Reebok History

Reebok is a United Kingdom based company founded by Joseph William Foster. The company started because Joseph added spikes to his running shoes, and this led him to start his own company, JW Foster and Sons in the late 1800's. The company wasn’t well known, but their shoes were seen in the Olympics in 1924. Later down the line Joseph’s grandsons came up with the company Reebok in 1958. Paul Fireman was able to get the rights to sell Reeboks in the United States in 1979. Reebok USA jumped into the market with their running shoes that were the most expensive shoe at the time.

Reebok then changed the game and starting gearing their shoes towards the aerobic and fitness crowd. Near the end of the 80's Reebok gained huge success with Reebok Pump shoes along with the well known slogan "Pump it Up". Although, Reebok was doing excellent in sales during the 80's and early 90's business slowed up in the late 90's. They lost around 7 million dollars during this time period and had to lay off many workers. After many struggles Reebok was trying to get back in the market. In 2002-2003 Reebok came out with the Rbk line. The RBK line was mainly geared to the younger Hip Hop crowd.

This was a wise move for Reebok, because they were doing something very different. The RBK line proved to benefit the company with the G-Unit collection and the S. Carter collection which really helped put them back in the game. Everyone knows Reebok is definitely not the #1 company, and many people will say that Reebok is over doing it with the Hip Hop stars. Regardless to what we think, Reebok is still here doing what they do best and that’s selling shoes. Reebok has signed their first skater "Stevie Williams" and he has a skateboarding shoe available called the DGKs. I guess they are trying to knock Nike’s SB line out the box......YEAH RIGHT!!

Reebok also has worked with many famous people like 50 Cent, Jay Z, Nelly, Daddy Yankee, Pharrell, Stevie Williams, Shag, Allen Iverson and many more.