This is not do with that. You know, you, you're very welcome to come and join us. Very welcome. But Jeff and I need to make this move now. The parent business was down the road, so we had to think of a new name. And we thought of Mercury. Mercury

• 14:10Speaker 03

  is already registered. It was actually registered by British Shoe Corporation, a big footwear, a lot of them dealt with the actual company. And they, they offered it to us for a thousand pounds. Well, we had set a whole factory up for two hundred and fifty pounds. A whole fa- a thousand pounds? Impossible. I went to see the parent. They said, well, if, if you can't buy it, you need a new, you have to find another name. Well, you know, we've been spending time, we've advertised, and this is our name, Mercury. How do we do that? He pointed through the window, and he pointed to Kodak. And I'm saying, what's with Kodak? He said, well, they, it's a made up

• 14:51Speaker 03

  name. They made it up. It's theirs. They own it. Nobody can challenge that. That's it. You can register it. Okay. So we've got to bring you a made up name or something like that. Yeah, he said, don't bring me one. Bring me ten. But let me take you back to nineteen forty three. I'm eight years old. And we're in World War Two, just like Covid, we couldn't go anywhere. We had sort of events at home and I was entered into a sixty yard race. I won the sixty yard race. I'm wearing Foster spikes.

• 15:21Ed Mylett?

  Oh my goodness.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  They gave me more grip. Nobody else has spikes shoes on at that time. I go up collecting my prize, right? Okay. And what do I get? It was a Webster's American dictionary. It was American dictionary. Why would they give me an American dictionary? Because the spellings on quite a few things are different. Fast forward now to nineteen sixty, we're thinking of names.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  And I like the letter R. I thought, yeah, R, strong, strong letter. So I opened my Webster's American dictionary at letter R. And I start thumbing through. It doesn't take you long to get to R E. That's R E B O K. What's that? A small South African gazelle. Gazelle, we're a running company. Gazelle, fabulous. That's it. Top of the list. Reebok, hardly be okay. I put this top of the list, take it to the, uh, the agent. And he, a week later, he came up and said, of all the names, and we did give him ten names, of all those, uh, Reebok is the only one that came out.

• 16:30Ed Mylett?

  Come on.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  We can have that. Yes, you can have that. One caveat, this is the registrar, one caveat. We can only put you in part B of the register. You know, part A, part B, what we're talking about is the register. We can only put part B. Because if anybody comes along and says, we, we're making shoes out of Reebok's skin, you can't stop them. No. Well, Jeff and I thought, no, never going to happen now, never going to happen. We'll have Reebok. So we sit in part B of the register. Ten years later, the registrar came back to us to say, we've moved you to part A. Yes, why? Well, everybody now knows that Reebok is a shoe, a running shoe.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Fantastic. So that's, that's, that's the story of our name.

• 17:17Ed Mylett?

  So here we go. Now we're building Reebok. You have to sell your house. You move in with your wife's family. Most people don't make those sacrifices and become entrepreneurs. They don't understand the sacrifice part.

• 17:28Ed Mylett?

  That's a huge thing. You don't do that. There's probably no Reebok today. You probably don't have a company that ends up, you know, exiting for three or four billion dollars the first time around. Like, think about that, guys. Like, he goes from selling his house, picking the name out of a dictionary, to a company valued three, four, almost five billion dollar range at one point. Just sold again to another company for a couple billion dollars. But just think about this for a second. So, but then you figure out, I gotta go on the road here. And I gotta start being a salesman. And is it true, I just want to make sure I read this right, because it was, you know, a few days ago. Not only did you go on the road as a salesman for your own company, but didn't you have to pick up kind of like some side gigs, selling for someone else just to feed your family? While you were building Reebok, you kind of had a side deal to eat at the time, did you not?

