History has always shown us that staying the same usually means becoming obsolete, becoming irrelevant or worst case scenario, dying and being forgotten. If you don’t change with the times, if you don’t adapt, and if you don’t learn from your mistakes, you will be left behind. It’s a simple fact. History books, self-help gurus and even your parents tell you that being stubborn and not changing with the times gets you nowhere. But there are exceptions, and usually these exceptions that do manage to withstand the test of time, they go from old to iconic, from irrelevant to evergreen, and from forgotten to legendary.
One of the best examples of this exception is the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star.
Converse Rubber Corporation was first established in 1908, and at first the company only made galoshes and other work related rubber shoes. At that time, these shoes were only made on a seasonal basis, and in order to make things more efficient in terms of costing for the company, they started researching on making athletic shoes which can be sold all year round. With the popularity of basketball on the rise in the USA, they wanted to make a shoe that is made specifically for basketball.
After many trial and errors, Converse released their very first basketball shoe in 1917 and named it the All-Star. It was the first ever mass-produced basketball shoe in North America and it first came in natural brown colors and black trimming. Later in 1920, Converse updated the pair to an all-black look that came in canvas or leather versions.
For the first few years, sales for the All-Star were slow. It did not fly off the shelves like they expected it to, but all that changed when a guy name Charles ‘Chuck’ H. Taylor showed up. Chuck first started wearing the All-Stars when he was playing basketball on his high school team in 1917. He liked what he saw in the shoes and saw its potential for the sport of basketball. He really believed in the potential of the shoe and the brand that in 1921, Chuck paid a visit to the Converse Chicago office in search of a sales job. He was already quite a renowned high school basketball player, and the guy interviewing him was an avid sports fan that knew of Chuck and hired him immediately.
Being a fan of the shoe, and most importantly being a basketball player himself, Chuck gave suggestions on how to improve the All-Star. Within a year of working there, Converse adopted his suggestions to change the design to help with enhanced flexibility and support, and also the famous ‘Star’ patch at the ankle to provide protection to the wearer. Chuck travelled across America promoting the shoe by hosting basketball clinics and using clever marketing tools like the Converse Basketball Yearbook, which is a yearly book that commemorated the best players, trainers, teams and greatest moments in the sport of basketball.
His personal salesmanship was so good till he became synonymous with the shoe, and because of that, in 1932, Converse added his name “Chuck Taylor” to the ankle patch and that was how the Converse “Chuck Taylor” All-Star was born!
To continue the dominance of Converse in the basketball scene, Chuck designed the All-Stars with a white top with red and blue trimmings for the American basketball players in the 1936 Olympics. Soon after that was World War II where Chuck served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force and coached their basketball team. Not long after that, more and more soldiers were wearing the All-Stars for training and exercise. Because of its insane popularity, it became the official sneaker of the United States Armed Forces further stamping the All-Stars as the shoe of America.
After World War II, basketball became a major professional sport. With the merging of the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America to become what we know as the National Basketball Association (NBA) today, the very iconic and classic black and white Chuck Taylor All-Star High Top was introduced in 1949 to the world. It became the shoe for professional, college, high school and any avid fan of the sport. Not long after that, in 1957, Converse introduced the low cut All-Star as a more casual alternative to the high tops and it became a big hit with the general public.
Converse’s dominance in the sneaker industry was so strong that it held an 80% share of the entire American sneaker industry.
Because of his tireless efforts in promoting the sport, Taylor was called the “Ambassador to Basketball” and in 1968, Charles ‘Chuck’ H. Taylor was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, one year later he passed away.
With the passing of Chuck, Converse’s dominance in the industry began to slide as other companies were starting to chip away at their market share with the introduction of better and more advanced shoes. Majority of basketball teams started ditching the All-Stars for more high tech innovative shoes while also being offered higher sponsorship packages by the companies to wear their shoes.
In the 1970s, many athletic footwear companies heavily marketed their shoes which made athletic shoes a very popular choice of footwear to the general public that people were even wearing them for leisure purposes. This caused a certain counter-culture to happen which made the All-Stars the footwear choice of rockstars, musicians, creative individuals and the younger generation in general, who saw the All-Stars not as a basketball shoe, but as a fashionable shoe.
In the 1980s all the way to early 2000, Converse experienced hard times as they changed ownership and management a few times. These changes affected the company badly, and coupled with bad business decisions along the way, the company loss a lot of market share. Even with that said, Converse was still making waves outside of the business world. Marty McFly wore chucks during the famous skateboard chase scene in Back to The Future in 1985, Rock band The Rolling Stones made the Chuck Taylor the official sneaker of their Steel Wheels Tour in 1989, and Kurt Cobain took the world by storm with his band Nirvana and his pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars in the early 1990s. One crazy fact about the Chuck Taylors is that in 1997, there was 550 million Chuck Taylor All-Stars produced that year.
In 2001, Converse filed for bankruptcy which was bought over by Nike after a few major reshuffles in their production and management in 2003.
Over the years, Converse has built themselves back up to a point that they are almost synonymous with the word “sneakers”, this is especially true for the Chuck Taylors. Why? Because the Chucks still remains as the bestselling basketball shoe of all time, because 60% of Americans own at least a pair of Chuck Taylors, because Converse sells a whopping 270,000 pairs per day, and because every 43 seconds a pair of Chucks is sold.
Nobody can deny the fact that the Chuck Taylor is one of the most iconic sneaker ever made.
