Reebok
Reebok International Limited is an American footwear and clothing brand that is a part of Authentic Brands Group. It was established in England in 1958 as a companion company to J.W. Foster and Sons, a sporting goods company which had been founded in 1895 in Bolton, Lancashire. From 1958 until 1986, the brand featured the flag of the United Kingdom in its logo to signify the origins of the company. It was bought by German sporting goods company Adidas in 2005, then sold to the United States–based Authentic Brands Group in 2021. The company's global headquarters are located in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Seaport District.
History
Early years
In 1895, Joseph William Foster at the age of 14 started work in his bedroom above his father's sweetshop in Bolton, England, and designed some of the earliest spiked running shoes. After his ideas progressed, he founded his business J.W. Foster in 1900; later he joined with his sons and changed the company name to J.W. Foster and Sons. Foster opened a small factory called Olympic Works, and gradually became famous among athletes for his "running pumps". The company began distributing its shoes across the United Kingdom, which were worn by British athletes. They were made famous by 100m Olympic champion Harold Abrahams in the 1924 Summer Olympics held in Paris.In 1958, in Bolton, two of the founder's grandsons, Jeff and Joe Foster, formed a companion company "Reebok", having found the name in a dictionary won in a sprint race by Joe as a boy. The name is Afrikaans for the grey rhebok, a type of African antelope.
In 1979, American businessman Paul Fireman took notice of Reebok at the Chicago NSGA Show. Fireman had previously been an executive with his family business Boston Camping, and negotiated a deal to license and distribute the Reebok brand in the United States. The division became known as Reebok USA Ltd. That year, Fireman introduced three new shoes to the market at $60. By 1981, Reebok reached more than $1.5 million in sales.
1980s–1990s
In 1982, Reebok debuted the Reebok Freestyle aerobics shoe, the first athletic shoe designed for women. The following year Reebok's sales were $13 million, and Fireman bought the English-based parent company in 1984. Officially an American company in 1985, Reebok had its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RBK and was renamed Reebok International Limited.The brand established itself in professional tennis with the Newport Classic shoe, popularized by Boris Becker and John McEnroe, and the Revenge Plus, also known as the Club C. The company began expanding from tennis and aerobics shoes to running and basketball throughout the mid to late 1980s, the most significant segment of the athletic footwear industry. One of the company's most iconic technologies, the Reebok Pump, debuted in 1989 with more than 100 professional athletes wearing the footwear by 1992, including Shaquille O'Neal.
In 1986, Reebok changed the company logo it had used since its founding, from the flag of the United Kingdom to the vector logo—an abstract Union Flag streak across a race track—which mirrored the design of the side flashes of its shoes. The switch signaled the transition of the company into a performance brand as it began licensing deals with professional athletes in the NBA and NFL. Reebok also began developing sports clothing and accessories, and introduced a line of children's athletic shoes called Weeboks. It acquired Rockport for $118.5 million in 1986 and Avia for $180 million a year later. By mid-decade, Reebok's sales were about $1 billion, and it overtook Nike, Inc. as the largest athletic shoe manufacturer in the US before losing the top position in 1988.
Reebok worked with fitness professional Gin Miller in the late 1980s to develop Step Reebok, based on Miller's wooden prototype step and her ideas for step aerobics. The Step was evaluated in physiology trials undertaken by Drs. Lorna and Peter Francis at San Diego State University. In August 1989 the Step was ready, made in molded plastic by Sports Step of Atlanta with Reebok's name on it, and by March 1990, the step aerobics classes were attracting media attention. Miller promoted Step Reebok in person, touring the U.S. and demonstrating it at exercise studios. Step aerobics became widely popular, helping the company sell many thousands of adjustable-height step devices and millions of high-top shoes with ankle support. Step aerobics peaked in 1995 with 11.4 million people exercising in that style.
Reebok named Carl Yankowski president and chief executive officer of the brand in 1998, replacing former president Robert Meers. Yankowski stepped down one year later to accept an executive position at another company. Reebok chairman and CEO Paul Fireman took over as president for the first time in 12 years.
