In our latest exclusive interview, Counter Kicks talks with Reebok Pump creator Paul Litchfield, Vice President of Advanced Concepts at Reebok. In Part 1 of a 3-part series, Paul discusses the Pump’s origins, talks about his involvement in the project, and gives us an insight into the athletic shoe industry climate in the late 1980s. Continue reading to get a glimpse of what the man behind Reebok Pump technology has to say about it all…
*Update: Read Part 2 of our Paul Litchfield Interview now!
*Update: Read Part 3 of our Paul Litchfield Interview now!
Counter Kicks: What was the impetus for creating The Pump?
CK: Can you tell us about your start at Reebok?
Litchfield: I started in late ‘85, early ‘86 at Reebok. Basketball was really becoming a global sporting endeavor and it was really capturing an attention, not only in the essence of the sport but also how the athletes presented themselves and how they became global icons. Reebok had launched a really successful basketball line in ’86 and ’87, and we followed up with The Pump. We were doing pretty well as brand and to be even part of that, it was pretty cool. I started in development at Reebok and for a brief period of time I was the product marketing manager for basketball. I did basketball marketing and development in ’87-’88. It was really funny because a lot of the Detroit Pistons – Dennis Rodman, John Salley – a lot of the Celtics – Ainge, all those guys – wore the Pump. It was a really cool time. It was great to be able to be that close to it and see how the NBA grew up and became global. For Reebok, and the Reebok basketball brand, to be right there hand in hand with it, it was pretty exciting.
CK: How did your academic background in biochemistry and in exercise science inform how you approached the Pump?
Litchfield: Desperation is a great way to make you creative. One of the things about the shoe business and creating product is it’s really how you apply what you’ve learned. I’m not a mechanical engineer but with my biochemistry background, I knew about chemistry. For some reason, chemistry was just something I liked and enjoyed. I was able to work a lot with a lot of the chemical companies, the resin companies, and that’s where I learned an awful lot about their product line and how to understand what they offer to the product line. I have an understanding of how we could potentially use that and how it might behave in a certain way.
With the exercise science background, the human body is an amazing machine. Looking at biomechanics, or looking at exercise science and muscle biochemistry like I did, you’re kind of like a car mechanic. You’re trying to make something move as efficiently as possible. You just kind of extrapolate. The thing that we do in the athletic business which is kind of cool is that it doesn’t cost a lot to make samples and prototypes. So you can make a lot of initial ideas and you can test them on yourself. We’ve done a lot of that. To this day, we still do that all the time. We make ideas, we make new products, and we test it. There’s so many prototypes and so many ideas of Pump and Hexalite and ERS that go with a lot of other technologies that we haven’t introduced, that never make it to the marketplace because they don’t work. What you see at the end result, hopefully, is a product that is a culmination of a lot of experiments and something that works.
CK: Dominique Wilkins was essentially the face of the original Pump shoe. During the development process, did he or any of the other Pump athletes give you any kind of feedback on perhaps what they would like for their own personal on-court needs, or did you just develop the shoe and have them wear it?
Litchfield: We certainly started out in the beginning with a focus on trying to create this customizable fit and support. Then, when we put it together and had the different players evaluate it and test, they came back, as they always do, with a whole bunch of feedback that helped direct us into refining the product as well as moving into different directions with it. It ends up being a real kind of balance. To say ‘Hey, what would you do for a new style of shoe?’ is not really fair. But you put something out there like we did for the first Pump with Dominique and Dennis Johnson, and we even had coaches involved. We had Pat Riley and Digger Phelps. A little later on we had Dee Brown. Dee Brown’s not only a phenomenal guy and great spokesman but he believed in the product from the get-go.
All these guys had a lot of input – how they use it, how they interact with it. Different players. Dominique was a big forward. Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge, Doc Rivers were smaller guys. We had a whole stable of really cool basketball NBA players. Reebok was really small, relatively speaking, and we were a pretty open environment so these athletes were in all the time. Although I just built the shoes – I wasn’t part of the PR nor was I part of the athlete promotions department – you still had access to these folks and you got a lot of feedback from them. A lot.
CK: Take us back a bit to the late ’80’s and describe being involved in Reebok and in the sneaker business at a time when there was an amazing amount of competition. There were so many landmark shoes coming out at that time.
Litchfield: It was really, really cool. Reebok was one of the top brands and we were battling for number one in size with Nike at the time. A lot of kids growing up, they didn’t have iPhones, they didn’t have mp3 players and things like that, so your athletic gear that you wore around was your badge. So people were buying a lot of product at the time. Jordan was taking off and we had our own stable of athletes with Dominique and Dee Brown and all of the other folks who were doing a bunch of great product work for us representing the brand and so it was a really cool time to be involved.
Now, working in the job that I work in, we’re kind of like the engine room. We’ve just got to keep the fuel in the engine and we’ve got to keep on stoking the furnace to make sure that the place runs. To say there was a lot of time for us to bask in the glory of the Pump, you know, it didn’t happen. The advanced concepts department at the time was three people. We had to make new stuff. As soon as the Pump was launched, we were well in the midst of trying to improve it. And we were well in the midst of trying to expand on it. That’s not to say that I’m upset about the course that I took on it but there was never a stop. It’s not like there’s a season here that you can just stop at.