• 18:13Speaker 03

  I, I had an agent who was working locally with Reebok. And he decided he was packing that in. He was going out in a sports shop. So, I said, well, probably I'll have to go and do my own repping. And he said, well, I've also got a couple of other brands. If you want, tell them that you can do that. So. He started, suggested to his other brands that I represent them. So I took the other brands. And one, one was a darts brand, darts. And it was incredible. The commission on that was really good. So that was okay. But, you know, what we did learn is that you have to, you have to look at a problem. And with the name, we had to change our name because we had that problem.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Four years into our business, we got a letter from Adidas, or the lawyers, Adidas lawyers. To say, because in those days, we had two stripes and a T-bar. And they said our two stripes and a T-bar infringes their three stripes. Oh, and Jeff and I, I'm saying, look, Jeff, you know, what are we going to do? And then we, we thought, just a minute. Adidas are writing us a letter. Adidas know we're here. Adidas, we must be disturbing them a little bit. They've recognized us. Okay. So when you get a problem, why don't you look at it and think, well, that's telling you something. It's telling you you've got to think a bit deeper.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  And you can go around it. You can change it. So we've always almost welcomed problems. Because it's given us the opportunity to rethink where we are. Now we come out with a better silhouette, better name. So, you know, this is Reebok. Now I'm going on the road. And I call in at the retailers and apart from selling dart flies, I do introduce Reebok. And the retailer is saying, Reebok, who's Reebok? And I give him a story and show him some very nice shoes. And he looks up on his shelf and said, look, I've got Adidas and I've got Dunlop. Why do I need Reebok? That resonated. That was, I think, he doesn't need Reebok. I've got to find out who needs Reebok.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  And we used to go to events and we used to take shoes in the back of the car and we used to sell them at the events. And I'm thinking, there's a hundred athletes coming past. They're the people. They're my consumers.

• 20:32Ed Mylett?

  It is, yep.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Is it? They're my consumers. I need to get straight to them, which I did. Fortunately, at that point, the running clubs in the UK were all part of the three A's. The Amateur Athletic Association and the Amateur Athletic Association, they produced a handbook. And in that handbook was the name and address of every secretary of every club in the country. Three hundred clubs. Letters went out.

• 21:01Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  We'll give you fifteen percent off if you want to buy direct from us. And if anybody in your, in your club wishes to be an agent, then he can have the fifteen percent and we'll deal direct. I got a hundred agents on the first letter. Great. Yeah. A month later, I sent a second letter to some people who've not come. And I got another fifty agents. We ended up with about two hundred and fifty agents. And, right, we're selling direct. And what happens? Then the retailers, the retailers are picking phone up. And they're saying, Mr. Foster, we believe you're supplying our local club direct. Yes.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I'll start your shoes if you stop selling. You stop selling like, ah, I thought about this for a couple of minutes or whatever, maybe not that time. The answer to it is no. But what I will do, you you you will get the the shoes at wholesale price. We will also advertise that you are a dealer. And and I'm sure a lot of people will prefer to go to you, but I'm not going to stop selling direct. About ninety percent of the retailers that phone me, I accepted that.

• 22:17Ed Mylett?

  He did.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  And so our business is now starting to grow locally and and the retail stores.

• 22:24Ed Mylett?

  You guys, interesting points here. There's a few. One, what Joe said about problems, that's that should be drawing your attention to something. And should be getting a pivot and be creative and using your entrepreneurial genius. That's number one. Number two. He even says, I took a step back so that we could go forward. In the book, he uses this phrase because he had to go make sure he was feeding himself, which is this dart deal and selling this other stuff. He was willing to do basically whatever was required to stay in business. I think one of the rules of entrepreneurship that is understated is your first business is to stay in business. And Joe found all these different ways to stay in business. I want you to think about this. Here's this guy, he's out selling darts and doing these other things to stay in business.

• 23:09Ed Mylett?

  He finally gets this deal with the the the direct people. He doesn't know it at the time, but he is over time, over a decade or so, about to go face to face with Adidas and Nike and kick their tail for a while. Right? I want you to think about this. There's these two brothers, right? Joe's really driving it. They got nothing going on and he's about to go soon, someday, take on Nike and Adidas. Think about how far you might be able to go if you could just stay in business and make these pivots. But this wasn't like a week of rejection for you, Joe, or a year. There's really decades of then there's the scale issues. Then you get these big orders. You can't fill them sometimes, right? Like, how did you emotionally deal?

