Word: sneakers
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...athletic-footwear manufacturers started experimenting with sneaker design more than a decade ago, but initially for the men's market and then primarily with gadgetry purported to offer technological advantages on the court or field. (Remember the Reebok air pumps?) Despite such marketing, surveys showed that in almost 75% of sneaker purchases the decision to buy was based on how the shoes looked or who endorsed them rather than on their intended purpose...
...again have a shot at unseating Nike, the champion of footwear. The roster of top athletic talent and deals with the NFL and the NBA have turned Reebok from an also-ran into a contender for domination of the athletic-apparel market. Sure, Nike owns 36% of the U.S. sneaker business right now, compared with Reebok's 11%. But the league deals represent a long-term threat to the Swoosh. For one thing, it means that if Michael Jordan returns to the game, no matter what he wears on his feet, he'll be wearing a Reebok logo...
Reebok's fall and rise are a classic tale of the wonders of the entrepreneurial world. Fireman was selling sports equipment for his father's business when in 1979, during a Chicago trade show, he became impressed by a hand-sewn leather sneaker called Reebok, named after a type of African gazelle and marketed by the heralded British athletic-shoe company J.W. Foster & Sons (a family-owned company that made the running shoes worn in the 1924 Olympics by the athletes celebrated in Chariots of Fire). Fireman bought the U.S. distribution rights to Reebok, and by 1984 had dropped...
PLEADED GUILTY. STEVE MADDEN, 44, shoe designer and proponent of the platform sneaker; to stock fraud and money laundering; in U.S. District Court. Madden, whose fans include Sarah Michelle Gellar and MTV's Ananda Lewis, agreed to pay some $8.2 million in fines and to relinquish the directorship of his company. He will probably face 41 to 51 months in prison...
...Wong-Jiang chip factory that takes the trend far beyond the realm of sneaker manufacturers looking for cheap workers. Winston Wong was once heir apparent to his father's company, Formosa Plastics, one of Taiwan's biggest firms. In 1995, Taiwan newspapers reported that Wong was cheating on his wife with a university student; Wong's stepmother shoveled them much of the dirt. It turned out she wanted her own children to run the company. Her husband, Wang Yung-ching, who has three wives of his own, backed wife No. 3 and forced his son to leave Taiwan for embarrassing...