Keds History
Earlier company descriptions, brand line-ups, store counts and photographs from the history of Keds, kept for historical reference.
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The Company Description of Its Time
In 1916, historical descriptions say, Keds created an American classic: the first shoe with a soft rubber sole, and coined the term sneaker. That original sneaker, called the Champion, has remained a style icon for over ninety years, counting from the filing's own period. Few product profiles can state their claim in a single sentence, but Keds can: a canvas shoe on a quiet rubber sole was new enough in 1916 to need a new word, and the word it coined is now the generic name for an entire footwear category. The Champion is the shoe that gave sneakers their name.
PRO-Keds and the Royal
The profile's second half belongs to the sporting sibling. PRO-Keds is described as an icon of American sports, born of backyards and pickup games. The distinctive PRO-Keds classic Royal is available in both canvas high and low tops, and features a distinctive red and blue power stripe on the midsole that is an original and unmistakable signature for PRO-Keds. Where the Champion's signature is absence - plain canvas, plain sole - the Royal's signature is a stripe: two colours on the midsole that identify the shoe at a glance from across a court.
The Royal, a canvas PRO-Keds sneaker, graced the feet of numerous NBA stars in the 1970s, and ultimately attained cult status as the first real sneaker with style among the leaders of New York City's revolutionary cultural change. PRO-Keds are sought after by sneaker collectors around the world, the filing closes. That arc - from backyard pickup games to professional courts to collector status - is the sports version of the Champion's story: a working shoe whose plain construction turned out to be a style statement durable enough to outlive the games it was built for. The historical record page's photograph of Keds shoes is carried in the gallery on the history page, by reference, exactly as it appeared.
Photos
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