• 23:54Ed Mylett?

  Is it just your makeup? Or did you ever want to quit? And how did you deal with all of the rejection? I want you guys to think about this before he answers this decades of rejection. Not a week, not a month, not six months, not two years. The different forms of rejection over and over again. How did you deal with it?

• 24:12Speaker 03

  Well, to me, I love a challenge. And the reason that I left Reebok and retired was because at that time we got so big. The challenge had gone. So I like a challenge. And I also like to find an answer. There's a question there. And there's got to be an answer. And we're now talking about the American market. Because the the UK market, we're doing very nicely. We were number one in the UK. We were recognized as the experts that, in fact, we we had a little tag inside our shoe. We said the athlete shoe and we were the athletes. Athletes were coming to us. But if we could have gone into soccer, that would have been okay.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  That's the big market in the UK, big market in Europe. But unfortunately, by the time Jeff and I got into business, Adidas had really got a grip of that market. For us to try and get into that market, we needed money. It was a money market. However, in 1968, I am reading a magazine and I'd wanted to get to America. And there'd been resistance. No, that's too expensive to go over to America. But the magazine, I'm reading the magazine and the government are advertising for people to export to America. And this was sports magazine. So they were saying, we will, we will pay for a stand at the NSJ show, the National Sporting Goods of America show in Chicago.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  We'll pay for a stand for you. We'll pay for your return airfare and we'll pay half of your hotel bill. Wow. This is sixty eight. No more resistance. Yeah, you can go to America. So that was it. I was going to go to America in sixty eight and I went with a friend. A friend I was making climbing boots for. So he was in sort of the outdoor business. We were in the sports business. And we went together. We stopped off in New York and we had some wandering rounds. I'm looking at the sports stores. He's looking at the outdoor stores and then we go on to Chicago. And we have a nice stand and people are coming up. Lovely shoe. Great. Where do I get the shoe from? And I'm saying England. The resistance was they didn't want to be bothered with importation and all the detail. They were a sports store.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  They were wanting to just be able to say, knock on somebody's door or pick a phone up and just order a few pairs of shoes. That's what they want. I realized I need, I need a distributor. I need somebody in the, in the States who's going to take on this. Take on the Reebok brand and sell locally. Okay, they love my brand, but that was a problem. Now, this is nineteen sixty eight. I actually got into America in nineteen seventy nine. Oh, my God. I took eleven years from there. Eleven years. I'm knocking on that door. But you know what? I'm trying to push the price and I had at least six failed attempts.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  This is where your luck comes in. Late sixties and all the way through the seventies, the running category became something really big. It exploded. And in America, Nike were growing with that. And a few more, New Balance, Soponi, a lot of companies growing at that time. And Bob Anderson had Runner's World. Runner's World, that magazine, started as an A four page. And by nineteen seventy five, it was a full glossy magazine. So good, selling it, all these athletes. Well, you know, they've got three hundred and fifty million people in America at that time. And at that time, probably ten percent were running. Thirty five million runners out there. Okay.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  That's a good number. And maybe ten percent of those would want the best shoe. Bob Anderson told everybody the number one shoe and it was a Nike. Of course it was a Nike. Well, had to be. And but you know, Phil Knight, he's importing his shoes from Japan. And so demand is rising now. He's the number one shoe. Well, demand. Probably three million people would like that number one shoe. Can Phil get that production? No. You know, can knock on the door of on it, Suka, he can knock on his door for as long as he want, but could he get enough shoes? No. And you know, by the time he's getting the shoes through, twelve months later. Well, Bob Anderson decides, no, we've had enough of that one. We're gonna have another number one.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  So of course, the problem is shoes are coming in now, but another number one. Everybody turns away and I don't know, we don't want that Nike now, we want this new one. Probably New Balance at that time. Somebody, or maybe, maybe Bob Anderson worked it out for himself. This isn't gonna work. Let's, let's start, uh, star ratings. So the top one, we'll have a five star shoe, then we'll go down, down, down. We could make a five star shoe. I knew that. And I'd called in on, on, on Bob Anderson and had chats with him and, you know, you, you gotta get in all these people. Yeah, cause Phil was in with him, right? Phil Knight had an in with him. Of course, he was, he was fairly lo- fairly local. So, you know, you knew that, uh, yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  If you, if you do a good bit of advertising, you're gonna get more, uh, people listening to you. But I knew he'd get a five star. By nineteen seventy eight, we had our five star Aztec shoe. Nineteen seventy nine, I'm at the NSJ show, February, with my ready five star shoes. This is gonna be a five stars. Kmart come up and say, because I don't think Kmart were that interested in five star shoes, but running was so big. They wanted a product. Um, right, we'd like twenty five thousand pairs. Oh, okay. Sounds good. Alas, we're in here, twenty five thousand pairs and we haven't even got a five star shoe then.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Um, right, okay, but that's about six months work for a small factory in the UK. But you know, when you do these things, we're going for five stars, we, we're gonna need help. So I had a friend at Barta, Barta, but at that point were the biggest shoemakers in the world. And a friend of mine, he was running the sports division, we'll help you. You get, you know, you get a five star shoe, we'll help you. Great, I can handle that. Then Kmart said, yeah, but what a better price.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I think it do a better price than we could, but really this meant South Korea. This meant going to South Korea. Again, we pre-thought this and I had, I connected with an agent for a South Korean factory, right? And, and they could make the shoe at less than half the price that we could. And they were good. They were good. Yeah. So, okay, we've got that one covered. But, you know, part of the show with the four days, along came Paul Feyman.

