Earlier this summer season, Fox launched a brand new model of Fantasy Island, the tv present that first aired from 1977 to 1984. It’s one in every of the handfuls of reboots within the works: the brand new model of Sex and the City is presently filming in New York, and the reprise of Gossip Girl premiered on HBO Max in July.Even filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, recognized for his or her originality, can’t resist the lure of revisiting outdated hits: His remake of West Side Story will open in theaters on December 10.The leisure trade loves reboots for a similar motive it depends so closely on sequels and franchises. They arrive with built-in pre-awareness, and so they can leverage a base of present followers for achievement.Outside of leisure, companies can take a lesson from this apply. What if older, long-neglected manufacturers may very well be rebooted, benefiting from hard-won identify recognition and customers’ nostalgia?That’s a part of the motivation driving the $2.5 billion acquisition of Reebok, the Boston-based footwear firm, by Authentic Brands, a New York-based firm that within the final a number of years has bought a rising assortment of legacy manufacturers together with Izod, Eddie Bauer, Barney’s New York, and Brooks Brothers.When it involves Reebok, I’ve a rooting curiosity. When I started my profession as a professor at Harvard Business School greater than 30 years in the past, Reebok was one of many first corporations I studied. I used to be enthusiastic about innovation-intensive corporations, and Reebok offered an important case examine. Under CEO Paul Fireman’s management, the corporate had developed a popularity for being a pioneer within the fast-growing sneaker trade.Although youthful customers might lack consciousness of it, Reebok has a proud historical past with deeper roots than trade behemoth Nike. The firm traces its lineage again to 1895, when Joseph Foster, a 15-year-old British runner (whose grandfather was a cobbler), determined to compete in observe occasions in home made spiked trainers, which he modeled after the footwear cricket gamers used. Foster went on to discovered J.W. Foster & Sons, a provincial maker of athletic footwear that limped alongside for many years till, in 1958, his grandson (additionally Joseph Foster) spun off a brand he referred to as Reebok, a reputation he picked out of a dictionary. (It’s a sort of antelope.)During the unique Fantasy Island’s run on ABC, Reebok started getting traction within the United States. In 1979, Runner’s World journal started giving its footwear rave opinions. That’s when Paul Fireman met Foster at a commerce present and secured the rights to drive the brand’s U.S. enlargement, finally, in 1984, shopping for the father or mother firm. Then, within the early Nineteen Eighties, when Reebok’s California salesperson attended his spouse’s aerobics class, he observed how the ladies exercised barefoot—and the way a lot their toes harm afterward. In 1982, Reebok launched the primary aerobics footwear, and the brand caught fireplace. Jane Fonda started sporting them in her exercise movies, and by 1985, actress Cybill Shepherd (star of the hit present Moonlighting) was sporting orange Reebok high-tops to the Emmy Awards.“While gross sales of our health gear soared, Nike, Adidas, and the others continued to take a seat again and watch, content material of their perception that aerobics and the ladies’s health market was only a blip, a mere fad that was right here right this moment and can be gone in a flash tomorrow,” writes Reebok founder Joe Foster in his 2021 memoir Shoe Maker: The Untold Story of the British Family Firm that Became a Global Brand. “By the time they realized [women’s fitness] was right here to remain, it was too late.”Reebok remained a worthy rival to Nike by means of the Nineties, however by the early 2000s, it started to say no because the market shifted in direction of basketball-led high-performance footwear. In 2004, Fireman offered the brand to Adidas, the place regardless of the German firm’s efforts, the brand has continued to languish. By 2019 Reebok’s gross sales had been roughly half what they’d been 15 years earlier—and by early 2021, Adidas had put the brand up on the market.Reconnect, restructure, reimagineIt’s unclear whether or not Reebok’s new proprietor, Authentic Brands, will proceed to carry Reebok as an working unit that designs its merchandise, or if it’s going to license the Reebok brand to an outdoor firm, because it has performed with different acquisitions. (A Reebok spokesperson declined to remark; Authentic Brands didn’t reply to my e mail.)Either approach, what does the brand new proprietor have to do to reboot this storied brand?Like profitable film reboots, it should reconnect the brand to its previous whereas reimagining it for the current. The present success of athleisure manufacturers like Lululemon and health manufacturers like Peloton suggests there’s potential to create worth by re-forging a hyperlink with prospects searching for comfy sneakers for his or her at-home exercises. Much like Reebok was in its heyday the brand of alternative for followers of health icons like Jane Fonda, it has a possibility to attach now with followers of common Peloton instructors and social media health icons.As a lot as Reebok has to reconnect with the product-market match that outlined the brand’s positioning in its glory years, it has to distance itself from its latest parentage and restructure itself to develop into a leaner, fitter, extra nimble firm. Small corporations that get acquired and reside underneath the roof of a big company father or mother, as Reebok has performed underneath Adidas for greater than a decade, are likely to have fats that can be decreased. Even if its new operator retains Reebok intact, there can be vital alternatives to scale back promoting, common, and administrative (SG&A) bills, company trappings like costly actual property, and extreme staffing.Its new operator should search to reignite the entrepreneurial power that after fueled Reebok’s success. It might want to reimagine a brand new natural development “playbook” that can unlock worth.Potential parts of this new development playbook can embrace:Attracting extra entrepreneurial expertise to the companyBringing in best-in-class digital advertising and marketing capabilitiesDeveloping a strong direct-to-consumer (D2C) playbook that leverages classes realized from new shoe corporations like On and even established rivals like Nike.Combining this new D2C playbook with a strong omnichannel technique realized from corporations like Warby Parker, and so forth.Partnering with a platform like Peloton to launch footwear promoted by their hottest health instructors.Transforming Reebok right into a platform that, like Zara, permits “fast” launches of latest merchandise.To make Reebok a storied firm once more, its new house owners have to Reconnect it with its brand heritage within the athleisure class, Restructure to make it lean and match, and Reimagine a playbook that may allow Reebok to leverage new applied sciences and methods of doing enterprise to reignite natural development.Hollywood has created super worth by “rebooting” outdated films and TV exhibits. I hope outdated shopper manufacturers like Reebok that we as soon as beloved can be rebooted as nicely.