Joe Foster Shares His Journey of Resilience and Passion as a Shoemaker

Pamela Bardhi: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Underdog. Today, I have an incredibly amazing person here with me today. I have the iconic Joe Foster with me, the founder of Reebok. And it is such an honor to have you here, Joe, welcome.

Joe Foster: It’s an absolute pleasure. And, being in Boston makes it even more of a pleasure, so it’s fantastic. Thank you.

Pamela Bardhi: It’s such an honor to have you here today. Like I mentioned before the interview, I’ve been studying you, the story of Reebok, how you started, your grandfather. All this amazingness, and I just can’t wait to get into it with you. So I’m excited.

What inspired you on your journey to where you are today

So my first question and my opening question is, what inspired you on your journey to where you are today?

Joe Foster: Well, inspired me, I think it was the need to do something. Ja. We Foster. My grandfather started that, he was a genius, he really was. I’m sure we’ll touch on him a bit later. But my father and uncle didn’t seem to inherit that DNA. Didn’t seem to inherit the, what you do with the business, how you grow, the excitement. Myself and my brother Jeff. Unfortunately, Jeff isn’t with us these days, but we were looking at a fail in business. Father said that when I’m gone and your uncle’s gone, this business will be yours. And, we said, well, look, dad, we really don’t want you to go.

That’s not the plan. This business will be gone long before you because it needs attention, it needs, planet. But they didn’t get on. My father and my uncle just didn’t get on, and that really is the base. If they don’t get out, they don’t speak, they don’t work together. You can’t take a company anywhere. The inspiration was, with Jeff, we need to do something about this, this is not going to be a future. So we need to make our own future. And so we left the family business and we set up our own little company, Mercury Sports. Footwork.

Pamela Bardhi: I remember reading that, I was like, what? So different. Mercury Sports. Oh, my gosh. Amazing, amazing, amazing. And from there, I had read that your accountant had told you to register the name so nobody could steal it.

Joe Foster: That’s right. We were quite young, quite naive, we had no idea that you did such things. But he said, oh, you better register your name. Because if you don’t and somebody else starts making, because they like the look of these mercury shoes. Somebody else will start making mercury shoes, and then you’ve got problems. You have to prove that you own it and you used it and all that. So he said, go and register it, and of course you read the story. I tried to register the name, only to find out it’s pre registered, somebody else had got it. And that was a British shoe corporation. They’re a big company, and we were a big company in those days.

They offered it to us for £1,000, which is today £1,000 is not much money. But if somebody says to you $100,000 and you’ve just on a startup. You’d be saying, oh, we didn’t have that money. We’d set a whole factory up for £250. £1,000. Impossible. Of course we were so small the bank wouldn’t listen to us if we wanted to borrow that sort of money. So I had to go to see a patent agent in Manchester. Manchester is quite a big city in the north of England, near to where we had our factory. And then the man said, well, if you can’t buy it then you have to think of a new name.

He said, but don’t bring me one, bring me at least 10, and he pointed through his window. It was a nice day in May, he pointed through his window to Kodak. There was a Kodak sign, and I said, well, what’s with that? And he said it’s made up. They make that name, it’s their own name, they invented it, so nobody can have that name. So if you can make a name, invent a name, fine. Well, I go back and we sit down with Jeff and our wives round the table. We’re thinking, names and some silly names do come out. You can imagine it’s extremely difficult to get really serious when you’re doing it.

But let me take you back to 1943. I’m only 8 years old and it was during the war. A bit like today, and Covid nobody could go anywhere. There were a lot of events happening locally. And I won a race, I won, I think it was a 60 yard race at 8 years old. I had an advantage, I had spike shoes. Nobody else had spike shoes on. JW Fosters made spike shoes and iron spike shoes on. So maybe that was a bit of an advantage to me. Maybe a big advantage, but that won the race anyway.

Jeff and I wanted to change our name to Reebok

And it ends up to Collect, my prize, and what do I get? A dictionary, and, I’m saying a dictionary. Where’s the football? I’m only a kid, what can I do with the dictionary? Above all else, it was an American dictionary. And a lot of the span were Websters, a lot of the spellings in the American dictionary are different from the English. You know, you spell colour without the U, you spell color with you and other such things. So, okay, I know fast forward and we’re sitting down, we’re thinking names, and I see my dictionary, it’s there. I opened it because I like the letter, R, I thought, R. It’s a nice strong beginning to any word, so turn into R.

