The Beginning Sometime in 1908, Marquis Mills Converse decided to start a rubber shoe company. Early catalogs bragged about how many trucks left the Converse factory in Malden, Massachusetts, delivering product directly to stores in Boston. Mr. Converse’s idea worked. In 1918 Chuck Taylor joined the Converse Rubber Company. How it happened remains lost to history, but the reason isn’t: Chuck Taylor loved basketball and desired nothing so much as to spread of the word of the new game and sell the sneakers it required. In 1938 World War II provided Converse with a singular opportunity. Many products destined for servicemen overseas now became a focus of Converse manufacturing with the product range including footwear, apparel, boots for pilots and army servicemen, parkas, and rubber protective suits and ponchos. In 1948 came the invention of Rock & Roll. It was loud, lewd, filthy and everything everyone who feared it said it was. It was also a movement in search of a uniform: It found the high-top sneaker. 1958 All Stars finally came in colours. Onto 2008 and the brand enters its second century by honoring its heritage of seeing things a little differently, loving people who want to change the world for the better, and basically celebrating the spirit of rebellion and originality in basketball, Rock & Roll and anywhere else you find it. And there you have it — for now… The best stories are the ones that don’t end — the ones you just keep adding to and adding to — all the while marveling at the creative, disruptive, optimistic, courageous ways things evolve from being what they were, to what they are, to what they will become.