Converse Ceo Jim Calhoun Has Ignited an Industry-Wide Battle Royal. but Is Boston's Coolest Company Shooting Itsel
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CONVERSE CEO JIM CALHOUN HAS IGNITED AN INDUSTRY-WIDE BATTLE ROYAL. BUT IS BOSTON’S COOLEST COMPANY SHOOTING ITSELF IN THE FOOT? BY ZACHARY JASON the last thing anyone at sales. So in 2011, when parent company Nike Yet Calhoun saw a company that was Robert and John as his older brothers,” Cal- But that was far from Converse’s biggest the Great Depression. In that time, com- ➼ Converse’s North Andover head- installed its rising star Jim Calhoun—son of still in peril. Employees—from sales clerks houn says. Nike executives rarely visited problem. An existential threat lurked in plain petitors had unleashed top-selling, space- quarters thought they needed was legendary University of Connecticut bas- to vice presidents—were insecure, apolo- Converse’s modest headquarters, forcing sight. A century into its storied history, it was age innovations, including Reebok’s Pump, a new CEO. Relegated to the clearance bin ketball coach Jim Calhoun Sr.—employees getic, and suffering from an inferiority com- Calhoun to travel roughly once a month clear that Converse had only one sneaker to in 1989; Adidas’s supportive Feet You Wear of the sneaker industry since the 1980s, the were quick to remind him that they’d just plex. Nike, a once-fledgling brand that had to the mother ship in Beaverton, Oregon, show for: The iconic Chuck Taylor All Star technology, in 1996; and Nike’s very own 107-year-old company had bounced back received the largest bonuses of their careers. bought the bankrupt Converse in 2003 for a for an exhaustive round robin of corporate accounted for more than 85 percent of the Lunarlon foam cushioning, in 2008, designed from bankruptcy and in 2010 was coming The message was clear: We’ve got a good song, was making Calhoun’s new colleagues sermons. “Every game,” he recalls, “was an company’s revenue. The product line was to mimic the way astronauts jump from the off a record year, with nearly $1 billion in thing here. Don’t screw it up. feel “how Ted Kennedy felt about having away game.” ancient and had barely been updated since moon “as if on marshmallows.” Meanwhile, 104 BOSTON | DECEMBER 2015 PHOTOGRAPH BY TOAN TRINH BOSTONMAGAZINE.COM 105 market research showed Converse’s can- Standing atop Converse’s sleek new headquarters little-known sport that was beginning vas shoes hurt people’s feet, and custom- overlooking the Zakim Bridge, CEO Jim Calhoun to catch on in the Northeast. He dubbed THE REBIRTH takes aim at the competition as he lifts the Chuck ers complained that the soles were about Taylor to new heights. his basketball shoe the Converse All OF COOL as supportive as stale sub rolls. On top of it Star, complete with a rubber toe cap How does a sneaker company all, Calhoun saw how dozens of big-name and bumper. For four years, sales succeed without sports? brands had for years been selling sneakers remained slow. Then, in 1921, a scrawny By emphasizing its creative- that looked nearly identical to the Chuck 20-year-old jump shooter from Indiana class cred. Taylor. It made Chucks the most imitated named Charles “Chuck” Taylor con- shoe in the world—and also cut deep into vinced Converse to hire him, minting Converse’s potential profits. the country’s first player endorsement. Each morning on his drive to work Taylor advised improvements on the from his home in Wellesley, Calhoun shoe’s ankle support and traction, and passed New Balance’s sprawling new head- in 1932 the company stitched Taylor’s quarters along the Mass. Pike in Brighton. signature into the All Star heel patch. The campus, which is still being developed, The shoe barely changed for 80 years. will feature a sports complex, two residen- Over time, Converse became syn- tial towers, an office building, and its own onymous with basketball. Chucks MBTA commuter-rail station. The shin- were on the feet of the U.S. men’s team 1 ing behemoth was an immutable reminder when it won gold at the 1936 Olympics of the fierce sneaker competition not just in Nazi Berlin. Wilt Chamberlain wore here in Massachusetts—which Calhoun them the night he scored 100 points has dubbed “Sneaker Town, USA,” where in 1962, and by the mid-1960s, Con- the hometown teams include Saucony, verse comprised 80 percent of the Reebok, and Puma North America—but sneaker industry. also around the globe. By the end of the 1970s, however, Calhoun looked at all of this and knew basketball sneakers had become a he had to make a change. Converse needed booming international business, a modern headquarters of its own, this and competitors such as Adidas, time in Boston. It needed a new shoe to Canton-based Reebok, Brighton-based 2 win fresh customers and bring back people New Balance, and Nike began to out- who had abandoned Chucks