And it’s not long leafing through that I get to R W B O K. Reebok. What’s that? Small South Africa, and gazelle. Gazelle, Fabulous. That sounds great, top of the list, Rebo. Top of the list. Okay, we had this list. I went back to the agent and said, look, I know you asked for 10, but we want that one. We bough. We’ve got to be in love with this. It’s got to be our passion. You know, we’re here for the long haul and we really, we really want that name. He said, okay. It took about a week to go through, whatever they go through with the registrar.

He came back and said, well, you’re very lucky because it’s the only one there is absolutely no problem with. You can have that, but the registrar had made one caveat. That if somebody came to them and they were making shoes out of Reebok skin, they couldn’t stop them. But you know, Jeff and I were look at each other and said, nah, that’s not going to happen. So we registered Rebok. We, I mean, my dictionary and I’ve been looking at an Oxford English Dictionary. It would have been R H E B O K and sometimes R H E booker Nothing like the reebounk. Just, RW be okay. Two syllables, brilliant, so that’s how we changed our name to Reebok.

Pamela Bardhi: But I love that it’s the gazelle, I love that. It’s absolutely perfect. And that basically it was 15. It came to you 15 years prior through that dictionary, shows, I don’t know. I call that destiny, Joe, I don’t know, it’s pretty incredible.

Joe Foster: Well, it is, I mean, these are the sort of things good fortune, luck, whatever it is. And I think you have to look at your luck. I would speak to Dan Pink’you probably read his books, he said, we all have some luck. He said, just think how lucky I am, that was himself. He said, I was born in America and I was born in the 20th century. How lucky is that when you think about that? Yeah, that’s pretty lucky, and I was born in England in the UK and that’s pretty lucky as well. We started off being lucky by being born in the right place at a good time. So you know, you’re luck and whatever it is. I was obviously destined to win that dictionary when I was 8 and my name was in there all that time before.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s incredible.

What was Joe dream as a kid when you grew up

And now I have to ask you, what did you want to be when you grew up? You had the spiked shoes with you, you won that race. What was your dream as a kid?

Joe Foster: I think in those days if you’re very small, you want to be a train driver. Then as you get a bit older, you want to be a pilot. You want to fly the paint, I spent my national service for years in the raf. And towards the end they ask you if you’d like to stay because you do two years which are compulsory. It’s national service. You’ve got it way back then, it doesn’t happen today, but way back then we had to do that. They did say, look, if you want to stay on, you can do it. We can promise that you’ll do this and if you want to go to fly in school, we can train you. So maybe I can fly a jet, maybe I could fly a fighter jet, something like that.

When you’re young, you’re full of that enthusiasm, it’s like, won’t. That’d be great, but I think maybe sense prevailed and I left the ar, came home to be a shoemaker. School though. I was educated at school as an engineer. That was quite interesting because again, we had, in the town that we’re in, we had an aerospace industry. And it is, I think it’s still there, but there was a chance to go into that. But no, I think, you know, you’re not too interested when you’re only 17, 18. You’re more interested in what’s going on in life, having so much fun. Going to the local dances and meeting up with the girls.

Pamela Bardhi: And.

Joe Foster: I mean that’s what you do when you’re young, you know, you’re not seriously thinking. Some people do. We’ve met one or two people who at 21, doing incredible things. Whereas at 21, but we were still, Jeff and I were still doing national service at that point. Well, I had just finished and so it was getting back into life again, you know. So really, I guess I didn’t have many big ambitions at that point. I think if we hadn’ had a family business, I would have probably go got into something. My father wanted me to go into accountancy, to be an accountant. And I spent a few days just in an accountant’office and I thought, I can’t. Just ticking numbers. No, no, I got to get something a little more active than this, so I ended up a shoake.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s incredible, it’s so interesting to see, you know, what are the dreams of a kid. And how did it sort of, you know, throughout your life changed a little bit. It’s interesting that your father wanted you to be an accountant. It was kind of like the same thing in my world, you know. My parents were like, Pam, get a nine to five, do something normal. I was like, no, I can’t do that, that’s not fun, that’s not fun. Oh man, what an incredible story.

So when you and your brother basically came together in 1958 and decided that you were going to start this business. Even though you had come from a family of shoemakers, right? Your grandfather in 1895, J.W. Foster and Sons, he created the Spike shoes. He was an influencer of marketing of all sorts, which is so cool. I’m sure you have learned quite a bit from him. But who would you say was your biggest influence? Or could be one or a couple of them that influenced this decision?

Joe Foster: I think necessity. You know, necessity, ah, is a mother of invention, and of course it also drives you to make decisions. The necessity was, well, okay, I’m 23 and Jeff is 25. We’re thinking about what are we going to do, this company’s failure so the necessity of we have to do something. And then the enthusiasm that we actually went to night school before we left. We went to college in the evenings to learn about shoemaking. Because all we knew was what we picked up on the floor and the workshop floor there in JW Fosters. That was a good decision. Not so much that we did learn quite a lot, of course. But what we did, what happened is we met the industry, we met people, we knew who to talk to. They knew who we should talk to.

