THE HISTORY OF SNEAKERS
PART 1
2023 JANUARY ISSUE
INSPIRED BY | SNEAKERSBAR
NARRATED BY | IAJ
From the Desk of the Publisher | Andrew Sia
We read that sneakers are used for marathon runners. We found that our forefathers began with walking and running in 13,000 years ago. They survived through migration and they walked from African continent to the four corners of the world without shoes to protect their feet.
Running became a sport in 776 BC and it was the first Olympic Games.
This article took us through the history until we have seen breakthrough and the first pair of running shoes was born. They laid the foundation of the sneaker industry and most important the sport that came along with it.
We were able to read a lot about those pioneers. The story is in two parts and we will release part 2 in April.
October 12, 2019, was a day that could be recorded in the history of human marathon, because on this day, Eliud Kipchoge completed the pioneering work of human marathon “Break 2”. Although this is a personal challenge, the results couldn’t be recognized by the IAAF, but it at least proved to the world the limits of human beings in the marathon sport.
Similarly, the pair of running shoes that Kipchoge wore at that time also left a very deep impression on people. Although some of its configurations did not meet the regulations of the IAAF and could not be officially released to the public, it also proved that It has the highest level in running shoes today. But if we go back in time to the birth of the marathon, or even earlier, would you wonder what shoes people were wearing to run at that time?
According to Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, humans and orangutans began to differentiate 7 million years ago; Homo erectus appeared 4 million years ago; Homo sapiens appeared 500,000 years ago; Neanderthals appeared 130,000 years ago; 13,000 years ago, the true ancestors of our species began to appear in Europe. In fact, with the emergence, survival and migration of human beings, walking and running are definitely inevitable, but it is obvious that there must be no shoes to protect human feet at that time. Since we are talking about running shoes today, its appearance must have come into being with the appearance of running. So the question is: When did running really become a sport?
In 776 BC, ancient Greece held the first ancient Olympic Games. In the first 13 ancient Olympic Games, the only competition event was the sprint, and the running length was about 192 meters. At this time, what shoes are these “athletes” wearing? In fact, this matter is almost impossible to verify, and there is a high probability that people at that time ran without shoes. Because with the holding of the ancient Olympic Games, the clothes on the athletes are getting less and less, and even they are directly naked in the back. They don’t wear clothes, and they probably don’t wear shoes.
However, sandals made of straw had already appeared at that time, and the Romans also invented a technology that used tacks to fix the soles to the uppers to make the sandals stronger. Later, the ancient Olympic Games gradually added other sports, and people gradually began to wear this kind of shoes on their feet as their own “sports shoes”.
The wheel of history continues to move forward. With the changes of the times, human life, including clothing, is changing, and shoes made of leather have begun to appear on people’s feet. In the 18th century, the sport of running began to be revived among the British aristocracy. But at that time, the leather shoes on their feet were definitely not suitable for sports. Then, in the 1820s and 1930s, rubber appeared. In 1832, a man named Webster applied rubber to the soles of leather shoes and boots at the time and obtained a patent. Although the shoes he made at that time were very thin and easy to disassemble, the appearance of such shoes was undoubtedly a major breakthrough for the sports experience at that time.
In the 1850s and 1960s, shoes with studs on the soles were gradually developed, and what everyone sees now is the shoes known as “the first pair of running shoes in human history”. But who did it come from, I have not found accurate information. Sources say the shoes belonged to a Lord Spencer and were made by Thomas Dutton and Thorowgood. Leather upper, rubber sole with four running studs, three in the forefoot and one in the back. The design of the studs on the sole is naturally to bring a stronger grip to the shoe. There is also a strap above the forefoot of the shoe to increase the lateral stability of the upper.
Through this shoe, we may be able to see people’s understanding of running shoes or sports shoes at that time, and we can also find that this kind of shoes only belonged to the nobility or middle class at that time. But later, the person who really carried forward this kind of spikes was a shoemaker from England named Joseph William Foster.
It can be said that Foster’s spikes attracted a lot of attention as soon as they were launched. In 1904, Alf Shrubb broke 3 world records wearing Foster’s spikes.
Foster, who was born in 1881, made his first pair of spikes in 1895, when he was only 14 years old, and named it Pumps. At the age of 19, he created a company named after him, and as the company grew, his children joined the company and helped his company to grow. In 1958, the company officially changed its name to Reebok.
Alf Shrubb breaks 3 world records with his spikes
The 1924 Paris Olympics and the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, Harold Abraham, Eric Liddell and Lord Burghley all wore the Foster spikes to win gold .
