"They've just been doing a better job than anyone else" in combining durability, fashion, comfort and creativity, according to John Torella, senior partner at the JC Williams Group, a Toronto retailing consultancy.
"You can take a great Nike or Reebok product, but it's not that differentiated," Torella said. Pointing to the "poor boy" hats that Roots designed for the Canadian team at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Torella said, "When Roots came up with the cap, everyone wanted it. It's like, `I've got to have it.'"
According to Biespiel, American athletes at Nagano said they wanted uniforms like the Canadians.'
Vanessa Myers, a Salt Lake City resident, waited in line for two hours at the downtown Roots store to buy Olympic-team berets this week. "You can buy them for the whole family, the parents and kids," she said. "They have a comfortable look and a nice style."
Budman and Green have built Roots around products that emphasize outdoor comfort and a relentless pursuit of celebrities to show off those products.
Their first mark was made in the mid-1970s with a reverse-heel shoe -- one in which the back of the foot rests lower than the front. They plugged the shoe and other apparel relentlessly to prominent visitors to the Toronto Film Festival, then in its early days.
Geoff Pevere, a Toronto Star reporter who has written a book about the company, said Budman and Green "were like the clothes-marketing versions of paparazzi -- they were ubiquitous at film festival parties."
The strategy continues today. A few days after the games began, Rosie O'Donnell wore a Roots-designed Olympics uniform on her talk show. A publicist for the show said the clothes were sent to O'Donnell by the Roots store in New York.
"I love the lifestyle of show business, and most of my friends are in show business," Budman said.
But, he added, "we never pay people to wear clothes. They wear them because they like them."
Budman and Green, who is 52, have tried to extend their apparel success into other ventures, so far with little success. Last year, they lent the Roots name to a Canadian air charter company that was trying to establish a scheduled airline, but Roots Air was grounded after less than two months in operation. Other abortive ventures have included a European lifestyle magazine called Passion and a ski lodge in Aspen, Colorado.
Now, though, their attention will be concentrated on following up their Olympics success. The company plans to open 300 new outlets in the US over the next eight years. And American athletes will be marching before the world's television cameras in Roots uniforms again at the Summer Games in Athens in 2004.
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