Shoemaker After Shoe Dog

Shoemaker After Shoe Dog 

Three years back, I read Shoe Dog , memoirs of Nike’s founder  Phil Knight . It was a powerful tale of triumph against all the odds, revealing the challenges and sacrifices that go into creating a iconic global shoe  brand; it is also the story of how a small local business can transform itself, with the right products and the right vision, into something much, much bigger. 

Similarly co-founder of REEBOK  Joe Foster wrote Shoemaker. He is on a visit to India these days. I am lucky to meet him yesterday thanks to my friend Anurag Batra. He invited Joe in Indian Business Literary Festival as one of the speaker. 

Joe nararated an interesting tale of his linage and and and that how this shoe manufacturing business  started The business started in a very very modest way  in 1895 when Joe Foster’s grandfather at the age of 14 started work in his bedroom above his father's sweetshop in Bolton city UK . He  designed some of the earliest spiked running shoes and founded J.W. Foster' in 1900. For 40 years the company distributed shoes which were worn by British athletes including 100m Olympic champion Harold Abrahams (who would be immortalised in the Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire).

Joe Foster served in British armed forces , after returning from national service in the 1957 he realized that family feud between his  father and uncle is hampering the business. In the year 1958, this led to Joe and his brother Jeff setting up a new company, inspired by the success of Adidas and Puma. Thus born Reebok. By the way REEBOK  is a small South African Antelope.

What I admire most about Joe Foster is  his relentless positivity in the face of much adversity , it took him 10 years to break into the US market. His company faced two big  crises, the one in 1960 when it  was in huge debt to defend its marketing and brand name, and the second when their South Korean supplier incorrectly made 20,000 pairs as REEBOOKS destined for the first major shipment to the US.

Ultimately, all good companies Nike, Amazon, and REEBOK experience near death experiences . Nike and REEBOK both faced  supplier issues, but those that come through those periods with the same founder, hold that intangible IP, and become world class companies.

Not long before the company became  public, Joe decided  to sell the company to the US to enable it to become a global company, but still work for the company as president, still doing the job he loved, promoting REEBOK, thinking of new ideas, and managing people. The intellectual humility to realise that he was not a “numbers guy” is impressive, as is his ability to be likeable and nice, something that provided good fortune when looking for a US distributor, and on many other occasions when the company was under pressure.

Sadly, for Jo, the single-minded love and ambition for REEBOK impacted his marriage with his childhood love Jean, who divorced him in the age 55. For a man from humble beginning in Bolton, but who applied a growth mindset with humility, passion and desire, in his words, anything is really possible.

I have started  reading Shoemaker , will share interesting anecdotes later.

#Joefoster, #AnuragBatra,#IndianBusinessLiteraryFestival