Executives on track

Featuring Bruce Joubert of Reebok SA

With Reebok’s strong heritage in fitness and Bruce Joubert’s lifelong love of an active lifestyle, the brand and its SA management is a perfect match.

One of the reasons why Joubert left the corporate world of Coca-Cola to run Reebok’s SA distributorship, was because he liked the brand’s positive fitness image. His love for watersport was another deciding factor, as he could return to Durban from Johannesburg.

His passion for the ocean was first nurtured as a nipper by the lifesavers on Margate beach in his primary school days and he still keeps active whenever he finds the time to kitesurf.

His first job was in a Durban windsurfing retail store, where he also lived the lifestyle.

Reebok CrossFit

At school he also enjoyed windsurfing, volleyball, swimming, rock climbing, motor cross, athletics and soccer, but nowadays he keeps fit twice a week with the help of his home gym and has engaged in CrossFit in the last few months.

Again, an excellent fit with Reebok’s worldwide support and involvement with the CrossFit gym concept. The brand has always been closely associated with fitness through the 80’s aerobics drive and the Reebok fitness education business unit.

Now they’ve aligned themselves with the high intensity CrossFit workouts using free weights and the body’s resistance, which has become one of the fastest growing fitness concepts in the US (see more p6).

Joubert had been a director of Coca-Cola for five years when he joined Reebok SA as CEO in 2002. Before that, marketing and sales had dominated his career — he studied marketing in Durban after completing his compulsory army stint and completed a MBA-degree in the late 1990’s while working for Coca-Cola, obtaining a distinction in marketing.

After nearly ten years at the helm of Reebok SA, Joubert still maintains the enthusiasm and appreciation of good marketing opportunities.

Since then, he and his management team bought the SA distributorship and steered Reebok SA through the global acquisition of the brand by the adidas Group; a worldwide recession and the Reebok sales boom on the back of ZigTech and other footwear technologies.

Joubert is upbeat about the current trading conditions — he believes the Credit Act had cushioned SA businesses against the worst impact of the recession; that SA offers attractive opportunities for global investors, which also benefitted Reebok by favourably influencing the Rand exchange rate, which had almost neutralised the rising production costs in China.

Adidas has been a driving force behind Reebok’s consistent and focused strategy and great product innovations since the Group bought the brand five years ago, he says.

Brands doing well

Apart from leading the toning footwear movement that made retail partners extremely happy, Reebok technologies like the eye-catching ZigTech shoes and fitness apparel has done wonders for the brand.

The unique advertising campaign to coincide with the launch of the new natural running Flex technology (see p19) will set it completely apart from competing brands, believes Joubert. Flex will be launched to SA consumers early next year, but the range was launched as a pilot in the USA and Dubai, where it has been hailed as the best selling shoe that Reebok has launched in the past ten years.

All divisions in the adidas Group had weathered the recession well, says Joubert, and globally all brands in the adidas Group grew in 2010. In footwear, the group grew global sales by 11% to $6.8-bn in 2010 and apparel sales 10% to $7-bn. According to Sporting Goods Intelligence (SGI) Europe, the adidas Group is the world’s top sportswear brand with 11% of sales.

From 2009-2010 Reebok’s global footwear sales grew from $1.3-bn to $1.4-bn and apparel sales grew 7.4% to $1.2-bn. In North America the brand’s footwear sales grew 22%.

Reebok the brand is set to empower people to be fit for life, helping them thrive not survive, says Joubert. “At Reebok, we love fitness. It’s what wakes us up in the morning, what we think about all day, and what drives us toward tomorrow. We want to invite people to see fitness the way we do, to be passionate about it the way we are. We believe fitness can be surprising, amazing and fun.”

They are so excited about their fitness that they want bring it to the world in a fun, intriguing way, he says.

Joubert also believes that companies with a purpose beyond profit are more successful, because they are companies where the staff are the most engaged.

“The local Reebok staff has a passion for enhancing the lives of everyone they touch,” he believes. “Our global brand position fits perfectly and we are all taking responsibility for leadership of our lives, irrespective of our positions. We believe leadership is a personal choice and comes from within and not from others.”

Joubert is also very much a family man.

His daughter Lauren worked at Reebok as PR manager before leaving to raise her two girls, and her brother Dayn was recently married.