Adidas – A Brand History
Adidas Headquarters
Adidas is a German clothing brand with its headquarters in Bavaria. They are the largest sportswear brand in Europe. Along with Nike, Adidas forms the biggest sportswear canopy in the world.
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler had originally founded the brand Schuhfabrik in 1924. Later the company broke and two separate units were formed – Adidas and Puma respectively.
The Adidas group or AG is one of the leading manufacturers of sports clothes, best tracksuit brands and shoes in the world second to popularity only to Nike.
From manufacturing Sports clothes, running shoes and sneakers to sports accessories like sunglasses and watches – Adidas is a one stop solution for all your sports needs.
The brand has its headquarters at Herzogenaurach in Germany with over thousands of retail shops and uncountable franchises all across the world.
Adidas Slogan
Initially Adidas was a family owned business – the ownership passed from Adolf Dassler to his son Horst Dassler. But Horst Dassler passed away in 1987, that made the ownership pass to a multinational company – a corporate house with multiple shareholders. Kasper Rorsted is the current CEO of the popular brand with an inspiring slogan of “Impossible is Nothing”.
Adidas traces the historical roots to the times of World War II. To be precise, the devastating aftermath of the war. It was well into business for some years.
However, the major turning point in the life of the brand happened during the 1936 Berlin Olympics when the internationally acclaimed player Jesse Owens wore the shoes from the top brands.
It was at this time that the brand gained some fabulous recognition from the international platform and this was the shining star moment for Adidas.
Post World War that us precisely during the 1940s, the brand went through a rough patch. During the year 1948, some drifts of personal rivalry cropped between the two brothers – Adi and Rudolf that led to a permanent incorrigible ridge in the Dasler form.
Adi kept on working on the brand Adidas while Rudolf started a new offshoot brand that is equally popular today – none other than Puma.
After the ridge, the brand started witnessing steady growth in the years of 1950s and 1960s. The company manufactured multiple variants of light weight and easy to use shoes that significantly enhanced the performance of the players who used them.
Multiple soccer teams started to become ardent lovers of Adidas football shoes. In 1963, owing to the huge demand of products, the brand greatly diversified their product line including apparels and soccer balls into their connections.
In 1972, the brand came up with its new logo to include some diversity in their appearance and presence. This was during the time of the Munich Olympics. However, during these years, they also started to face steep competition from other emerging brands such as Nike.
1980 marked a major change in the fate of Adidas. In 1978 the father of the company that is Adi Dassler passed away and it was during this time that Adidas got converted into a public trading company.
The ownership of the Dassler company over Adidas ended in 1989 – a tragic end to the long owned legacy. This was also the start of ownership conflicts in the company 1990 to 93 can be marked as a dark age in the history of Adidas – the ownership changes from Bernard Tapie later to Robert Dreyfus impacted the company’s fate in multiple ways. In 1997 it was ultimately the Salomon Group that owned Adidas and in 2001, it was rebranded as Adidas Solomon group.
During the early 2000s Adidas acquired several units such as Salomon, Reebok and Five Ten. They even took up new business strategies such as sponsoring players.
This enhanced the overall cultural influence of the brand and Adidas soon became a much more deep rooted emotion and brand for the players and commoners rather than just another sports apparel seller.
The 2020s brought back some controversies in the book of the brand. During the phase of 2010 – 2020 some great corporate controversies started to taint the books of the brand.
Some Users put up allegations that Adidas set the retail price of its products quite high and promoted racial discrimination at workplace. Adidas had partnered with Kanye West in 2013 and their toxic partnership continued till 2022.
The partnership is labeled toxic and regressive because the artist had been making multiple offensive public comments during the time. Later the brand broke away this partnership but eventually ended up losing money.
Overall Adidas the best jacket brands in the world that is more of an emotion to the users than just a sports vendor. They are committed to innovation. The brand has been through multiple storms in the past, yet continues to be one of the best in the market with an ardent and loyal fan base across the globe.
