How Leaders Lead with David Novak · Oct 15, 2026 · 1h 4m · 54m saved
With Joe Preston, President and CEO of New Balance
New Balance had $3.3 billion in revenue in 2020. It now brings in nearly $10 billion, and about 35% of those sales come from the US.
Joe Preston, President and CEO of New Balance, told David Novak on How Leaders Lead that the growth did not come from chasing larger rivals. Nike and Adidas are bigger. Since 2019, Joe has pointed New Balance at the levers it owns instead: its target customer, its shelf space and its spending.
"You can control strategy, you can control capital, you can control SG&A. Those are the things that you have primary control over." — Joe Preston
Joe has spent 30 years at New Balance, a company he describes as the only major athletic brand that is private and the only one with US manufacturing.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 64 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 14 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
New Balance canceled a planned US distribution center in 2019 to pay for new systems, weeks before COVID moved sales online
One target customer, the "global independent" aged roughly 18 to 27, put every region on the same plan
Athletes sign only if the shoe helps them perform, because their income depends on it
The roster now runs from Shohei Ohtani to Coco Gauff and Josh Allen
About 10 projects every 90 days go to internal "ninja" teams, followed by planned recovery
Every new hire changes how a team works, which made culture the biggest challenge of fast growth
Joe Preston rarely talks for the first hour of his own weekly leadership meeting
New Balance's cultural rule is "be nice", with direct debate encouraged alongside it
1. The First $100 Shoe
New Balance's identity goes back to 1982, when it launched the industry's first $100 running shoe. That shoe is the line behind today's 990.
New Balance's first premium shoe was built for road and trail
"It was the first $100 shoe in the industry... And it was a product that would be made for roads and for off-road. And it was built that way." — Joe Preston
The price rested on construction. The old tagline, "intelligent choice," referred to how the shoes were made and to width sizing that ran from narrow to extra-extra-wide, up to size 18.
New Balance sold its manufacturing as the logical reason to buy
"We used to have a tagline called the intelligent choice... we thought the manufacturing processes we used and everything about it made it just a more logical choice." — Joe Preston
The early advertising made fun of the brand itself, with lines such as "runners aren't normal" and "ma and dad New Balance." Joe described it as a deliberate refusal to take the company too seriously.