And so we managed to learn how to set up a factory and things like that. That to me was very interesting because people are so important to life and it’s. We’re going to be friends now for life. This is what happens when you meet people and you talk to them and you discuss things. They help you, and if you can, you help them. So what made the inspiration was. Yes. Well, granddad did. Jeff and I knew very little about grandfather because grandfather died 18 months, 15 months before I was born. But I was born on his birthday, which, like, that’s how I got his name. He was Joseph William. I was born on his birthday, 18 May, 15 months after he died. So my grandmother was so insistent that I brought my name with me.

Pamela Bardhi: I would be insistent too. Jo. The same day, same birthday. Absolutely.

Joe Foster: So I guess it’s a bit of fate in that, you know, a bit of sort of. Oh, why not? Yes, people think, well, born on his birthday 15 months after. You know, if you think we don’t get into that, but, you know, it is that coincidence. Those are the coincidences that happen in life. And whether that’s luck and probably it is a good deal of luck for me to be born. Because it gives you that little bit of, people ask questions.

Joe Foster supplied every athlete at the 1920s Olympic games

Wow. Did it really happened? Yes, that really happened, so we didn’t know an awful lot about grandfather. It took us until we were quite reebok. We’re going nicely and we decided really with bits and pieces. Bits of newspaper cuttings and things like that about Jedu Foster work by grandfather. So, we actually employed a young man to just go to the library in Manchester and to dig out everything he could. Now I have a folder which is 3 inches thick of all the advertising and all the stuff that grandfather did. We learned an awful lot more about grandfather, his successes. And we had actually picked up, ah, a letterhead. A letterhead from the 1920s on that letterhead and this is written on the letterhead.

My grandfather supplied every athlete at the Olympic games in Antwerp in 1920, so he supplied them with footw, anything. But in those days the Olympics were just track and field, you know, I mean now the Olympics is massive. It covers a lot of sports, but in those days the Olympics was track and field and he supplied the athletes. So, you, this was news to us. Plus also he was supplying soccer. Soccer is big in the UK. It was born in the UK, where it came from. And he was supplying, if you know any of the teams, all of the premiership teams, he was supplying them. There were 96 teams on this list. The whole of the UK and Scotland, wherever, so, and we wondered when we’d found this, what happened?

Why weren’t Jedwu Foster as the biggest sports company in the world when they got that. Why had they allowed Adidas to come in? Because when Jeff and I left the company, Adidas had come and they were quite big, especially in soccer. And they were too big for us to challenge them at that time. That’s why we concentrated on athletics and on running. Grandfather, he obviously, he was an influencer and he knew what influencing was and he knew who to, give his shoes to. He actually gave his shoes to, even to journalists, and journalists would then write about his shoes. So he didn’t have anything like we have today. Computers, telephones, you know, the fantastic communications we had, he had to rely upon journalists, so he was a great man.

Unfortunately, as I said before, my father and uncle, maybe they didn’t get on together. The other thought is they had gone through two world wars. They went through World War I and World War II, and you come out at the other end. Do you want to start building a business at that point? Probably not, probably in the early 50s and it was probably just a matter. We got through the war, let’s live a little. And, so we were left with that thought, grandf, that we needed to, out of necessity, build a company. It’s when you get going in your company, know how it becomes from two people. How it became Reebok in the story, and the fun and games I had getting my product to America.

Pamela Bardhi: Yes. My goodness. So your grandfather, I feel like today he would be like this massive Instagram and YouTube sensation. Because he was already doing it a hundred years ago, which is fantastic. And I love that he almost trailblazed the way in a way right, like way back when to put this all together. Then for you guys to sort of put the pieces together, which is so incredible.

Living in the factory when Joe started Reebok

And what I love in reading your book, Shoemaker, and I know you discussed this in the book. But I’d love to get into the story of what you just mentioned of how you start from such humble beginnings. In which I believe you and your wife and your brother and his wife were living in the factory in the beginning. When you started Reebok.

Joe Foster: Initially, yes. They, the factory that we rented, the factory was an old brewing building and the brewery at the front of it. It fronted onto a main road in our small town, and the front part of the building was living quarters. There were some nice living areas. We had a couple of living rooms and bedrooms, but, you know, we didn’t need much. Again, you’re young, you know, you’re a bit indestructible when you’re younger. Yeah, tons of energy, and so what can go wrong and nothing can go boring. It’s finding your way around the problems. And, I think that doing national service, two years of national service took us away from home. Making us think for ourselves, because mothers are no longer there.

