Athletic-shoe giants find a snug feel in Boston
Shoe companies are heading to this American city to lure young, urban-centric employees with pleasant, energising workspaces near public transit, writes Lisa Prevost
WHEN Asics America, the athletic-shoe maker, decided to diversify its US presence beyond its headquarters in Irvine, California, a few years ago, Boston beckoned. Massachusetts has a centuries-old tradition of shoemaking, and when it comes to athletics, Boston is a sports town through and through, said Gene McCarthy, the company’s chief executive at the time.
“It’s a city of champions,” he said during an interview at Asics’ downtown Boston location in February as the surrounding streets teemed with fans awaiting a parade celebrating the New England Patriots’ sixth Super Bowl win.
But the overarching reason for opening an East Coast design centre in the heart of Boston was far more practical: Asics was following the talent.
Like other industries competing for highly skilled workers, athletic shoe companies are heading to Boston to lure young, urban-centric employees with pleasant, energising workspaces near public transit.
The city is bursting with tech, education, design and creative hubs generating that talent, said Roy Hirshland, the chief executive of T3 Advisors, a real estate consulting and brokerage firm that worked with Asics on finding a Boston location.
New Balance and Converse were founded in the Boston area, and Reebok has had a presence there for years, but since 2015, all three have opened dazzling headquarters in separate corners of the city as they compete for the most creative shoe and apparel designers.
Puma recently announced that it, too, would open a new North American headquarters, this one in Somerville, a city bordering Boston.
Other shoe companies that have recently moved into new spaces just outside Boston include Rockport, in Newton, and Wolverine Worldwide, owner of Saucony, Sperry, Keds and Stride Rite, in Waltham.
Asics America, part of a Japanese sporting goods conglomerate, arrived last year. It now employs about 100 workers in a 1,765-square-metres open-concept design studio in an office tower adjacent to South Station, the city’s main transit hub.
As McCarthy put it, “It’s better to be among the bunch that are scrapping it out.”
According to data provided by T3, the Boston area has the country’s secondhighest concentration of labour in shoe fashion design services, wholesalers and manufacturing. Greater Portland, Oregon, home to Nike and adidas, is No 1.
CLUSTERED
“The reason these businesses are clustered is talent,” said Matthew Powell, a sports industry adviser for NPD Group, a market research firm.
“Brands tend to poach good people from other brands - we see a lot of people moving from one company to another. Workspace can play a role in that.”
Some brands have chosen to broadcast their Boston presence in highly visible locations.
New Balance’s 23,225-square-metre world headquarters, which opened in 2015 in the Allston-Brighton section, resembles a glass cruise liner skimming alongside the Massachusetts Turnpike.
The new headquarters for Converse, a Nike subsidiary formerly based in the suburb of North Andover, is in a reconfigured brick factory building overlooking the Charles River, just around the corner from the TD Garden sports arena.
Asics chose a subtler presence, bringing sales, marketing and product creation staff to a single floor in an office tower on Summer Street. The only hint of the company’s presence from the outside is a ceiling light fixture in the spiral shape of the Asics logo installed within view of passers-by.
In a nod to the company’s Japanese ownership, Asics’ office has a minimalist vibe. Walls are shaped by stacked, threedimensional undulating lines meant to evoke rake marks in the sand of a Zen garden.
Lighting is soothing in the employee break bar, which includes a living wall that reinforces the connection to nature, a concept known as biophilia.
Throughout the space, employees work at shared tables spaced generously apart amid colourful sneaker displays. Teams meet in conference rooms of varying sizes and brainstorm with dry erase paint on the white walls.
Asics is teaming up with the building manager, Oxford Properties Group, to open a small gym on the ground floor with space for fitness classes.
The partnership gives Asics an opportunity to brand the space, including bringing in fitness trainers who appear on the Asics Studio app, McCarthy said.
Reebok made a company gym a major highlight of its new 20,450 square metres headquarters, which opened in 2017 in the Innovation and Design Building, a massive complex that was originally a military storehouse in the Seaport District.
The company’s 3,251square metres employee fitness centre stretches to two floors, and includes a boxing ring and an area dedicated to training for the fitness regimen CrossFit, a licensing partner with Reebok.
“We didn’t do it for altruistic reasons,” said Matt O’Toole, Reebok’s president. “We did it because we really do think our employees are better at their jobs when they have a chance to work out during the day.”
The work areas in the industrial-style space are all open, with no assigned seating and no private offices, not even for O’Toole.
That’s been a big adjustment from the company’s former suburban office campus in Canton, Massachusetts, where cubicles were the norm.
The goal is to give people the flexibility to sit alongside whomever they need to be working with at any particular moment, O’Toole said.
“It’s an agile work environment meant to support a wide variety of work styles,” said Arlyn Vogelmann, a principal in the Boston office of Gensler, which designed the space. “Employees have access to focus rooms, lounge areas, huddle rooms, a cafe and touchdown spaces near the windows.”
An extensive archive of older products is available to designers who want to dig through them in search of inspiration.
At the old campus, such resources were “buried and distant,” Vogelmann said. Designers can also play around with lowtech and high-tech equipment in a maker lab.
DYNAMIC OFFICE
Office spaces with a variety of seating arrangements and access to workout facilities or outdoor terraces are part of a larger trend in commercial real estate, as even conventional corporations like IBM and General Electric adopt more collaborative work styles.
Highly designed spaces in dynamic urban settings can act as a magnet for young talent, Vogelmann said. But athletic shoe companies, she noted, also want their space to be “amazingly branded.”
“They are going after partnerships with athletes and celebrities, and they bring them in to kind of pitch them before they’re contracted,” she said. “They want their space to be the brand beacon.”
These companies recognise that office design is “the most physical expression of your brand,” Hirshland said.
Puma is still selecting an architecture firm to design its North American headquarters in Somerville.
Scheduled to open in 2021, the 14,000 square metre space, expected to employ about 550 people, will be in an office building going up in Assembly Row, a development on the Mystic River with apartments, dining, shopping and its own commuter rail stop.
“We are still working on how to structure a matrix for the organisation that enables people to come together effortlessly,” Adam Petrick, the company’s global director of brand and marketing, said from his Boston office at the company’s existing Congress Street location, near City Hall. Puma also has offices in Westford and will consolidate both operations in Somerville.
One problem Petrick is determined to remedy is the chronic clutter around the existing office. Boxes, sneakers and fabric samples are scattered on the floor and piled on desks. The new space should be a “reset” for greater efficiency, he said.
The space will also be “inspirational” in its reflection of the Puma brand, he said.
The company has recently returned to wooing NBA players to endorsement deals, as part of a strategy to link Puma to the broader culture that flows from basketball, including fashion and music.
“We want to embody sports and sports culture,” Petrick said. “We’re trying to reground in sports, but we still love that fashion edge.”
NYT