• 30:54Ed Mylett?

  This is the guy. Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  This is the guy. And Paul, I could tell, you know, he's like a bit fed up with life. He's running, he's running Boston camping. And he knows that running is growing, outdoor is like still the same old, we're going around this, we're going around every year, we're doing the same. And he's running Boston camping with his brother and his brother-in-law. And, yeah, well, Joey said, I'd love to be a distributor. He said, but I need a five-star shoe. Maybe it's going to be a five-star shoe, but unless it's a five-star shoe, I really can't take the risk. I said, okay, Paul, we're going to have to wait

• 31:36Speaker 03

  till the end of July because the, the shoe edition is August. That's when Bob Anderson comes out with his shoe edition. Okay, we fast forward now to the last week in July. And this is when the, the magazine, the August magazine would be out. And I phoned Paul, can you nip down to the local kiosk, see if Runner's World is there because this will be the shoe edition. An hour later, Paul came back and said, Joe, yes, five stars. You got it. Fantastic. But also Inca and Midas, they also got five stars. That was it. That was our end to the market.

• 32:16Ed Mylett?

  Now you're in.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  Five-star shoes.

• 32:18Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. You started Mercury, which is Reebok, in 1958, is that right?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:23Ed Mylett?

  So this is 21 years into the

• 32:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:28Ed Mylett?

  21 years as an entrepreneur, struggling selling commissions, UK, trying to get into the US, back and forth. And then there's like this interesting pivot that takes place. So then you're starting to build a business. This fireman guy is a big part of the company, obviously, and ends up becoming a major part of the company. Let's make one more pivot on Reebok, then we'll talk about when it's sold. The one more pivot that's sort of incredible about all this, we're talking about all this running stuff, right? So runner's world, chasing, getting Nike, getting the five stars, doing all this stuff. Now you're relevant. And oftentimes, companies become dogmatic. You think about, they get stuck in like legacy thinking. Small entrepreneurs have it too. You take a look at a blockbuster video, they should have been Netflix, but they never pivoted. They just never did it, right? You think about,

• 33:13Ed Mylett?

  you know, Barnes de Noble bookstores, they probably should have been Amazon, but they couldn't see beyond where they were. You, on the other hand, got this running thing going and it's competitive, you're doing well. And then like, women's sports comes along, aerobics specifically, right?