2000s
In 2001, Reebok hired Peter Arnell with the Arnell Group as its lead marketing agency, which created several advertising campaigns, including a successful series of Terry Tate commercials. The agency also helped develop the Yao Ming line, and the fashion-oriented Rbk brand. In December, Jay Margolis was named as Reebok's president and COO. After launching retail flagship stores in China, Dhaka, London, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Tokyo, Margolis resigned in October 2004. Fireman took over as president after signing a new long-term employment agreement with the Reebok board of directors. In 2016, Reebok announced it would move its global headquarters from Canton to Boston with intentions to lay off about 300 employees as part of the move.Reebok acquired official National Hockey League sponsor CCM in 2004. The company began manufacturing ice hockey equipment under the CCM and Reebok brands. It phased out the CCM name on NHL authentic and replica jerseys, using the Reebok logo since 2005. CCM became Reebok-CCM Hockey in 2007. Reebok moved most of its hockey equipment lines to CCM after 2015. In 2017, Adidas sold CCM to a Canadian private equity firm, Birch Hill Equity Partners, for around.
Adidas ownership
Following an intellectual property lawsuit in August 2005, Adidas acquired Reebok as a subsidiary, but maintained operations under their separate brand names. Adidas acquired all of the outstanding Reebok shares and completed the deal valued at $3.8 billion. Following the acquisition, Adidas replaced Reebok as the official uniform supplier for the NBA in 2006 with an 11-year deal that included the WNBA, replica jerseys, and warm-up gear.Reebok named Paul Harrington president and CEO of the company in January 2006, replacing Paul Fireman who was acting president since 2004. Harrington joined the company in 1994 and was Reebok's senior vice president of global operations and chief supply chain officer.
In 2010, Reebok announced a partnership with CrossFit, a fitness company and competitive fitness sport, including sponsoring the CrossFit Games, opening CrossFit studios, and introducing a line of co-branded footwear and apparel for Fall 2011. In 2011, Reebok debuted the CrossFit delta symbol on the brand's fitness apparel line. As it lost contracts to make sportswear for professional and college teams, Reebok began repositioning itself as a fitness-oriented brand, just as it had been during the 1980s and early 1990s.
In 2013, Reebok announced another fitness partnership with Les Mills International. The agreement included Reebok footwear and clothing integration into Les Mills' fitness programs and media marketing. By July 2013, the red delta sign began appearing on Reebok's fitness collections. The brand announced it was phasing out the vector logo and replacing it with the delta sign, the company's second logo change in more than 120 years. The delta symbol is meant to symbolize three pillars of positive self-change—mental, physical and social—as Reebok increases its presence in the fitness industry with yoga, dance, aerobics and CrossFit.
Following a successful re-release of many of its sneaker and apparel lines from the early/mid 1990s, in November 2019, Reebok announced that it was updating the 1992 vector logo along with the original "Reebok" script in Motter Tektura typeface and restoring both as the company's core brand identity, citing that consumers still identified with them rather than the red delta logo, although the delta would continue to be used on some fitness lines.
Authentic Brands Group ownership
In February 2021, Adidas announced plans to divest Reebok after analyzing options and expected a hit of about to operating profit from costs to sell or spin-off the business. In July 2021, Adidas shortlisted bidders for the brand, the finalist companies being Wolverine World Wide and Authentic Brands Group on a joint deal, private equity companies Advent International, CVC, Cerberus Capital, and Sycamore Partners, with a deadline for August 2021. On August 12, 2021, it was announced that ABG would acquire the Reebok brand from Adidas for at least $2.5 billion. On March 1, 2022, the acquisition was finalized. In the United States, ABG internally licensed the brand to SPARC Group, its joint venture with Simon Property Group; ABG also licensed the brand to the Accent Group in Australia and New Zealand, New Guards Group in Europe, the Falic Group in much of Latin America, and another licensee in Israel. SPARC Group merged with JCPenney to form Catalyst Brands in January 2025, divesting the U.S. license to New York-based shoe wholesaler Galaxy Universal in the process; ABG also gave Galaxy Universal the brand license for Europe, which it had revoked from New Guards in November 2024, via a joint venture with Batra Group named GB Brands Europe Limited.On October 10, 2025, a collective of runners presented a letter from 367 Palestinian sports teams to the headquarters of Reebok, urging the company to retract its sponsorship of the Israel Football Association. This situation has placed Reebok in a challenging position. As per a statement issued by the Israel Football Association, it has been reported that Reebok requested its local equipment supplier, MSG Group, to eliminate its logo from the uniforms of the Israeli team. Shortly thereafter, the union declared that the request had been put on hold following discussions between IFA President Moshe Zuares and representatives from Reebok and MSG Group.