If you prefer the marketing approach, you appear to be in the majority. If you prefer better fit and technology to more hype, there is a good chance that you buy New Balance athletic shoes.



I was vaguely aware of New Balance shoes when I was told that I should be wearing B width shoes rather than the D width shoes I had been buying all of my life. The next time I bought athletic shoes, I found that New Balance appears to be one of the few sneaker companies offering their products in narrow sizes. New Balance shoes are typically offered in a range of widths from B or D to 4E, but some models are offered in widths of up to 6E.

While shoe giant Nike, with about ten times the annual revenue of New Balance, has built its reputation on the endorsements of athletes such as Michael Jordan and Bo Jackson, New Balance originally built its reputation on word-of-mouth or local sports fairs, and has since adopted the slogan ?Endorsed by No One? to reflect the fact that New Balance currently has no paid endorsements by athletes.

In 1906, William J. Riley founded the New Balance Arch Support Company to manufacture arch supports and other accessories to improve shoe fit. In 1934, top New Balance salesman Arthur Hall became Riley's partner. Hall had been very successful marketing the company's products to people whose jobs required them to spend a lot of time on their feet.

In 1961, after Hall's son-in-law and daughter had taken over the company, New Balance introduced the world's first running shoe made with a ripple sole, which was also the first running shoe available in multiple widths. That shoe, called the ?Trackster,? became popular among running coaches and led to a growing reputation for New Balance in producing innovative and specialized footwear.

In 1972, Jim Davis bought New Balance, which at the time consisted of half a dozen people producing thirty pairs of shoes per day. Davis's timing turned out to be perfect, as running took the U.S. by storm in the 1970s. In 1975, Tom Fleming won the New York City Marathon in a pair of New Balance shoes.

Davis's wife Anne joined the company in 1978 and they expanded New Balance into a global company. In the same year, the same model New Balance shoe as worn by Tom Fleming was named the number one running shoe by Runner's World magazine. This helped to reaffirm the company's reputation among serious athletes.

In 1985, New Balance attempted to compete with Nike for the basketball shoe market by signing basketball star James Worthy and adding his name to a line of sneakers. However, New Balance had a difficult time in the basketball shoe market, leading them to drop all production of such sneakers. This also led New Balance back to its successful campaign of concentrating on producing good shoes, and to the adoption of the slogan that makes up the title of this article.