How Reebok Rebuilt Its Basketball Business from the Ground Up

Subscribe to The Kicks You Wear with Mike D. Sykes, a drill down on the red hot intersection between sports and fashion.

Good morning, friends! Welcome back to The Kicks You Wear. Thanks so much for reading today. I appreciate it! Hope you had a great weekend.

In today’s newsletter, I chat with Jide Osifeso, the head of basketball at Reebok. We talk about what’s working, what isn’t and the momentum the brand has gained from teaming with the likes of WNBA superstar Angel Reese.

Plus, Asics took a bit of the spotlight over the weekend with Kith’s re-release of the Salmon Toe Gel-Lyte III. This classic model has largely been reserved for collaborations like this one, but this moment makes me wonder if it’s time to bring it back.

Quick hits:

• Here’s BoF’s latest executive memo from Cathaleen Chen on how to outperform in the US marketplace. Give it a read.
• The great Tim Blanks asks if Demna has finally solved Gucci’s identity crisis. The designer really caught his stride with the house in Milan.
• Former NBA star PJ Tucker is selling pairs of his shoes on StockX as part of a new series called “Listed.” This is a fascinating move for the platform.
• Jordan Brand is launching a new platform for its drops. Interesting under-the-radar move for the brand.

Let’s get to it.

Reebok’s Bet On Its Rising Stars

Booming is certainly not the way anyone would describe the basketball business right now. Despite the fresh, new silhouettes that have entered the marketplace, sales numbers have been lagging over the last few years, with many models struggling to find broader connections with consumers.

Even so, Reebok and owner Authentic Brands Group have gone all-in on reviving the brand’s basketball business, viewing it as the best foundation on which to rebuild Reebok’s brand. Basketball was the reason the brand was able to briefly surge past Nike in annual sales in the early 1990s, but under previous owner Adidas, it drifted away from the category. Reebok’s team sports division was shuttered and needed to be rebuilt following its sale to Authentic in 2022.

Reebok has since hired former brand legends and NBA stars Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson as president and vice president of basketball, and signed several young NBA and WNBA stars such as Angel Reese, Lauren Betts, Darius Acuff and Nate Ament. It also named designer Jide Osifeso its head of basketball.

Osifeso’s work has centred on reconstructing Reebok basketball from the ground up. He’s turned Reese’s shoe into a collaborative franchise, launching pop-culture crossover colourways like the Reese’s Pieces and “Barbie” shoe, which was actually featured on a Barbie doll. He’s reenergised the brand’s retro business by bringing back classic models like the Reebok Shaqnosis, the Question and even deeper cuts like the Brutus. He also oversaw the brand’s “We Rise” campaign that heavily feature the brand’s younger stars.

“We want to create the foundation of the brand,” he said. “You have to have your foundation to build everything else on top of it.”

Osifeso talked with me about Reebok’s basketball strategy. Enjoy!

This conversation has been edited for brevity.

Mike Sykes: The state of the basketball market is so fascinating to me. Multiple brands, including Reebok, have a lot of momentum. But when you look at data from firms like Circana, there’s a lag in sales. How do you navigate that?

Jide Osifeso: Given my background, I’m always going to be creative first. But where we’re at in our infancy, we have to make sure we’re able to show growth for a number of reasons. We want to be able to show growth in expanding our footprint, in expanding the amount of shoes we’re offering. We’re not looking to go and drop a SKU and everything has to sell 2 million pairs. But we are looking to show category expansion and be able to say we can make an actual investment in this game that we used to have a home in.

Sykes: How do you go about picking athletes? You all have really had a youth movement over this last year with some of your signings.

Osifeso: We don’t have a template. We started with a very small team — me, Shaq and Allen, and three other people. We were like “What do we think feels real to us?” We asked Shaq and Allen, “What made you guys what you were?” It was just like, “Yo, there’s this kid at IMG Academy [Darius Acuff] that reminds me of [Allen Iverson] when he was at Georgetown. Or this kid, Matas Bezels in Chicago, his energy is crazy. His confidence is unreasonably high. We love it.”

Sykes: From a product standpoint, what have you all found that has really worked?

Osifeso: I think there’s the Angel Reese 1. And, obviously, it’s our first one. It’s our first time marketing a shoe, our first time doing sell-through, our first time understanding retail needs and our first time being on a professional basketball court in a very long time. There was a lot of learning.

But we’ve seen a very strong reaction to our performance platform, called ERS — energy return system … With Angel’s next shoe and with Darius Acuff’s Acuff 1, which is our next shoe coming in 2027, we figured out from a comfort standpoint the needs of the athlete and where our home is. Our home is not what the other brands are doing. We can’t do that. We have to make our own way. That’s been cool to figure out from a product standpoint.

Sykes: I wanted to ask about retro. You all have released some of Reebok’s older models. Do you all see that as part of the basketball strategy or is that more of a lifestyle play?

