Jim davis new balance biography books
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New Balance CEO Joe Preston on Strategy, Values, and What He Learned From a 2016 Trump Controversy
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For a long time, New Balance sneakers had the image of the “dad shoe” that fashion-forward people didn’t want to be seen in. Often associated with Steve Jobs and famously mocked by Ryan Gosling’s character in the 2011 movie Crazy, dum, Love, the brand’s turnaround to become a firm sneakerhead favorite was no easy feat.
Joe Preston, who took the helm at Boston-based New Balance in 2018, has been leading the push to broaden the brand’s appeal to Gen Z and Millennial consumers. So far the strategy appears to be working. The company reported a record year in 2023, with global sales of $6.5 billion, a 23% increase from 2022 and nearly double its 2020 sales. And it’s forecasting sales of around $7.6 billion this year, says Preston, who has worked at New Balance for nearly
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1906
In Boston, Massachusetts, an English immigrant named William J. Riley founds the New Balance Arch Support Company. The company focuses on producing specialist arch supports and orthopaedic footwear to give customers greater comfort and ‘new balance’.
1927
Riley hires a man named Arthur Hall to be a salesman for the New Balance båge Support Company. As New Balance products are not yet sold in retail stores, Hall becomes a travelling salesman; this personalised approach helps the brand stand out over competitors.
1936
Hall becomes a partner in the company and focuses selling arch support products to people who spend a lot of the day standing up such as retail workers, firefighters and police officers.
1938
New Balance create their first ever running shoe for a local running club known as the Boston Brown Bag Harriers. Designed bygd Riley, these specialist running shoes feature a crepe sole and are made from kangaroo leather.
1941
The company expands it
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How New Balance Reinvented Itself
With a dedicated internal team in place, Grondin began to build his network of collaborators, a who’s who of modern street culture including names like Aimé Leon Dore, Joe Freshgoods, and Salehe Bembury. Lynn and Grondin note how every collaborator brings something different to the table. Joe Freshgoods is one of the easiest to work with and understands the importance of his community. Bembury is an experimental marketing genius (he usually has a vision for the rollout and theme before he even knows what sneaker he’ll be working on). And Aimé Leon Dore’s Teddy Santis is meticulous about every single detail down to his lookbooks’ backdrops. As Davis sums it up succinctly, “the transformational shift that [New Balance] had was leading with the story versus leading with the product.” But this type of cultural shift doesn’t happen overnight. They had to prove it would be successful first, and with a bare bones budget.
“We were utilizing everything