Excerpt from Boston Business Journal
At Reebok International Ltd.'s new flagship store in Boston’s Innovation and Design Building, patrons can custom design their own T-shirts, watch as veteran shoemaker hand-crafts a pair of classic leather sneakers in the store and try out the new 30,000-square-foot Reebok headquarters gym next door—as long as they’re wearing loaner Reebok gear and accompanied by a Reebok employee, of course.
Reebok opened a 7,600-square-foot retail store on the ground level of its new Boston headquarters in the Innovation and Design Building. The store features a YourReebok Customization Shop, where a staff of Reebok craftsmen will hand-make a custom pair of Reebok sneakers, as well as Boston-specific gear, including tees emblazoned with “Hardah! Furthah! Fastah!,” “Reebok is the Hub of Fitness” and “Boston Runs Fastah.”
Reebok, a subsidiary of Adidas Group, has been moving its employees out of its sprawling Canton headquarters campus into a new Boston headquarters this fall. Some 500 employees are working out of the IDB now, and another 300 are expected by December.
Reebok’s retail store in Canton had a 4,800-square-foot selling floor and brought in about $3 million in revenue last year, said Paul Froio, the company’s vice president of U.S. retail. He expects the Seaport store, which has a selling floor of more than 5,000 square feet, to more than double that annual revenue.
“We are incorporating best-in-class retail technology and customer service at this flagship store,” Froio said in a statement. “We want it to be much more than a store. It’s a full brand experience. We want to encourage discovery, and we’re honoring our heritage of in-house shoe making with unprecedented on-site customization.”
Froio wants the store to cater to and show the Reebok brand both to co-tenants in the Innovation and Design Building, as well as to the broader Boston business community. That’s a big change from its former Canton campus store, which was behind layers of security check-ins.
“It’s really important for us to connect with the community here at IDB,” Froio said in an interview with the Business Journal. “We want to interact with as many businesses and people as we can.”
Connecting to the the gritty industrial roots of the Innovation and Design Building was key to the Reebok store design, particularly the in-house customization shop, said Peter Quagge, director of global environmental design. Ziba Design of Portland, Oregon designed the store, and then the Reebok team put its own branding spin on the space. Shawmut Design and Construction was the construction management firm for the project.