Osifeso: Basketball strategy. Reebok had retro that business before they were back in performance basketball. But obviously it’s well documented that Adidas didn’t want to continue with team sports with Reebok when they were owning the company, so there was no performance or basketball division during that era.

Sykes: You’ve got the Angel Reese 2 coming soon and the Acuff 1. How do you break through the noise in a market with a lot of it?

Osifeso: I grew up obsessed with basketball products. When I saw a “Little Penny” ad, it ruined my week. I couldn’t think about anything else. I was wearing Grant Hill FILAs. When The Question came out, I was like “This is heaven.”

The basketball space is crowded, but it’s kind of beautifully crowded. There are so many options out here. What are you going to resonate with? A lot of times, it could be the player themselves. But I think the landscape now isn’t based on the player having the best, most successful or marketable shoe. You see Ja Morant, he hasn’t played much over the last year, but the Ja 3 and Ja 4 are going crazy. Even seeing what we were able to do with Angel’s shoe, she’s not playing a slashing point guard style that’s typical for success on court. We’re able to see that personality and creative platform can win in a crowded landscape. So it’s finding that voice through the athlete and through the brand that can help you find your home there.

The Gel-Lyte III’s Next Moment

Asics’ Gel-Lyte III model had a bit of a resurgence over the weekend thanks to Ronnie Fieg and Kith.

What happened: As part of Kith’s 15-year anniversary celebration over the weekend, it re-released what is one of the brand’s most recognisable collaborations, the Asics “Salmon Toe” Gel-Lyte III.

• Kith originally released the model in Sept. 2011 as part of the grand opening of the brand’s first store in Brooklyn. It was the brand’s first collaborative footwear release.
• The public responded well to the release. It sold out immediately in Kith’s early access drop for the brand’s most loyal customers. There were also reportedly 60,000 entries into the raffle for the shoe’s wider re-release.

Reading the room: This was a bit surprising to me. The Gel-Lyte III has been semi-retired since Asics shelved the silhouette’s four original colourways in 2020, following the departure of its original designer, Shigeyuki Mitsui.

It’s appeared every so often through collaborations, including several with Kith. But otherwise, the classic models from the Gel-Lyte series have been overshadowed by Y2K mesh-running silhouettes like the Gel-1130, Gel-Kayano and more.

Be smart: The Gel-Lyte III represents a clear opportunity for Asics to keep winning in multiple spaces. The model can become for Asics what the 990 series is for New Balance: Every few years, the brand retires the 992, 993 and certain versions of the 990 to keep the market fresh and prevent oversaturation.

Asics can have that balance with this model if it wants it.

• This shoe will always work for the niche sneakerhead crowd. It’s always been heralded as a classic that people in the space have respected.
• At the same time, it’s not the same as the Nike Dunk or Air Force 1. Asics has always been considered niche, so while the “If you know, you know” crowd will be familiar with the model, a resurgence could also give Asics a chance to connect it with a younger generation.

I’d be happy to welcome a pair or two back into my personal rotation.

Heron Preston Hits The Track

It’s always interesting to me when fashion finds a foothold in niche markets in sports. That’s what I’d categorise Heron Preston’s new partnership with Formula E racing as.

The details: Preston, a longtime friend and collaborator of Virgil Abloh, announced a long-term partnership with Formula E racing, the world’s biggest electric-car racing championship.

• The designer is bringing his in-house “Ex Ray” sustainability programme to Formula E. The collaboration’s first capsule collection is made from recycled materials sourced through the programme.
• Preston also designed the livery for a Gen 4 Formula E car as part of the partnership. The collection and the car will be featured this weekend at ComplexCon.

My take: This is a partnership that comes out of nowhere, really. This is essentially Heron Preston’s first big move after buying back his eponymous label last year. It certainly wasn’t one that was on my bingo card.

But I can appreciate sustainability being a throughline here. It’s always been a core tenet of Preston’s business, and it’s nice to see that manifest itself through sports in an interesting way. This doesn’t feel like Formula E doing fashion just to do it — the organisation found a partner in Preston that matches its values. It might not be a partnership you expect, but at least it feels a bit more thoughtful than most.

We’ll see how this plays out in the long-term as far as future collections go and how deep Preston’s involvement gets here. But I like this start.

What’s Droppin’, Bruh?

This is a dedicated section detailing upcoming sneaker releases for the week, and sometimes other interesting drops I think you might care about.

• Hyperice x Nike Air Zoom Recovery Slide — Tuesday, Sept. 29
• Manors x Reebok Club C Revenge — Wednesday, Sept. 30
• Nike Caitlin 1 “Caitlin Blue” — Thursday, Oct. 1
• New Balance 983 — Thursday, Oct. 1
• Willy Chavarria x Adidas Megaride — Saturday, Oct. 3
• Nike Air Bakin’ — Monday, Oct. 5

Thanks for reading, gang!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, reach out to me via email at michael.sykes@businessoffashion.com or shoot me a message @MikeDSykes via socials.

Peace and love. Be safe, be easy, be kind. We out.

-Sykes 💯