Patricia Wall/The New York TimesBrooks has created a special running shoe with Warren Buffett’s image on the insole.Air Jordans have been around for decades for fans of the basketball legend. But for disciples of Warren E. Buffett’s value investing, there has never been a shoe that captures their hero – until now.
Brooks Sports, just one of the many holdings of Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, is ready to show off a special shoe, coming out just in time for the company’s annual meeting on May 5 in Omaha.
The insoles of a new Adrenaline GTS running shoe features a cartoon version of Mr. Buffett, in a running suit and headband, his arms raised in victory as he breaks through a finish line.
The shoe’s tongue features Berkshire’s stock symbol, BRK.
Mr. Buffett, who loves a good Dilly bar from Dairy Queen (also owned by Berkshire), might not be a professional marathon runner. But that probably does not matter to the some 40,000 attendees of Berkshire’s annual meeting, who gather to every year to witness the down-home mega-event that has become a showcase for products and services from the company’s subsidiaries. And this year, Brooks Sports, which had 34 percent growth in 2011, wanted to be a featured attraction.
“We started with the concept of Warren wearing a singlet and racing me on a treadmill in a 5K at the meeting,” said Jim Weber, the president and chief executive of Brooks Sports, which is based in Bothell, Wash. “He vetoed that. The next best thing was to create a cartoon. We went through a variety of iterations of it, and this was our best shot. He loved it.”
Mr. Weber says he has often tried to lure Mr. Buffett to run with him in the Pacific Northwest.
“We’re involved in hundreds of races in Seattle, and I told him I’d bring him a Cherry Coke if he came,” Mr. Weber said. “He said no, even with the promise of a Cherry Coke.”
Mr. Buffett’s green light to let his faithful investors pay to perspire on an image of him, one that will no doubt fade with wear, is not a surprise as it plays into his an investor-turned-showman role. In 2007, Mr. Buffett showed a video of himself winning a rigged one-on-one game against LeBron James, while last year, he showed a taped performance by the cast of NBC’s “The Office.”
Also new to this year’s annual meeting is a newspaper-tossing challenge that was inspired by Berkshire’s purchase of The Omaha World-Herald last year.
The special-edition Buffetts for the feet are Brooks’s way to get extra attention in Berkshire for a brand that is not as highly marketed as Geico or as sleek as NetJets. Mr. Buffett gave Brooks a shout-out (it’s been “gobbling up market share”) in his letter to shareholders in February.
“The average runner buys 2.6 pairs of shoes a year,” Mr. Weber said. “That’s why Warren loves the business. He’s been getting reports on our business on a monthly basis for years, so I think he’s been watching us and we’re performing.”
Brooks is sending a special shipment of 4,000 pairs to Omaha — not nearly enough for the tens of thousands of investors who attend the meeting. But Mr. Weber won’t be giving them away. The tribute to Mr. Buffett will cost $110 a pair — a tiny fraction of the $120,700 shareholders must pay these days for a single Berkshire Class A share.
“Why not sell them?” Mr. Weber said. “This is a capitalist enterprise.”
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