Of course, in addition to the popularity of spiked shoes during this period, another technology that has a significant impact on the development of running shoes or sports shoes also appeared, which is vulcanization technology. Through this technology, shoes can be made lighter, more comfortable, and more flexible, and a new type of sneaker has emerged as the times require – that is, the rubber-soled espadrille.
The earliest people will use the word “sneak up” to describe this type of shoes. Sneak is translated as sneaky, unexpected, because this type of shoes is different from the leather shoes that make a lot of noise when walking at the same time, sound. Later, the word gradually became Sneaker, which means rubber-soled canvas shoes, and the meaning of this word now do not need me to repeat too much, everyone should be able to understand. At the same time, with the emergence of rubber-soled canvas shoes, two brands, KEDS and Converse, have also been born.
Sporting goods companies sprung up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It can be said that with the development of the world economy at that time, the progress of the industrial revolution, and the holding of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, sports gradually entered the daily life of more people. So at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, a group of sporting goods companies sprang up like mushrooms after a rain. In addition to the Foster Company and KEDS and Converse we just mentioned, in 1898 Saucony was founded, in 1906 New Balance was founded, in 1914 Brooks was founded, and in the Far East, a company called Mizuno was also born in 1906.
Of course, these running shoe brands that are now well known to us, in fact, did not make and produce running shoes at the beginning of their establishment. Saucony first made ice skates; Brooks made ballet shoes; New Balance made shoe accessories; and the earliest Mizuno, you can even think of it as a baseball brand.
So, does Foster have no rivals? No, because at that time, there was also a young man who was obsessed with sneakers, especially running shoes. He was still a baker at the time, looking at the bread in his hand, but his eyes were full of sneakers, so he resolutely put down the bread and started learning how to make sneakers. And this young man is Adolf (Adi) Dassler, who was later known as the father of modern sneakers. Of course, he also has a more well-known identity: the founder of Adidas. Born in Germany in 1900, Adolf Dassler was the youngest of four siblings, his father was a tailor and his mother ran a laundromat.
After finishing high school, he followed his father’s wishes and became a baker, but this was obviously not what he really wanted to do, because at that time his biggest interests were sports and sneakers. So in the company of his friend Zelein, he began to participate in and learn many sports, such as track and field, football, boxing, skiing and so on. At the same time, when he participated in these sports, he was keenly aware of such a problem: he observed that all athletes were wearing the same sneakers. So he realized that “designing different sneakers for different sports” is very necessary. But unfortunately, when World War I broke out, Adolf Dassler was also drafted into the army. After the end of the First World War, his dream of making shoes was still not shattered, so Adolf Dassler transformed his old laundry room into a shoe factory, using the shoe repair skills he learned to make money by repairing shoes for locals.
In addition to repairing shoes, he also began to try to make sneakers by himself. His design ideas were very similar to the Foster spikes at that time. On July 1, 1924, Dassler’s brother Rudolf Dassler also joined his team, made shoes with him, and the two registered a company together, the Dassler Brothers Sneaker Factory.
Later, as the company grew, the Dassler brothers also realized that if their shoes could help athletes perform well on stages like the Olympics, it would undoubtedly be very important to their brand. So at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, German long-distance runner Lina Radke wore spiked shoes given to her by the Adolf brothers, participated in the 800-meter race, won the gold medal, and broke the world record at the time .
This is the prototype of today’s commercial sponsorship model for athletes
Later, Dassler established a cooperative relationship with the German national track and field team. The establishment of this relationship not only ensured that German athletes would wear their shoes for competition, but also provided good feedback for Dassler’s follow-up products. It can be said that this is the earliest prototype of the commercial sponsorship model for athletes today. Then, the Dassler brothers established partnership with the famous American track and field athlete James Owens. Jesse Owens also wore Dassler’s spiked shoes in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and won the 100-meter run and the 200-meter run. Gold medals in the meter run, long jump, and 4x100m relay. It can be said that since then, Dassler Brothers has been known to more people in the world, and the sales of sports shoes they produce are also increasing.
The cooperation between Dassler Brothers and Owens not only allowed the company to develop better, but there is also news that after the end of World War II, because the United States heard about the good relationship between Dassler Brothers and James Owens, Dassler Brothers Factory was kept. Of course, although the company has remained, the relationship between the two brothers has already cracked at this time. Because after World War II, the two of them had different ideas about how to operate the company, and also because of some political reasons, the relationship between the brothers has become irreconcilable. So in 1948, the brothers dissolved the company and divided the property, and then brother Rudolf Dassler established his own company, named Puma.