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Specifically, yes.

• 33:36Ed Mylett?

  And nobody else is even looking at this stuff. No one's even thinking about this. And then what do you guys do? This is really, to me, like, maybe one of the key decisions of the whole company in the whole time.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Oh, I would say so. I mean, there are many key decisions that make small changes. Sometimes we've gone to America, that was for fun. But of course, okay, we're a running company. And we had a tech rep, tech rep, Arhil, Arhil Martinez, he's down in LA. Yeah. And he's a good, in fact, he actually tried out for the Olympics. He was quite a good athlete. But he's in there and he's selling, selling the benefits of Reebok. His wife Frankie, his wife Frankie is coming home and from aerobics classes. She's going there with her friends. And they're coming back and they're full of it. Now they'll say, whoa, what are you doing? Oh, we're going to aerobics. What's aerobics? Well, we're exercising to music and it's fantastic, fabulous.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  And she was so enthusiastic, I said, can I come down and have a look what you're doing? Crazy. Okay, we'll do that next time. He goes down, he sees the instructor wearing a pair of sneakers. I think at the time, they're probably New Balance, if I can remember, just New Balance made it in white. So all white, just like grey. And half the class, they were in the same sneaker. The other half of the class, nothing. We're not wearing shoes at all. This was his lifeable moment. This was his moment, just like, why don't we just make a shoe for these girls? Huge. On a woman's last, woman's sizes only. All white, this little reebok there with the Union Jack and nice cushions. And make it in glove leather, because he, he had this feeling of just put this shoe on, it was so comfortable.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Glove leather would do it. Okay, off he went, up, see Paul Feynman.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  And he got the red eye from L A to Boston. And you see Paul, and he's full of this, and Paul's saying, whoa, slow down. Yeah. Slow down. The major moment. Yeah, we're running company. What, what, what, what do we want to be doing making dancing shoes for girls? I, I know this, but Paul's saying, okay, you know, let's give it some time, see, see what happens. Mm hmm. That's too slow for Arnold. No, he went round the back door. He had a word with Steve Leggett, Steve Leggett's in charge of production. He persuaded Steve to get him a couple of hundred pairs. And when he got them, down there. Arnold gives them to the instructors, because it's growing all the time, this, the instructors and some of the leading, uh,

• 36:06Speaker 03

  sort of girls down there, girls who were influencing. And I could say the rest is history. However, these shoes were made out of glove leather. Glove leather, just like a piece of paper, you can just tear it apart. So the shoes are falling apart. Oh, what do we do? Oh, we put nylon on it. Line it with nylon. By this time, I'm learning, whoa, what we're doing, what we're doing. And you're lining with nylon, but just a minute, you use leather because leather breathes. And you put nylon on, you stop it breathing. Oh. Okay, then we'll punch some holes in the front. So they punch holes in. This answers the breathing problem and it becomes a design point. At that point, I realized that being

• 36:51Speaker 03

  a she make, being a shoemaker has its limitations. You need to be a marketing man. We cured the problem with the leather. We got something more like garment leather, which was stronger and that was okay. And then, of course, you get Jane Fonda buying a freestyle and using them in her videos.

• 37:09Ed Mylett?

  She's the face of aerobics, everybody at that time. She's the face of this whole industry at the time. And now she's wearing your shoe.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  And she bought them. And at that time, we were doing nicely. We were a nine million dollar business. Not bad, but problems later, we were thirty million dollar business.

• 37:29Ed Mylett?

  Crazy.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Then, you know, as well, ninety million dollar business, then a three hundred million dollar business, then a nine hundred million dollar business in between four and five, nine hundred million from nine million. It just went like a rocket.

• 37:44Ed Mylett?

  Did everybody just hear this? Did everybody just hear that? Let's just, let's just do that again really quick. That's, he lived it. So he's like, yeah, we did. You guys, you got a business that you've taken twenty some odd years to get to where it's a nine million dollar business.