for cheaper, spend and bludgeon Converse into more comfortable knockoffs. Converse submission. Nike in particular seized needed youth; it needed new life. And the basketball market by paying col- it needed to get aggressive, not only to lege coaches unprecedented sums to remain a player in the $54- billion-a-year wear its sneakers. Then came Michael global sneaker game, but also to smother Jordan. MJ was famously wearing Con- the competition. verse the night he sank the National So last October, Calhoun turned fed- something with a swoosh or a puma has the prevent shoes that are considered counterfeit Championship–winning buzzer-beater for 3 eral court into Converse’s personal PREEMPTING AN perception of being corporate,” says Jay from entering and being sold in the country. the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, Thunderdome—suing 31 companies that ATTACK ON ITS Gordon, founder of the über-hip Boston The company argued that the Chuck’s com- but legendary Nike marketing executive he believed were selling copycat Chucks, boutique Bodega. “Chucks are much more bination of toe cap, toe bumper, and midsole Sonny Vaccaro, a.k.a. “Sole Man,” poached from Ralph Lauren to Kmart. He even went PF FLYERS SNEAKER, antiestablishment. They are rock ’n’ roll.” stripe had over the course of nearly a century His Airness by paying him $500,000 a year after the largest retail titan on the planet, NEW BALANCE FILED So far, customers around the world have developed what lawyers call a “secondary for five years. Up until that point, the high- Walmart. Rather than heed his staff’s “If it bought more than a billion pairs of Chucks. meaning”—a strong association in the pub- est contract had been between New Balance ain’t broke” advice, Calhoun had launched a A FEDERAL LAWSUIT They’ve become iconic. That success, though, lic’s mind between an image and the com- and James Worthy, for a measly $150,000 a global sneaker war. He just hoped he wasn’t CITING CONVERSE’S has led to an “explosion of knockoff activity,” pany manufacturing it. Like the McDonald’s year for eight years. about to screw it all up. “AGGRESSIVE EFFORTS” Calhoun says. During his first three years golden arches or Disney’s mouse ears, Con- The Jordan deal helped catapult Nike into as CEO, he played a fruitless and “endless verse argued, shoes with the telltale toe cap, the annals of pop-culture history. It became o sneaker embodies the rebel- TO BULLY IMITATORS. Whack-a-Mole game,” he says, sending hun- toe bumper, and stripe could not be mistaken the world’s most profitable athletic shoe 4 lious American spirit like the dreds of cease-and-desist letters to compa- for any other brand but Converse. company, and flung Converse in the oppo- Chuck. The simple, flat-soled nies he suspected of selling rip-offs. Finally, The company’s legal argument was site direction. Converse was slow to embrace Calhoun (1) introduced “Design Your Own Chuck Taylors,” which let customers cus- shoe with a white toe bumper, in October 2014, Calhoun took a bold step rooted in its origins. In 1908, a New Hamp- even simple innovations such as leather shoe tomize their kicks, (2) spearheaded the Nblack stripe along the bottom, and All Star toward choking off competitors, suing 31 shire native named Marquis Mills Converse construction: Within 10 years, the company global “Made by You” campaign featuring patch has proudly appeared on the feet of companies for copyright infringement. founded the Converse Rubber Shoe Com- was on the skids. In 1995, Converse dropped art installations across the globe, and (3) launched an Andy Warhol collection. To World War II Army cadets, Elvis Presley, Converse also filed a complaint with pany in Malden. In the beginning, his only its running, outdoor, walking, tennis, and strengthen Converse’s ties to rock ’n’ roll, Andy Warhol, the Sharks and the Jets in West the International Trade Commis- products were waterproof boots; later, he football categories, laid off 600 employ- he (4) opened Rubber Tracks recording Side Story, the Ramones, Hunter S. Thomp- sion (ITC), which expedites expanded into tennis shoes to keep his work- ees—20 percent of its staff—and watched its studios in New York, São Paulo, and Boston, which offer local musicians free son, Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, cases and has the ers employed year round. In 1917, he debuted stock plunge to the point where it was del- use of state-of-the-art equipment. Kurt Cobain, and Justin Bieber. “Wearing authority to (SNEAKER) OF NEW BALANCE COURTESY PHOTOGRAPH OF CONVERSE COURTESY PHOTOGRAPHS the world’s first performance sneaker for a isted from the (continued on page 156) 106 BOSTON | DECEMBER 2015 PHOTOGRAPH BY TREVOR REID BOSTONMAGAZINE.COM 107 Sneaker Wars Sneaker Wars CONTINUED FROM PAGE 107 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 156 New York Stock Exchange.