Mothers no longer do any washing or making your meals. So you do start to think for yourself. And yeah, we started and we living in this building, which, okay, I had to sell a property. I just bought a house, and, we had it on a mortgage. There wasn’t much equity in that, but bit and, you just put yourself in and start working. In those early days, yes, you’re young, I sometimes think now, and I look back. And I think that must have been tough, and I think again, think, no, it was fun. We were enjoying it. It was great. Certainly I was, ah, I don’t think my wife enjoyed it as much as I did. But she was young as well, so, you know, we did okay.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s incredible. And to see where it grew as a global brand at this point is remarkable.

First experience as an entrepreneur 

So what was your first experience as an entrepreneur like the first couple years of starting. And then how you made your way into the United States? Because I think it’s just incredible. I know there’s a lot of entrepreneurs listening who, you know, they’re starting their businesses. Or they’re in that initial phase or they’re looking to scale their business out. That I know are going to be listening intently to the answer to this question on. What your recipe was or what your story was.

Joe Foster: Well, we know we had to change our name. That was our first challenge. Our second challenge came about four years into business, and we got a letter. This letter was from the lawyers of Adidas, and at that point we had two bars and a T bar. Two stripes and a T bar was our silhouette. And, they considered that that silhouette was infringing the three stripes. We’re saying, oh, and for five minutes we were a bit o. What do we do? Then we looked at and said, this is from Adidas. Adidistss have written to Reebok. Challenge was thinking that we’re a challenge. Fantastic. We are a challenge, then you know, we’re here.

That letter was pinned up on the wall, and it stayed there for a long time. But what did he do? Right, well, okay, they told us to desist, stop using that silhouette, we don’t. Well, let’s change our silhouette. We’ve changed our name. Let’s change our silhouette, and we came up with what we see today for Rebonk, which is the vector. And that was a better sign. It looked better, it made us different. So again, a bit more luck pushed us into it, but we found something different. Okay, so now we’re doing quite nicely, moving along nicely. We had a lot of upsets and spills on your re those in the book trying to get somewhere.

But the United Kingdom is small. We have about 70 million people, just less than 7 and not the disposable income of America. So the people didn’t buy running shoes that much. It was a nice business and we could make a nice living, we also did Rugbeer. Which was another sort of north of England sport, but I knew that America was big when it came to athletics. All the colleges, all the universities, they had coaches, and the coach was a God. And you could get a scholarship to a university, a sports scholarship, an athletic scholarship. You didn’t need to be doing all the things that normally. You would go to university to do and learn how to be an accountant or maybe, a lawyer. That wasn’t it.

You could go for anything, I knew one of the coaches, I had coaches at Yale University, Frank Ryan. He’d done some work with Fosters, but when Fosters just went down, I spent some time with him. We discussed, but I think he was a bit older than he didn’t want to start again. Because he’d started with selling some Fosters, but he would tell me about the market in America. At Yale University, they used to take Fosters in and then they would sell them around to different universities. I thought that’s got to be my market, I got to get in there. So in 1968, I’m reading a magazine and a sports magazine about the business, about the industry. And there’s an advertisement in this magazine from the British government.

The British government would like us to start exporting our products, they want to help us. And what they’re willing to do is to pay for a stand at the NSGA show. Which is the National Sporting Goods Association of America in Chicago. They would pay for the stand, they would pay for our return, and they would pay 50% of our costs. Was with meals and whatever, so I thought that’s pretty good. That’s almost better than staying at home. Yeah, and we get to see America. I had a friend who had an outdoor sports business and he decided he would come with me. So we took a ticket which was, we saved the government money.

If we have just had a one leg ticket in and out it would have cost quite a bit. But we took one of these 14 day tickets. Which know if you go in and out they say you can get better. You get a deal, I don’t know why we did that but maybe we got 14 days in America. I think we got this seven days in America and seven days in Bermuda. Because we decided that that would be a nice side trip on the way back. And so we arrived in New York and Bob went to have a look at the outdoor stores. I went to look at the sports stores just to see what’s going on. Then we went on to Chicago, went oh boy, is it cold in February?

February, first week of February, oh, it’s freezing, I hadn’t known anything that cold. But it was cold. However I didn’t sell any shoes. Bob managed to sell a few of his climbing boots but we were making the climbing boots for him. And you, a lot of Americans would come and say oh, love your product, great product. Where do we get this from? I said oh, England. Here’s my business card. England, oh, is that near London? Yes. Oh okay, yes. Do you not have them over here? No, we’d have to sell them. Nobody wanted to buy them from abroad. Too much trouble. How do you do that? And indeed I can agree with them, it’s quite a pain.

