New Balance

New Balance was founded in 1906 by William J. Riley, a British immigrant in Boston who made arch supports inspired by the way chickens balanced on three points. Riley's company — New Balance Arch Support Company — made customised arch supports and insoles, selling to workers who spent long hours on their feet. Riley believed he could design a shoe that provided perfect balance through an arch support with three points of contact, the same stability system he observed in chickens. For its first forty years, New Balance focused on arch supports and orthopaedic shoes rather than athletic footwear.

The company produced its first athletic shoe — the Trackster — in 1960, a waffle-soled running shoe designed for serious runners. The Trackster sold through mail order and was adopted by several Boston-area running clubs, building a small but intensely loyal customer base that valued performance over marketing. New Balance's approach was distinctive from the outset: no celebrity endorsements, no advertising stars, no professional athlete sponsorships that drove Nike's and later Reebok's marketing. The brand would be validated by the performance of the shoe, communicated through specialist running communities.

Jim Davis purchased New Balance in 1972 for $100,000 on the day of the Boston Marathon — a coincidence that felt intentional in retrospect. Davis had been working in running shoe retail and recognised that the existing models were inadequate for the running boom that was beginning. He invested in manufacturing, expanded the product line, and made the decision that would define New Balance's identity for the following 50 years: maintain manufacturing in the United States. While Nike outsourced production to Asia in the 1970s, New Balance kept factories in Massachusetts and Maine. The US manufacturing carried real cost disadvantages — American-made New Balance shoes cost significantly more to produce — but Davis believed the authenticity was worth the premium.

New Balance developed a distinctive width sizing system — offering shoes in narrow (2A), standard (D), wide (2E/4E), and extra-wide formats — that addressed a genuine customer need that competitors ignored. People with wide feet who had been unable to find comfortable athletic shoes found New Balance through necessity and became loyal customers. The 574, 990, and 993 models — chunky, deliberately unglamorous designs built for comfort and durability rather than style — became associated with a certain archetype: the practical American professional, the suburban dad, the person who cared more about whether their feet hurt than whether their shoes appeared in a magazine.

New Balance underwent one of the most striking brand transformations in contemporary fashion. The "dad shoe" aesthetic that had previously been a liability became a cultural asset as streetwear and fashion embraced chunky, retro athletic footwear. Collaborations with Joe Freshgoods, Aimé Leon Dore, Salehe Bembury, and other influential designers created limited-edition versions of classic New Balance silhouettes that sold out immediately and traded on secondary markets at significant premiums. New Balance revenue grew from approximately $3.3 billion in 2018 to over $7 billion by 2023 — the fastest organic growth period in the company's 118-year history. The brand Jim Davis had bought for $100,000 on Marathon day had become a billion-dollar global fashion statement.