• 37:59Ed Mylett?

  You're a running company. A lot of you are out there. You're like, we're a fitness company. We're a financial company. We're a mortgage company and you're stuck. Like Blockbuster thought they were a video store company. These guys eventually had the vision to pivot and they go nine, thirty, ninety, nine hundred, right? Like after all those years, this one critical move and you just go back in the history, guys. You go back to the vision to break away from dad. I just want to give you the credit for this joke because I just think it's such a remarkable story. The vision, hard to say, Dad, I'm going. It's your father, right? And he was so crushed, he hands you the, the, the letter opener and says stab me, right? So, but you saw there wasn't a vision there. Then the,

• 38:42Ed Mylett?

  okay, I'll sacrifice. I'll sell my house. We'll move in. We'll, then we'll live in the factory if we have to. And then it's the, the, just getting through the UK. Then it's the, okay, I'll have to make money elsewhere and sell commissions for a while. Then it's getting into the country. Then it's all that time. Then it's meeting firemen, right? And finally having a guy who gets it that you're running with. And still, it's a nine million dollar company. And you're competing against Nike and Adidas. Like I said, everybody in the beginning, then this pivot happens because they can pivot on the fly. They're nimble. They pivot on the fly. My friend Phil Nike, he doesn't see the vision for this. Adidas didn't see the vision for this. Joe and his partner saw the vision for this. And they go to a $900 million company and then Joe ultimately, when Adidas buys it, right? That's who ends up buying the company. Am I right about that?

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:28Ed Mylett?

  Yeah. And what do they end up buying the company for roughly?

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Well, I, I retired. I retired, but they, they, they paid 3.6 billion dollars.

• 39:40Ed Mylett?

  3.6 billion and it just sold again recently after a lot of years where they didn't know what the heck to do with it. Frankly, no offense to them, but they didn't know what to do with Reebok after they got it. Like a lot of big brands that buy it just sold again for like two and a half billion to a group Shaquille's a part of, right? Isn't that correct?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  ABG. And do you know that deal is just closed today?

• 39:59Ed Mylett?

  It closed today.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  Today it's just closed. Yeah. So now Reebok is ABG and we just sent them the best wishes. Look after my baby.

• 40:10Ed Mylett?

  Oh, yeah. You sit back at, you'll be 87 in May.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:14Ed Mylett?

  You sit back and, you know, do you reflect on this journey of all these decisions and choices and sacrifices? I think it's interesting when I get people on that have made, just done incredible things in their life. I think it's because they lived it. They don't see it that way. And you're nodding. So you agree.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:32Ed Mylett?

  This is just this unbelievable story of having this grandfather who's this revolutionary, happens to be a shoemaker, right?

• 40:39Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 40:41Ed Mylett?

  And then, and then you get born on his birthday, but you never meet him because it's two years after he dies.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:47Ed Mylett?

  You get named after him. You go on to build freaking Reebok. Like that's incredible. And it takes you, really, when did you know you had it done? So you start in 58. When did you go, yeah, this thing's really rolling now. What year was it that you went, we're a big time company now?

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Well, that that would have been in nineteen seventy nine when we when we actually came through to get into America. I knew at that time, once once we got the hook, that was the thing we needed the hook. The hook was being a five star shoe. Yeah, trying to push, trying to push. That needs a lot of money, a lot of energy, uh, and a lot of gambling. We hadn't got the we got the energy. We didn't have the money. But as soon as we got in, this was the hook. As soon as we got it, I knew then that we would achieve it. And, you know, the saddest thing in my life is that just at that point, my brother died.

• 41:42Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was a real sad part because there are things that are sad in these sad things. You know, it's not all good. There's a lot of, there's a lot of suffering goes on. But, you know, we it's that makes you more determined.

• 41:55Ed Mylett?

  Was the suffering worth it? Honestly, I want to ask you, and by the way, I'm sorry for the loss of your brother. It's really a sad part of the story of everything.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:03Ed Mylett?