By 1975 Runners World was a full glossy coloured magazine

This is 1968 and by the time I actually got distribution in America it was 1979. 11 years of me going to every NSGA show, there were three in Chicago, then one in Houston and that happened. Three in car BO in Houston. So I went to Houston a few times. The biggest problem is how do you get in? And had at least six fails, at least six failed attempts with different people. One was an ex Adidas distributor that didn’t work. Another one was a couple of Brits who had emigrated, one into California. Another one who was in it was in New England somewhere but we justn’t make it work. But what was happening late 60s and all the way through 70s running became something really massive. Big, so big.

We were in that, that suppose we were in the running business. So surely we can get in there, by 1975, Runners World that the magazine started in the 60s. As a small A4 piece of paper, by 1975 it was a full glossy coloured magazine. Anybody was running Reddit, it was the bible. Bob Anderson, he was the publisher, he decided his magazine was so good that he could tell everybody. Which was the number one shoe to buy, and he did. I think that was something like Nike’s tailwind because Nike was just down the road. And Nike was growing massively because running was growing. Nike was growing, and he put this Nike in his shoe as the number one shoe now. You know, 350 million Americans, 10%, 35 million were probably out there running.

Maybe 10% of them, 3.5 million wanted the number one shoe. How do you get that? You don’t. Phil Knight was importing from Japan and so how does he get Japan to up their production? No, it just couldn’t happen. Bob Anderson did that twice, named a number one shoe. After that I think the whole industry was sort of saying no because the retailers. Everybody’s coming and looking for the shoe and it wasn’t available. And by the time they got the production in Pop Banerson to give them another shoe. The trade couldn’t stand there, so in his wisdom, Bob decided to have a star rating. So instead of having a number, number two we’ll have five stars.

If your shoe is five stars and there could be three or four five star shoes. Then you’ve got a choice of three or four shoes instead of just this one. I knew we could make a five star shoe, I knew we could make a Five Star shoe. And we did, we made Aztec and 1979. I’m over at the NSGA again, and came out, they wanted into the shoe market. This running shoe market and they wanted to buy 25,000 pairs of me. Well that was about six months work, six months work for my factory. But we knew that, we knew if we got a five star shoe and we got into the American market. We need help. So I had a friend at Barter, Barter would help us. Right.

It didn’t work out very well. We talked about that this morning, it didn’t work out very well but it gave us a start. But also KMAR wanted a better price, better price than we could make or BTER could make. And we knew the footwear business was going to the far east so we had to get in contact there. So we knew this is where we would have to go. Did I go with Kmart? No, the main reason I didn’t go with Kmart and 25,000 births is that. I thought that could be the first and last order. You know, if we were not selling enough in the square footage they gave to the Reebok brand. That would be it. But also, at that exhibition, Paul Feyman came and Paul Feyman was running Boston Camping.

It was a small wholesale campaign business selling tents, fishing rods, all whatever. I liked him right from the beginning. We got on very well. But I could see he had a problem. For 10 years had been running this company and just going around the Goldfish Ball. It was just the same thing they were doing. There didn’t seem to be anywhere where they could expand the business. And so I could see he was looking for something. He said Joe, I’d love to be a distributor, but we need a five star shoot. I said Paul, look, this is it Aztec. This is the five star. Yeah yeah, but you know, it’s not there yet. Doesn’t come out till August.

The shoe edition. I said I’ll be a fast star, and we started, said well you get a five star shoot, Joe. And I mean, okay, Paul, that’s a deal, and they talk about February up till August. So I went over to America again, I went to see Kmart. Yes, the man I’d seen was sitting amongst another 200 buyers in a big sort of building. I’m thinking I need emotion, this is not going to give me the emotion to drive. So I went along to see Paul and Boston Camping. Met his brother and his brother in law, and yes, nice little business and his head sales, Jim Bartley. Yeah, this is great. This would be a nice, nice operation to bolt on our Reebok shoes.

Made three five star shoes in 11 years

So we come along and it’s the last week in July and I know that the Runners World magazine is out there. I asked Pa, got him on the telephone. It was a bit early in the morning for him, I then get him, I seemed to get him up. Said Paul, can you go down to the local kiosk? Won’t get the Runners World. It’s going to be out, August issue, the shoe issue. One hour later he came back. They Joe, I say five stars. Wow. He said, but not only that Inca, which was a spike we’d made as well. And Midas, which was a racing shoot, also got five stars. We had three five star shoes, and that was our way in. That was the hook, that was the hook that got us into America.

