Reebok

The story of Reebok athletic shoes harkens back to the beginning of the 20th century. A father and son running team created JW Foster and Sons Limited. This partnership proved incredibly successful. The company created running shoes for many Olympic athletes, including Harold Abrahams, who was the subject of the award winning film, Chariots of Fire.In the late 1950s, the grandsons and heirs to the JW Foster and Sons, Joseph and Jeffrey, launched their own shoe company called Reebok, which was named after a fast-running African antelope. They marketed their custom shoes at $60--an incredibly high price back then. Reebok shoes sold moderately well but the brand really gained lots of attention during the 1982 aerobics craze, thanks in large part to the Freestyle athletic shoe.Reebok followed up the Freestyle shoe with the Ex-O-Fit, which featured a Velcro strap just like the Freestyle did. Later that decade, Reebok instituted its Pump line, which allowed customers to pump up their shoes for better fits. In the early 1990s, Reebok improvised on the air fit by introducing something called an Air Transfer System.Reebok has crafted numerous relationships with professional U.S. sports leagues, including the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball. In August 2005, Reebok was acquired by the Adidas Company for nearly $4 billion in a bid to help it compete against its biggest competitor, Nike.