  If we have a few more minutes, I'd like to ask you a couple of things about that. Would that be okay? We'll go a couple of minutes on it?

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm okay with it.

• 42:08Ed Mylett?

  You say in the book, there are a lot of suffering and sacrifice too. And one of the things you're very open about, you lost a daughter.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:15Ed Mylett?

  But you wanted to, I think leukemia at like twenty six years old.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Leukemia at sixty, yes, absolutely.

• 42:21Ed Mylett?

  I told you, I read that book.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  You did.

• 42:23Ed Mylett?

  And you say in the book that, hey, I wasn't present enough as a father or a husband the first time around. And I'm wondering how you feel about that. And what advice would you give to a entrepreneur with a young family right now in terms of trying to find not balance, there's absolutely no balance as an entrepreneur, but in terms of trying to, you know, find those times to be present and to put family as a priority as you're doing it. What would you what would you say about all that?

• 42:51Speaker 03

  If you can make time, make it. If you can take them along with you, take them along with you. It's it's good. Yeah. Eventually, my wife did move, did come with us eventually. Uh, when we when we were doing the Monte Carlo tennis tournaments and I I toured the world and my wife came with me and there's some good stories in there. Um, but, um, The thing is with your family, Reebok became my family. And I think if you're an entrepreneur, in order to be an entrepreneur and to be successful, you need to be a hundred percent. You need to be in there. If the business needs you, you have to go. The compensations are you try.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  You try to keep everybody at home informed and part of it. I used to, I still have them. I used to send postcards home from wherever I was. I used to send a postcard, just say, hi to all the family. This is what's going on. So I mean, sometimes I would arrive home before the postcards arrived. But if I'm away for three weeks doing around the world trip, which quite often I was, I would send postcards and try. And I was also, I was always away on my son's birthday because his birthday was the same dates as the NSGA show in Chicago. So I was always away. But, you know, I, I hoped that the compensation for that was I used to take him something back from America, which none of his

• 44:14Speaker 03

  friends would have. You know, this is a, this is what, this came from America, you know. And so you, you try your best to sort of bring them in and hopefully they will understand. I don't think they, I, I think the problem is with the family. There's a little bit of, well, no matter how much you try, you don't satisfy them, no matter how much, because you just cannot be there all the time. The, the business demands. And to be successful, I, I think there are things that you surrender, but the, the most, I mean, when we talk about the tragedies and the things that happen, it's not so much that on occasions, your wife doesn't like the way things are going.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  It's, it's when your, your daughter dies or your brother dies. These are things you can't change.

• 45:01Ed Mylett?

  I imagine, Joe, that you're, that Jeff, your dad, your grandfather are immensely proud of you. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta think there's a part of them that are going, I can't believe all this crap happened too. I think they have to be amazed. I'm curious, you did, I, I, I know that. A couple of last things. So you have traveled the world.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  Many times, yeah.

• 45:22Ed Mylett?

  Many times. So you've met people from all over the world. What have you learned about people in general? Such an interesting time, isn't it? You know, where? In different parts of the world, we're against each other here, there, and you know, seems as if it's a very divisive time. But what have you learned about people as you've traveled the world and done business many, many times over?

• 45:44Speaker 03

  Expanding Reebok, I put Paul Feyman on the app to Paul, I put on about thirty different countries. And luckily, because we were doing well in America, I knew if we did well in America, my job beyond that would be easy. And I had been meeting the right people. So I could, I could select the people that that would now become Reebok, wherever, Australia, whatever, Greece, whatever country. And, you know, they're still friends today. You know, those people are still friends because you make friends, you share things. So I think traveling, yes, it's, you know, if you're traveling with a message, then there's a lot of people want to talk to you. I guess if we're just a student backpacking

• 46:25Speaker 03

  and traveling, that's, that's a different thing. You see in bits and pieces. Again, when, when I traveled, a lot of the time, I, it was business. Yeah. So it relied upon somebody saying, well, why don't you visit this? Or, of course, you don't see that much. I mean, I, I never got, well, I got to China a few times, but I never saw the Great Wall. And maybe one of those, one of these days, I'll be able to go and see the Great Wall. But I, I guess I see certain things that a lot of people don't see.

