Newton Running sued for unpaid bills
Today Boulder-based creative agency Moxie Sozo announced it has filed suit against Newton Running for unpaid invoices. According to a source at the agency the total owed is in the neighborhood of $300,000.
Moxie Sozo’s founder Leif Steiner and Chris Dickey, who handles PR for Moxie Sozo, each said that Newton Running has continued to use the creative generated by Moxie Sozo even while not paying the agency’s invoices.
Steiner said that “everything changed” when Boulder-based Newton Running hired its new president. Newton hired Brooks, New Balance and Reebok veteran Craig Heisner in March of this year. Heisner had last been in brand management of a global running footwear company in 2003.
Moxie Sozo is not an ad agency that books ad campaigns with magazines and other media, so the bills Moxie Sozo contends are unpaid are only for those services provided by Moxie Sozo.
What makes this accusation of unpaid bills curious is that Newton seems to be running on all cylinders, and also has the appearance of being well funded. Newton Running probably has equal to or more specialty running stores selling its shoes in North America than does any other footwear brand. The running shoe maker’s co-founder, Jerry Lee, is considered a very successful real estate developer, and Newton Running took an investment reported to be between $20 and $25 million from Fireman Capital Partners. This is the investment arm of former Reebok owner Paul Fireman, who reaped a reported $800 million reward for building the Reebok brand prior to selling it to Adidas-Salomon for $3.8 billion.
Newton signed to become the official footwear and run course sponsor of Ironman in January of this year, replacing K-Swiss. Newton’s plans for full event activation, designed to elevate the athlete experience on and off the race course, will begin this weekend, at the Memorial Hermann Ironman Texas triathlon on May 18.
Newton Running was contacted by Slowtwitch for this story and declined to give a statement or answer any questions about the lawsuit or the invoices Moxie Sozo contends remain unpaid. Steiner maintained his agency took this action only as a final step, and that it’s the only time in his company’s 14-year existence that he’s filed a lawsuit to collect an unpaid bill.
