Name Game

New Balance chief marketing officer Chris Davis hopes to redefine the 119-year-old sneaker and apparel brand's place in the sports hierarchy

- By JUSTIN BIRNBAUM

In 2023, before Cooper Flagg was the top player in college basketball and the No 1 pick in this year's NBA Draft, New Balance chief marketing officer Chris Davis issued an audacious challenge to one of his top lieutenants. “Go get this guy,” Naveen Lokesh, who leads the brand’s basketball and football divisions, recalls being told, as his boss dropped a recent issue of SLAM magazine with Duke’s prized freshman on the cover onto his desk. The odds certainly weren’t in New Balance’s favour. Though just 17 at the time, Flagg had already spent years dazzling scouts with his elite athleticism and seemingly clairvoyant playmaking ability, leading to a reputation as one of the best teenage prospects this century, alongside other No 1 picks, LeBron James, Zion Williamson and Victor Wembanyama. And that sky-high potential had sneaker companies dreaming of the financial windfall he could unlock.

But while the Boston-based New Balance, which posted $7.8 billion in revenue last year, could hardly match the resources of, for example, Nike ($51 billion in 2024 revenue) or Adidas ($26 billion), it did have one edge over the competition. Flagg grew up in Newport, Maine, about 40 kilometres east of the privately held New Balance’s manufacturing facility in Skowhegan, and the now-18-year-old phenom tells Forbes he still remembers shopping with his mom at the factory’s annual tent sale for backpacks, clothes and sneakers every school year.

So when it came time to pitch Flagg, at a Calabasas hotel with other sneaker brands waiting outside, New Balance led with a personal touch, unveiling a tribute video shot at the Skowhegan factory that “let the associates that have been working in Maine for 20 years speak for us”, Lokesh says.