Pamela Bardhi: Wow. So you not only made one five star shoe, you made three five star shoes, right? Incredible. Joe, I am loving this. You found your ideal client and you found the best way to market to them. Yeah, wow. But what I love most, I will say to you. Is that 11 years of persistence that you kept going and you never stopped on trying to figure out that distribution. 11 years.

Joe Foster: 11 years, it was just keep going. In fact we have a campaign now in the UK which we just started. Since Covid’s been around, we’re pushing that, just keep going. It’s so important, and yes, we just kept going. But you know, one big disappointment was Jeff died just as we got our five star shoes. Jeff died of stomach cancer. Which was a great tragedy. It was an incredible tragedy, but it probably spurred me on because I say, oh, we’re going to make this work. This is going to happen. And it did, but that was very sad. However, we move on and Paul is ready to become my distributor. Bright, fantastic.

Reebok started out as an aerobic shoe company

And so the next thing I do, I go across to America, after we made all our arrangements. Paul picks me up at the airport. We go down to his office and I’m saying, well we’re Steve, you. Where’s the rest of the guys? Oh, Boston Camping, no more, we Finished with Boston Camping. I’m now a Reebok distributor. His brother had gone to make wallets, so he set up a company to make some wallets. And his brother in law, he had a second grand car lot. So from what I thought we were just going to pull it on. No, that split it up, Paul would take on this massive job on his own.

But Paul was incredible, he really was because we didn’t have much money and he needed money. So we eventually got funding. It was funny really because we asked a number of people. I’m with Paul on a number of occasions. And we went to New York. We went to the Empire State Building to see a guy there who he sourced products out of the Far east. He’d been asked by Nike for funding and he turned them down. He turned us down as well, and his story was he turned us down. Because he didn’t want to be seen to be the person that financed a failure because we were just starting.

So he didn’t come with us, but Stephen Rubin, he was a similar, so, of person. He was in the uk he was sourcing out of the Far east and Stephen even didn’t believe that much in Reebok. But what Stephen believed is that this was a route into America for his sourcing company. That if Paul was to send his salespeople into Seears and all the big department stores. Stephen would get his business and that would be good for Stepen, but Paul said no, no, I’m Reebok. That’s it. And of course Reebok just grew, grew. But you know the big thing that happened for Reebbok was Aerobics.

Pamela Bardhi: Yes, I was going to say the aerobics shoe and Jane Fonda and all this. I mean you picked such a niche. Oh my God, tell me about that. That’s amazing.

Joe Foster: Well, it is amazing. It’s fantastic because Paul had taken on a guy down in Los Angeles called Ahl Martine. Arl Martine was a possible Olympic runner, he was very sporty, very much into it at home, his own sports shop. But found that being in a sports shop wasn’t that interesting really because the reps were coming in. And taking him for a meal and he was thinking why don’t I become a rep? Because you. They seemed to be having all the fun, and so he signed up with Paul as a tech wrp. He just went into the stores, won’t sell it, but he was telling everybody good to choose where it is. Know all the good points about the shoes. And he was living in LA with his wife Frankie and Frankie is coming home with some friends after doing.

After going to aerobic classes, they’re full of it. They’re really enjoying it, and Arold says what’s going on here? Well, we’re doing these aerobic classes and they said what’s that? What’s the aerobic class? Well, it’s exercise to music and it’s really good. We exercise today’s music not just, not just of strict dancing or whatever. No, this is great. Fantastic, he said I’m coming down to, to your next, the next time you go to a class. I’m coming. Yeah yeah. Come on, he went to the classroom. What did you see? He saw the instructor in trainers, sneakers. And he saw half the class in trainers are sneakers and the rest no shoes at all. But that was quite a light bulb moment. That was. Wow. You know, he thought, why don’t we make these girls a shoe just for them. 

Specifically for aerobics and specifically for women. Off he went up to Boston seeing Paul and it set A.P. Paul, this is something fantastic going on in LA. These girls, we need to make a shoe for them and Paul saying whoa, hold on, hold on. We’re a running shoe company and we’re doing very nicely. Yeah, but this is something great, Paul. This is going to be really good. Not look poor Luke saying to Idol. You know, just wait, you know, if it started does something you we’ll probably get in there and do something. Arnel wasn’t put off. Arnold actually went to the back door and he gets to see Steve Liggert. Steve Ligget’s in charge of production. Steve, make me some shoes. Make them with glove leather, nice cushions just with Reebok on site and the flag and make one a woman’s last.

