New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc., is a privately held company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts and manufactures athletic shoes in a variety of widths and athletic apparel. New Balance is the 4th largest manufacturer of athletic shoes in the United States and the fifth largest in the world.
New Balance was founded in Boston in 1906 as the New Balance Arch Company by an English immigrant name William Riley. The company manufactured arch supports and orthopedic shoes. In 1934 Riley went into a partnership with leading salesman Arthur Hall and began marketing New Balance shoes and arch supports to policmen and other people who spent much of their day on their feet. Riley had committed the company to providing relief from foot pain and other orthopedic problems. Also during the 1930's the first New Balance developed their first handmade running spike. The shoes were worn by runner Dan McBride who later competed in the Reddish Road Race in Jamaica Plain, MA while wearing a pair of black kangaroo leather running shoes with crepe soles from New Balance.
Partner Arthur Hall sold New Balance to his daughter and son-in-law, Eleanor and Paul Kidd, in 1954. Arch supports and prescription remained the bulk of the company's business until New Balance developed the world's first performance running shoe available in multiple widths. These shoes, called The Trackster, were released in 1961 and quickly became the shoe of choice for running coaches and YMCA fitness directors. Throughout the 1960's New Balance continued to grow using the same methods the company uses today, a combination of word-of-mouth advertising and grassroots, low-tech promotions. Their reputation for multiple width performance athletic shoes gained a firm foothold and was solidified in 1972, when, current chairman and CEO, Jim Davis bought the six-person, 30 pairs a day company from the Kidds and committed to uphold the founding values of fit, performance. This approach paid off when in 1978, the New Balance 320 running shoe became the number one rated shoe on the market by Runner's World magazine after Tom Fleming wins the 1975 New York City Marathon in a pair of New Balance 320's. This success put New Balance on the map as an up and coming competitor in the tough athletic shoe world. Jim Davis's wife, Anne joined the company in 1978 and as Executive Vice-President of Administration, she began building a superior work environment and culture the New Balance associates who sell the New Balance products around the world in order to expand New Balance into a global company.
New Balance has always proudly manufactured their shoes in the U.S., but in the 1980's the company shifted most of its production to Vietname, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and other international destinations spearking a flurry of controversy in the mid 1990's after a brief filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) disputed the "Made in the USA" labeling standards . The FTC claimed that New Balance acted in bad faith by emblazoning their products with "Made in the USA" labeling when in reality most of the New Balance component production came from overseas. . By the late 1990's, production had shifted to China and New Balance's imports increased more than 36% over the first three quarters of 1997. Finally, a last minute lobby by labor leaders and a bipartisan group of politicians shot down the FTC's attempt to change "Made in the USA" labeling standards.
More scandal followed in 2000 when New Balance reexamined charges published in Business Week magazine of sweatshop conditions in its China factories and found most of them to be accurate and true. A year later, in 2001, New Balance doubled its U.S. work force; a move possibly prompted by the company's problems with its "Made in the USA" labeling and allegations of sweatshop labor. Today, while New Balance still manufactures some of its products in one of its five U.S. factories, using modern management, high-tech production methods, and extensive employee training to offset the cheaper manufacturing costs of Asia, a large number of its products are still produced in China.
Perhaps the largest appeal of the New Balance shoe is the varying widths in which they are made. With its commitment to high quality athletic shoes in a variety of widths and sizes, New Balance shoes are offered in up to six different widths - from a narrow 2A to a wide 6E in sizes 5 to 20 for adults, 6 to 8.5 for small children and 2 to 8 for infants. Having multiple widths available in many sizes is a hallmark of the product line. New Balance shoes are also practically indestructible when compared to other leading brands. While coaches and doctors will recommend that you still recommend getting new shoes every 3-6 months, New Balance shoes can often be worn for more than a year for casual wear and as long as six months for serious athletic purposes. Because New Balance shoes are designed to be worn for athletic purposes, the company has stayed true to its standards of a quality performance athletic shoe at a reasonable price. This commitment can be summed up by a New Balance advertising slogan from the 1980's:
So while the other major brands like Nike and Reebok fight for your dollars on the battleground of fashion, New Balance consistently delivers a quality shoe for serious athletes and serious casual wearers alike by maintaining the same principles they were founded on.
