I began working for my dad shortly after my 17 birthday, February 1983. I had got by at school and scraped through my exams, spent 6 months resitting over half of them just to scrape through again. I am still no academic. I loved to draw though and had flirted with the idea of following my mum to art school. A six month course than ran with my resits did not inspire me, so in the end I asked my dad for a job. My dad seemed genuinely happy that I wanted to be part of Reebok, Paul Brown who I worked for there was great guy that had worked for Bata when they made Aztecs for Reebok and been convinced by dad to move north and work for this little shoe company.
It was Paul’s job to breath new life into the product and take on the creative mantle vacant by my uncle. There had been previous attempts, but it would be Paul and the other members of the new team that would take up the challenge.
Paul’s, now our, office was at the back of the factory, the term office can only be used very loosely. It was and old storeroom (10x 8 ft) next to the canteen, with a sliding door. The walls were of painted brick, last repainted in the 1960’s. the ceiling was over 20 ft up and was just a couple of beams that supported the second floorboards. Every time someone walked above us, small piles of dirt would drop down on our heads! Near the top of this room was the only natural light. 24 small glass bricks, that let in a dismal glow. My first job was to “get up there and clean the window.’ Paul held the ladder whilst I scrubbed away. Half an hour later we had a bucket of dirty water but no improvement in light. This was blamed on the grey skies of Bury. When we moved the factory, we discovered that there was a shed, with a skylight on the other side of the glass bricks, so no amount of scrubbing would improve the light.
Furniture consisted of a bench with two cutting blocks and one stool, which was Pauls. A propane gas heater and a set of fabricated shelves, not the most inspiring of design studios.
Paul had just revamped the Aztec to create the AZII, with gillie lacing in place of the nylon speed lacing a flex dipped toe-guard and the Iconic lateral window label.
Next on the list was a replacement for Midas and Scirocco; There had been a mild rework of Midas using the suede and nylon from Victory G with black and silver vector side stripes in ’81. A more radical change was required though, enter ‘LONDON’ first of the new city series racers. Lightweight stone coloured nylon flame and foam bonded to Cambrelle, a new random fibre material that absorbed moisture to keep the foot dry and cool. 1.6-1.8mm Stone pig suede was tough and lighter than the moss backed cow suede of the previous racers.
The same 1.5mm bontex insole provided stability and it was shod with Vibram’s 5mm Mandurlo pattern moreflex sole. More striking though, the lateral side stripes were red, the medial, blue with left heel tab, red and right blue. This was topped off with bright red laces.
My first job was grading and production trial this beast, trying to keep the Stone suede, stone coloured with ancient machinery that dripped oil everywhere was a constant nightmare as was weighing sheets of EVA on the old balance scale at the top end of Bright Street amongst the storage racks.
Here I got my first introduction to the rats that inhabited the Victorian industrial areas of Bury! I had always noticed while weighing EVA that Vibram’s sheets had a rather strong ammonia smell and that the edges of the sheets seemed to have small scalloped features on the edges. One morning I happily started pulling sheets of EVA from the shelves to weigh them. Third one in I pulled and something fury came off with it. As big as a cat, it looked at me and I stared back, it crouched and hissed. I stepped back and caught the sweeping up shovel in my hand. Whack whack whack, lucky shot. Shakely, I scooped up my victim and placed him in the bin. Norman Barnes stood and looked at me as I came back from the bin. “You fall?”
“No, it was a Rat!”
“Cheeky Buggers!”
It wasn’t until I visited Korea that I learnt EVA does not Smell of Rats Urine.
© David Foster 2020
Foster's Famous Shoe's 