After separating from his brother, Adolf Dassler wanted to make his products more distinctive and recognizable, so he chose to use three stripes as the logo of his products. As for the name of the company, he hopes to use his own name to name it: addas. But the name was rejected. Even so, he still didn’t want to give up naming the company with his own name, so he turned to his nickname adi, so in the middle of the original name, the English letter “i” was added, so in August 1949 On March 18, the Adidas brand was registered
Adolf Dassler ran Adidas with his own wife, Kathe, who turned out to be a match made in heaven. Wife Kate has a stronger ability in the company’s sports management, which undoubtedly gave Adolf Dassler time on what interested him the most—innovating sneakers. After that, Adidas has gradually grown into a world sporting goods giant.
After the separation, Adolf’s brother, Rudolf Dassler was not idle either, but his focus was obviously not in the field of running, but in football. In 1948, shortly after the separation, Puma released its first football boot (ATOM), which was also the world’s first pair of football boots with detachable spikes. Later, what really made Puma famous was that Collaboration with Pelé.
After two world wars, World War I and World War II, the whole world was in a state of waste and idle. During this period, there was not much revolutionary development in running shoes. However, shortly after the end of World War II, a sports brand appeared. This brand also led the reform of running shoes later. It occupies an important position in the field of running shoes in the world. It is also called “the king of running shoes.” The sports brand founded by Kihachiro Onitsuka in 1949: Onitsuka Co., Ltd., and in 1977, nearly 30 years later, the company was officially renamed: Asics.
At the beginning of the brand’s establishment in 1951, a man from Hiroshima, Japan, who was later called “Atomic Bomb Boy”, was wearing the split-toe running shoes (Tabi) launched by Onitsuka Co., Ltd., with a 2:27:45 timing . He won the championship of the Boston Marathon that year. He not only created the third-best result in the Boston Marathon at that time, but also became the first Japanese to win the championship in this event.
Shigeki Tanaka’s World War I fame has also made more and more people in the world pay attention to this sports brand from Japan. In the subsequent 1964 Tokyo Olympics in Japan, athletes wearing Onitsuka Co., Ltd. sneakers won 46 medals in one fell swoop, making the brand one of the few in the limelight and becoming one of the few sports brands that could challenge the status of Adidas at that time.
However, at the same time, New Balance also released a shoe that occupies an important position in the history of running shoes. In 1960, New Balance released the Trackster running shoes. The outsole of this shoe used a wave-patterned outsole for the first time. It brought a qualitative improvement, and this shoe also proposed the concept of protection at that time.
The continuous domination of Adidas, the new running shoes of New Balance, the sudden emergence of Onitsuka Tiger, all of which have been seen by a young man on the North American continent, the young man is Phil Knight. When he was in his 20s, he had just graduated from Stanford Business School. And during his studying, he wrote a paper on “The world sports shoe center should be transferred from Germany to Japan”. So after graduation, Phil Knight’s biggest idea was to sell Japanese sneakers. As a newborn calf who was not afraid of tigers, he flew to Japan, met the executives of Onitsuka Tiger, and told them about the idea of selling Onitsuka Tiger sneakers in the United States, and the other party readily accepted. Just as he was leaving, an
executive of Onitsuka Tiger suddenly asked Knight: What is the name of your company in the United States? At that time, Knight, who had not yet established a company, said it without hesitation: Blue Ribbon, and this company called Blue Ribbon, which is later known as Nike.
It can be said that the emergence of Nike has changed the pattern of sports shoes in the whole world in one swoop, and also introduced the competition of sports shoes into the competition of midsole technology. After that, the development of sports shoes, especially running shoes, is like getting on a high-speed train, changing with each passing day and turning the world upside down. The world’s sports shoes are gradually showing a situation of one super brand and many strong brands, under one super and highly competitive arena. In addition to Nike, there are new brands being launched every day.
We can’t wait to show you what are the threats and opportunities out there
To be continued…..
Youtube: Chariots of Fire • Main Theme • Vangelis | June 13, 2013 | 3:21
Soundtrack from the 1981 Hugh Hudson film, “Chariots of Fire.” With Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Nicholas Farrell, Ian Holm, Alice Krige, Brad Davis, Dennis Christopher & John Gielgud.
Get up and finish the race!
Youtube: get up and finish the race.avi | January 27, 2010 | 2:11
Get up and finish the race!
Chariots of Fire is a British film released in 1981. Written by Colin Welland and directed by Hugh Hudson, it is based on the true story of British athletes preparing for and competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics.
