In 1988, Reebok seemed untouchable. The company controlled more than a quarter of the U.S. athletic footwear market, having dethroned Nike only two years earlier. Revenues reached $1.8 billion while Nike trailed at $1.2 billion.
Today, the scoreboard looks very different. Nike dominates with roughly 86% of the global basketball sneaker market and stands among the world’s most valuable apparel brands. Reebok holds just over 1%.
The story was never about who made the better shoe. Reebok built excellent products. Nike simply understood that their brand isn’t an accessory. It’s the foundation on which everything else depends. When you engineer and integrate that foundation correctly, it becomes a self-propelling system.
In the early 1980s, Nike and Adidas battled for the attention of male athletes and runners. Reebok found a completely different lane. The company noticed an audience the rest of the industry ignored: women taking aerobics classes.
Reebok’s 1982 Freestyle was the first athletic shoe built specifically for women, and it arrived at the perfect moment. Aerobics classes were filling up, and Jane Fonda’s workout tapes had become a cultural phenomenon. Reebok laced itself directly into that movement.
By 1986, the company had sprinted to the front. Revenues hit $1.4 billion in 1987 and $1.8 billion in 1988. Acquisitions such as Rockport and Avia signaled plans to expand into new sports. Reebok was the brand of the moment.
But momentum built on a single trend can fade as quickly as it forms. When the aerobics craze slowed, Reebok had no deeper engine to keep the brand moving forward.