A mercurial but winning leader
Paul Fireman can make people love him or he can drive them nuts.
He got a hugely successful company off the ground by catching a fad, and worked hard to make the most of it. But he's also been a poster boy for executive compensation excesses in years past. Then again, he's exhibited a dazzling talent marketing products to millions of consumers. But his level of attention to the public company he ran seemed to fade in and out over the years, affecting business along the way. Dizzy yet?
Mixed among all those contradictions is one clear fact: Paul Fireman made something out of nothing on a scale that is hard to grasp today.
The story of Fireman and Reebok International Ltd. stretches over 25 years and, will end when the deal to sell the company to Adidas-Salomon AG for $3.8 billion closes. Fireman and his wife, Phyllis, both big shareholders, will get nearly $800 million combined when they cash out.
''It's just a true American success story," says Bob Epstein, a lifelong friend who runs a wine and spirits wholesaling business. ''What he saw were the possibilities and he grabbed them. He truly came from humble beginnings, and he never forgot where he came from."
The beginning of the story really was humble. The sporting goods business operated by Fireman's family had closed in the 1970s, and he was looking for a new opportunity. He tried selling a firestarter shaped like a golf ball, called Great Balls of Fire. Then he went to a sporting goods trade show in Chicago, where he discovered the British athletic shoe company that agreed to sell him licensing rights in America.
Fireman pitched Reebok sneakers everywhere with a powerful sense of optimism. According to legend, he sold them out of the trunk of his car. Then sales exploded when women's fitness and aerobic exercise swept the nation. Reebok went public in 1985 and the company was on its way. Shares sold in the Reebok initial public offering went for $2.83, adjusted for splits, and will be purchased by Adidas for $59 each.
''There aren't too many guys who used the trunk of their car to build a fortune," notes Jack Connors, chairman of Hill Holliday which once created Reebok ads.
Even Fireman's friends agree there was a dose of luck in Reebok's early success. But Reebok's marketing achievements in exploiting a shoe business niche as it boomed for years were impressive.
Along the way, lots of people became very rich. Especially Fireman. He began earning huge sums of money later, thanks to a pact that effectively rewarded him with a piece of Reebok's profits when they exceeded goals once considered lofty but soon became quaint.
He earned more than $67 million in cash and bonuses from 1986 to 1990, a huge amount of money compared to his peers, and institutional investors began to howl. Fireman was ''pigging out," says executive compensation specialist Graef Crystal.
As years went by, Fireman seemed like he was becoming more interested in other things besides Reebok. He got involved in lots of projects, most notably his 1991 acquisition of the Willowbend Country Club in Mashpee. A long line of Reebok executives came and left in those years.
The good news was that Reebok stock continued to perform pretty well, climbing to new heights by the summer of 1997. The bad news was the party ended that summer. Reebok shares fell into a funk and could not match the peak stock price of 1997 until yesterday, when news of the company's sale sent the shares spiking by more than $13.
But Reebok has been staging a comeback that can be tracked in improving business and rising stock prices in the past few years. Fireman's renewed focus on Reebok's business, after he recovered from multiple-bypass surgery, has clearly been part of the story. Most notably, Reebok pushed aggressively with endorsements by musicians and other entertainers who weren't jocks.
Fireman sees the big recent improvement as a sharper definition of Reebok's brand.
Fireman, now 61, will part ways with Reebok soon enough. He expects to commit to staying a year after the sale of the company and doesn't sound sentimental about turning over the business he created from scratch. ''I think I'll have to get over it," Fireman says.
As always, there are other projects competing for his attention. A Fireman-backed golf course in New Jersey is one. The $130 million golf course promises fabulous views of New York City but is being developed above a former toxic waste dump.
The businessman who built a corporate giant out of thin air now has no problem imagining a golf course on top of a dump. Who can argue with that?
Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com. 
