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Asics has for years been held in high esteem for their running shoes by professional athletes.
The man behind their footwear designs for the early part of the brands existence was called Kihachiro Onitsuka. Onitsuka initially started manufacturing sneakers for children to fill a gap in the 1949 Japanese market but soon started dabbling in sports.
His first challenge came in basketball essentially taking on the monumental task of creating a sports shoe suitable for the sport. The first attempts by the company proved moderately successful and triggered their official brand name of “Onitsuka Tiger” in 1950.
The company would keep “Onitsuka Tiger” until the mid seventies merger and re-brand to Asics but to this day they still manufacture a range of heritage Onitstuka sneakers. Their depth of knowledge and design in the early sixties was well ahead of European and American manufacturers and Asics played a small part in the early history of Nike. Founder of Nike, Philip Knight was quick to realise the clever work done by Asics and attained the first license to sell the brand in the United States of America before developing his own sneakers.