• 46:55Ed Mylett?

  Is it worth it? All the sacrifices, all the travel, all the struggle, the time away from family, the stress? If you could do it all again, would you? Was it worth it? You must reflect a little bit. I'm sure writing a book caused you to reflect. If I asked you whether it was worth it or not, what would you say?

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Well, yes, it's worth it. Absolutely. I, I remember reading Shoe Dog, Phil Knight's book. And I know he ended up by saying, I just wish I could do it all again.

• 47:25Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  I can understand that. And, you know, Phil and I, we obviously traveled a very similar path in many ways. And, and he lost a son. Just as I lost a daughter, he lost a son. But, you know, you can't alter that. Maybe, I don't know what the maybes are on that. But, you know, yes, it was worth it. The reason it's worth it is because I retired at eighty nine, and I decided I'm, in nineteen eighty nine, I retired, and I was going to put my feet up on rest, but the phone kept ringing. You know, Joe, what do we do here? Joe, we've got this, this happening. You know, it's like,

• 48:02Speaker 03

  it's a bit like the edles in Hotel California. You can check out, you can never leave.

• 48:08Ed Mylett?

  So good. That's so good.

• 48:12Ed Mylett?

  That's so good. Oh, my gosh, I enjoy you so much. All right, last question, because I, you know, you're, you're in England and it's not fair time change wise. So I have to ask for on the behalf of entrepreneurs that are listening to, you know, as I introduced you as a legend. And what advice would you just give in general, but to a budding entrepreneur? They're driving in their car right now, or they're running on the treadmill and they're listening to you and the story and, you know, maybe they're watching it on YouTube and they go, I'm, I'm in, I'm in the struggle, brother. I'm, I'm, I'm struggling. I don't know whether I'm supposed to be doing this or not. I don't really know what to be thinking, you know? I don't know whether I should believe in myself. What just advice would you do if you saw that entrepreneur? What would you say to them?

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I think to be an entrepreneur, you've got to know your business. You've got to know everything about it. You've got to, nobody can ask you a question you can't answer about your business. You've got to know it. And today is technology. Today is so much technology. But, you know, the most important things as far as I am concerned is number one, have fun. You've got to have fun. If you're not having fun, you're not in the right place. Number two, have a lot more fun. A lot more fun. Number three, really, really have fun. Because that way you'll enjoy it and you'll be successful if you're not having fun. And it doesn't mean to say that every day you have fun, but what it doesn't mean to say you get up and I'm going to have fun. And that way you'll be successful. Enjoy it.

• 49:45Ed Mylett?

  I love it. I always say winning is more fun than fun is fun. So go ahead and decide you're going to win as an entrepreneur too. That'll increase the fun level for sure.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  You know, the game isn't over until you've won. It's as simple as that.

• 49:58Ed Mylett?

  That's so good. I feel like we won today. Like my audience won. I won. I got the chance to spend an hour with you and the story's incredible. And by the way, we've touched on probably 15 to 20% of the entire story today. And so I'd encourage you to go get Shoemaker, go get the book. Joe is a treasure and I enjoyed you so much today. I want to be heading towards 87 years old, looking like you, talking like you, with your net worth, with your great family that you have there with you just right off of the camera and helping as many people as you helped today. That you're, you're a hero to me and I admire you very, very much, Joe. So thank you for being here today. Please share today's show with as many people as you love and care about that want to be inspired, that want to learn, that want to grow. We're the fastest growing show in the world and we

• 50:42Ed Mylett?

  keep growing every 90 days like doubling and that's because of people like Joe Foster and because of people like you listening to it that share it with other people. So thank you, everybody. Joe, thank you. It's been a pleasure, Mark. It really has. My pleasure. God bless everybody. Max out.