Ironically, key to making the deal happen was none other than Reebok’s “collaborator,” NBA legend Shaq, who these days (among many things) is one of ABG’s largest shareholders. Last August, Adidas announced it was selling Reebok to Authentic Brands Group, an innovative, New York–based licensing company that, over the past few years, has acquired and helped resuscitate a range of beleaguered brands, from Aéropostale, Juicy Couture, and Forever 21 to Eddie Bauer, Brooks Brothers, and even Sports Illustrated. And that’s after a relatively strong performance in 2021.ĭespite the gloomy decade and a half, however-and despite the elimination earlier this year of 150 Boston-based jobs-the mood at Reebok HQ these days is cautiously optimistic.
Today? It’s tumbled all the way to 16th in sales, and its market share is a barely noticeable one percent. In 2006, the year it was acquired by Adidas as part of a strategy to take on leader-of-the-pack Nike, Reebok was among the highest-selling sneaker brands in the world, with a 10 percent market share. All of them-and plenty of others-helped turn Reebok into one of the most well-known athleticwear brands in the world, while turning the company’s longtime leader, Paul Fireman-a working-class kid born in Brockton-into a billionaire.īut over the past decade, alas, things haven’t been nearly as rosy. The various “collaborations,” to use sneaker industry lingo, with stars like Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson and Jay-Z. The innovative Pump, which caused a sensation a few years later. There was the groundbreaking, female-focused Freestyle, which first put the company on the radar in the go-go ’80s. “But it’s funny how you remember the things that you either wanted for Christmas or you had to kind of negotiate with your parents how you were going to get.”įor a long time, atop many people’s sneaker wish lists were any number of Reebok shoes. O’Toole, who joined Reebok in 2008 after a couple of decades in the sporting-goods business and became the company’s president six years later, shakes his head. I had no idea I would end up where I am today.”
And when Reebok was coming on the scene in a big way in the ’80s, I was wearing Classic Leather”-a Reebok staple from that era-“most of my young adulthood. I played basketball, and so a pair of suede Converse All Stars-I think they were $14.50. “I have three brothers, and the four of us were playing sports growing up in Chicago. “Wow, that’s such a great question because it was such a hot topic,” he says. O’Toole, 59, who’s sporting a pullover with Reebok emblazoned on the front as we talk via video conference one recent morning, brightens. So, I ask O’Toole, what’s your sneaker story? Who did you wear as a kid? And I haven’t completely gotten over the envy I felt when my buddy Tim arrived in my driveway one day wearing an awesome pair of green Puma Clydes. I still vividly remember, for instance, the first pair of Converse All Stars I got at some point in the ’70s, not to mention my first-ever Adidas Superstars a few years later. The move from its longtime campus in Canton, 15 miles southwest of downtown, to cool new digs in the Seaport in 2017.īut as I’ve immersed myself in Reebok-world, I’ve also found myself thinking a lot about my own sneaker history-specifically, the kick I got as a kid out of talking my parents into just the right pair of kicks. The cultural buzz its shoes and athlete endorsers continued to generate in the 1990s and early 2000s. Its out-of-nowhere rise to sneaker and athleticwear superstardom in the 1980s. Over the past few weeks, I explain, as I’ve worked on this story about Reebok, I’ve learned or been reminded of a lot about the company. An affable Midwest native with expressive blue eyes and an easy laugh, he smiles. This is something of a strange question, so please bear with me, I tell Matt O’Toole, Reebok’s fit, athletic-looking president.
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