He got his shoes. Steve made his 200 pairs. And Atult started to give them to all the instructors and some of the girls as well. That was it, they loved them. We had a problem again because it’s made of glove leather. Glove leather like making it out of tissue Pa but you can just rip it. And I didn’t know at the time that they were making this shoe. This was done without any words to me at all. And so what’s happening, what we’re doing, we’ll have to support it with nylon. They line it with nylon, and then I say look, leather breathes, nylon doesn’t breathe. Yes, that’s not going to be good, so what do we do next? We punch some holes in the front so that the air can get in and out, so this is designing a shoe. This is wonderful stuff.

Build Reeboks into a billion dollar company

Some of those shoes did fall apart really badly, but you know, had that been in many countries. In particular in the UK and England I think that would have been, that would have killed us. Could we survive such a thing, happen in shoes. fall apart. But this is America, this is California. This is Los Angeles, so the girls loved the shoes, and went out, and bought another pair. That was it. We soon got the leather right. Once we got theather right. Yes, it just explored then of course you’d like to say we got Janm funda doing our workouts in Reeboks. She’d actually bought a pair of Reeboks. She bought them because they were all over. And at that point we just about got to a 9 million dollar company.

12 months later we were a 30 million dollar company. Then a 90 million dollar company and 300 million dollars then 900 million dollars. So in four, just all four years were nearly at a billion. Now your biggest problem, there is not even financing at that point. Because things are Rolling that fast, that the money’s coming in and you can fund it. But how do you get from 300 to 900 million with a product? How do you get the product? That was another piece of luck. Nike at that time, Nike been, doing so well and Nike hit this wall. And all of a sudden they had a, pull out of about four factories in South Korea. Just when we need it.

So we moved in and we got our production by the time we got to for just under 4 billion. I’d put on another 30 countries around the world and put on distribution for another 30 countries. And I’m at 35,000ft for probably every month, probably about three or four journeys. I was going around the world at least three times a year. And I’m arriving and being picked up by a limousine. I’m going to the best hotels, eating at the best restaurants. You know, and then, what we did. We did the Princess Grace Pro Celebrity tennis tournament, which was for her memory, for her charity. There was a charity at that point. Of course we get all the stars of tennis, stars coming into Monaco, Monte Carlo.

We also got all the Hollywood stars. You know, with Frank Sinatra, we’ve got Sean Connery, Charlton Heston as Endless Je Seymour. All these people were coming in. So you living a, somewhat artificial life. It’s like you’re with the air listers. And I remember John Fyth who you remember, he was fantastic. I’d only met him once before and we met again at a very big dinner in Monte Carlo. He came along and he said, hi, Joe, how are you? I’m dumbstruck, I’m looking and saying, John, you know you’re famous. I know you and you know, I can remember it, but how do you remember my name? Wow, and he said, Joe, that’s my job. Fantastic.

But they were all very nice people, fantastic people, but I think for me, the buzz had gone. That challenge is gone. You know, with loads of accountants and with loads of lawyers and a lot of people in between making shoes. And packaging shoes and selling them. So just short of, 4 billion, we had then become number one. We’d overtake an Adidas, we’d overtake Nike, where they’re number one. I’m thinking, well, yeah, the challenge is over. It’s time now to retire. I did retire, but when I say I retired, the phone was ringing a lot. There were a lot of things that I went up. So for me it’s like, a bit like The Eagles and the song Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave.

Pamela Bardhi: Wow. What an incredible story, Joe, wow, wow. You overtaken Nike, Adidas. Everybody, everybody. Four billion.

Joe Foster: Wow.

Pamela Bardhi: Wow. Internationally. Oh, my goodness.

The biggest lesson was to get the passion, get the people

And I have to ask you, what were some of your biggest lessons that you learned along the way? I’m sure there were quite a few of them. But the ones that are most memorable to you, or even just one?

Joe Foster: Well, there were a lot of lessons. You know, I think the most important one is to find the people you can work with and to empower them. To let them feel part of your business, they have to have ownership as well. They have to share that excitement, build the right culture, build a winning culture and let everybody subscribe to it. Let them all come in on it. And get that eagerness so that people are not just saying, oh, I’ve got to go to work. Oh, you’ll have bad days. Course you’ll have bad days. But you know, if you get up in the morning and say it’s going to be bad, it’ll be bad. But if you get up in the morning and say, no, I’m glad to get there.

People turn up in the morning at 6:00, 7:00, they want to, they’re so eager to. What’s the next, what’s happening next? So I think that the most important thing, I think, is to build the team. And I have a team that really, really enjoys it, and really there are many lessons. But people, people are the main, the main thing is to get the right people. It’s no use having talent if you’ve not got passion. You need passion because that’s what other people feel is infectious, you infect people with your passion. This is, we’renna be a winner, and if you think that, then that’s the biggest lesson for me. The biggest lesson was to get the passion, get the people, and you will grow.

