Super Show moved in Spring ‘86 from a frosty Chicago to a balmy Atlanta and this coincided with Reebok’s first International Sales Conference. Three days before the show we met up with Reebok’s Distributors from around the world at a golf resort called Pine Isle, two hours out of Atlanta. Reebok was on a high, the biggest athletic brand in the USA, built on aerobics and men’s fitness two categories that hadn’t existed three years before and now dominated the American market. Our competitors Nike, number two in the USA and Adidas in Europe had not seen it coming and been dumbstruck by our growth. Both companies had cut jobs, fired their marketing teams and agencies and now had fitness product to launch in soft nappa leathers. Adidas even dropped its three stripes for a window label on the side of the shoe, just like Reebok.
Pine Isle was a beautiful island in the Georgia countryside with an 18 hole golf course and five star hotel. We had been bused there from Atlanta Airport and my job was to present and talk through the new lines to our 30 strong group of distributors after Dave Singleton had taken everyone through the new marketing plan based around a set of pastel drawings under our buy line ‘Because life is not a spectator sport’ that had just been created.
Lots of comments about big logos that looked awkwardly added “Sorry about that!”
The range was very well received, and I could roughly divide the group in two:
Our running specialist distribution: UK and France.
Our fitness/fashion distribution: Australia and Italy.
These were the biggest markets, but the smaller ones fell into one or the other camps. Our job in ’86 was to get everyone singing from one ‘hymn sheet’, Dave did his best, talking about the ‘Reebok Instructor’ programme. Even having Michael and Gary Hendler from Australia give a slide show of how they had broken into fitness. It didn’t really matter either way, the consumer was going to dictate what style they wanted as Reebok was about to go viral.
Lunch was followed by team building exercises and everyone went to bed content that night ready for the next round of presentation in the morning, for the international team however especially myself there was little rest. Everyone of the distributors had a customer or 20 customers who all wanted a special colour way in this style or that style, freestyle and hi-top where the most popular and where possible, I would shoehorn them into a US or Italian colour combination. Even so by the time we packed up and headed to Atlanta I had 40 projects for different soles and different colours in aerobics, fitness, running and tennis. Special Make Ups or SMU’s was a job on its own, I made an A4 sheet up to specify each part of the shoe and a Pantone reference. Steve Liggett kept increasing the minimum order, but it didn’t slow down. I was drowning under the weight of requests.
The final afternoon Angel stepped up in the auditorium and gave a speech on how Reebok had achieved the number one position in the USA! How ‘THEY’ had a vision and how we would grow to be the biggest and best sports brand in the world, we were out in front, everyone else was a follower, we should have pride and confidence in the brand and ourselves. It was a great finale and we were fired up for the Super Show as we mounted the buses for Atlanta.
The pace didn’t stop when we reached Atlanta and checked into the Marriot on Peach Tree. My Dad and Dave had been forced by the bigger distributors to agree to a distributor steering committee on product and marketing. Chief instigator was Chris Brasher, he was right, international needed a united voice and that’s what they got.
We arrived in the atrium of the hotel that soared 30 stories into the sky with each layer overhanging the next. I’m not quezzy but on the twentieth floor the view down was dizzying and made your knees wobble.
No time to waste though, Dave Singleton had secured a meeting room for our first Distributor Product Meeting: UK, France, Australia and Canada plus Paul Brown and Steve Liggett.
I talked through each of the new products and where they fit in the line, passed them around for a touch and feel, making notes on comments. Steve nodded for what he would accept and was vocal when he disagreed. DL5600, needs a rubber sole, “No, its blown rubber because the US needs it.” Round and round the samples went and my list grew again. Now I had to review SMU requests against the list.
As we got to Tennis, things started to get interesting: Chris Brasher’s wife Shirley was high up at the Lawn Tennis Association, and Chris had been pecked about our shoes. ‘ACT600 love the new look but we need a better sole:’
‘US play on Asphalt,’
‘France play on clay; our outsole is no good for this.’
‘UK play on both the above, plus grass and cinders.’
‘Then there’s indoors on carpet.’
“ACT600 (All Court Tennis) is not all court, it’s asphalt only” Chris pointed out, “Qui, need a sole good for clay, like adidas Lendl.” put in Jean-Marc (Reebok France).
Steve was not happy; “Okay you can have a new sole if you can do 10,000 pairs.” He was obviously trying to flush them out.
“No problem, but we need the shoe at £30!” came back Chris. That was below Newport Classic, it would be made of chewing gum and spit!
“We can do it” Paul Brown chipped in, “Remember that two colour braiding we picked up in Korea David?” I did “We’ll run that around the shoe to make it look like an ACT!” we had a sketch off and hey presto! The following week I made the tech drawing of the sole. A simple diamond pattern that would work on clay. A month later I presented the prototype to Chris and then Jean Marc, they placed the orders and we had our first internationally developed shoe the ACT 300.
A double sized logo, and simple styling echoing the ACT 600’s extended counter look. An overlooked classic.
© David Foster 2020
Foster's Famous Shoe's 