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Reebok wasn’t always Reebok. In 1958, Joe Foster and his brother, Jeff, had decided that the Lancashire-based family company JW Foster & Sons they had inherited from their father needed its first rebrand since it was founded in 1895. They would still make trainers, of course, but they needed a new name to make them under. In an extract from his new memoir, Shoemaker, Foster recalls how, at first, they settled on an appropriately fleet-footed name: Mercury, like the winged messenger of the Roman gods. But upon heading to Manchester to file the patent, they were met with news that meant they had to come up with a new name and fast.