Pamela Bardhi: Yes, I love that. Further, faster when you have the right team with you. Right. Because without Paul in the us you wouldn’t have gotten to the US Distribution. Then, of course, building more team to stretch out. So, of course the team took you there, which is incredible.

What would Joe older self tell his younger self based on what he know

And I have to ask you, Joe, what’s one of your biggest mantras, like your biggest. Like, sayings that you’re like, stick by it.

Joe Foster: I guess the thing is that the race isn’t over until you’ve won.

Pamela Bardhi: Amen, and you sure won that one, 4 billion over everybody else. Oh, my goodness. And then this is one of my favorite questions ever because this can be business or personal or anything. But what would your older self tell your younger self based on what you know?

Joe Foster: Now the old thing is with life we sort of, sitting across the table here, we’re having conversations. I didn’t have that. We didn’t have mobile phones, I had a handful of American Express traveler checks. And jumping on a plane and I had to go places to meet people. What can I say now that’s technology, I would tell him to get into technology, really know your technology. Where it’s going, what it can do and try, and develop that technology with whatever your business is. Whether it’s making run issues or whether it’s technology itself.

I think I would say to him the technology is growing and it’s going to keep on growing. And it’s going to go faster and faster, so that is it. Something remembering your grandfather and how much influencing he did, so technology influencing. Those are the things to sort of pass on because you won’t get the opportunity I got. My opportunity was different back there, in the 1950s and 1960s. So you’ve got to look at what is today? Well today is technology.

Pamela Bardhi: Yes, absolutely. And what would be your biggest piece of advice to anybody listening?

Joe Foster: If you have an idea, just go ahead, get on with it. Ah, don’t ask too many questions because nobody there knows you knows the answer. There’s only time, will find you, the answer and you’ve got to experience it. And if you think you fail. No, that’s a lesson. That’s just something too. Yep, wow. Learned that one a bit tough but on the go and they’re super lessons. Failures are super lessons. They really are because you know you do a plan. I’ve done so many business plans and you look at that business plan. Mind me, it’s a five year business plan. Wherever you look at it after six months and you say how did I put that out?

Why did I believe in that? Re totally, we now we’re near that planet is good because it gives you something to aim for. But quite often, more often than not you find that circumstances take you in different ways. Do a plan but don’t have to make it work. Just use this as a reference and say well yeah my thinking was we were going to do that. Now we’re here, we’re either bigger or we’re not as big or in a different direction. So yeah, just whatever your thought is, if it’s good enough. If you can believe in it, carry it out, make it happen. It’s so important to follow your dream when you’re young.

Pamela Bardhi: Yes. And just keep going, right?

Joe Foster: Just keep going. I love that joke.

Pamela Bardhi: Oh my God. It has been such an honor to have you here today. I can’t even express my gratitude hearing the story, I’m so fired. I’m ready to go kick off and just scale companies and go do, do something crazy. Nod, it was Seriously, Jo, you are such an inspiration. You are incredible, your energy is infectious. It’s no surprise to me that Reebok blew up the way it did because of your hard work. Your dedication in your perseverance, more than, more than anything. And I would love it if you could let everyone know how to reach you. How we can find your amazing book Shoemaker, all of that, that would be lovely.

Joe Foster: We’re on all social media and the book is on sale through Amazon. I would hope Barnes and Noble as well, have it. I’ve yet to come across to America since we actually launched, which we will do. But Covid has been a little bit of a problem as far as that is concerned. We will be coming across, ah, I will be talking to a lot of people. And yes, so the book is available.

It’s out there and it’s in audio as well. You get audio, you can get a Kindle as well as the book itself. And yes, we’ll be signing some books when we come. Happy to speak to people because, you know, that’s what life is about. I hope people can sort of look at what I did. And you know, say, okay, that’s been an experience and it has been a great experience and fun.

Pamela Bardhi: That’s ah, incredible, Joe. It’s the Underdog story though, if you really think about it. You came from the bottom international, multi billion dollar brand, which is absolutely incredible. And you’re so humble about it, it’s so remarkable, and everyone needs to read Joe’s book Shoemaker. It is absolutely phenomenal, it’s Barnes and Noble. Amazon Shoemaker by Joe Foster. So that’s it for today’s episode of Underdog, catch us next week. Always dropping on Thursdays. And remember, if you’re interested in real estate or want to learn how to create more money and magic in your life. Check out meet with Pamela.com and let’s chat. Sending you so, so much love.