Basketball
In 1922, Taylor began the Converse Basketball Yearbook, in which the best players, trainers, teams and the greatest moments of the sport were commemorated. It proved to be good publicity, and in 1928 it was enlarged. In 1935, Taylor invented the "stitchless" basketball that was easier to control.
The basketball clinic was his main basketball interest. In 1922, Taylor led the first one at North Carolina State University, and continued for years. His next "demonstration", as he described it, was for Fielding Yost at the University of Michigan, followed by Columbia and then for Doc Carlson at Pitt. It continued for a third of a century, in the high schools and YMCAs of the country. Steve Stone, a former Converse president, noted "Chuck's gimmick was to go to a small town, romance the coach, and put on a clinic. He would teach basketball and work with the local sporting goods dealer, but without encroaching on the coach's own system."
Taylor promoted basketball internationally; it became an Olympic sport in 1936. White high-tops originated in 1947 for the 1948 Olympics.
During WWII, Taylor became fitness consultant for the US military. GIs were soon doing calisthenics whilst wearing Chuck Taylor sneakers that had become the "official" sneaker of the US Armed Forces.
By 1966 Converse had an 80% share of the US sneaker market. In 1968, Taylor retired. Just one day short of his 68th birthday in June 1969 Taylor died of a heart attack in Port Charlotte, Florida.
Read more about this topic: Chuck Taylor (salesman)
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)