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History of Adidas
Adolf Dassler was born on November 3, 1900 in the small Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach.
His mother was a laundress, and his father was a baker.
Adi, as Adolf was called in the family circle, grew up a quiet boy.
When he was 14 years old, Germany started the First World War, but Adi did not get to the front because of his youth.
He did not rush there.
His passion was football, which was just then becoming the most popular game in Europe.
In 1918, the war ended with the defeat of Germany.
There was devastation and inflation in the country, and millions of soldiers returning from the front joined the army of the unemployed.
Bad times have come for the Dassler family.
Having lost their chance earnings, at the beginning of 1920, the Dasslers decided to organize a family business – sewing shoes at the family council.
The Dasslers approached the implementation of the idea with German thoroughness.
My mother's laundry was given over to a shoe workshop.
The inventive Adi converted a bicycle into a skinning machine.
His sisters and mother made patterns out of canvas.
Adi, his older brother Rudolf (or Rudy in the family name) and his father cut shoes.
The first products of the Dassler family were sleeping slippers.
The material for them was decommissioned military uniforms, and the soles were cut out of old car tires.
Rudy took over the marketing of this conversion product.
Adi was engaged in the organization of production and the invention of new models.
After four years, twelve employees, including family members, were producing 50 pairs of shoes a day.
And in July 1924, they founded the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory company.
Both brothers with their opposite characters complement each other well.
If Adi was an inventive and timid intellectual and played football, then Rudy had an explosive character and preferred jazz, sex and boxing to everything else.
Adolf Dassler founder of Adidas
By 1925, the company's business was going so well that Adi was able to afford a little fantasy.
As an avid football player, he invented and sewed football boots with spikes, which were forged for him by a local blacksmith.
So the studded sports shoes were born.
The football model turned out to be comfortable and, together with gymnastic slippers, became the main product of the Dasslers.
Soon the production could no longer fit in the courtyard of their house.
In 1927, the Dasslers rented an entire building for their factory.
Now the staff has been increased to 25 people, and production – up to 100 pairs of shoes per day.
Soon the Dasslers bought out the rented factory, and the whole family moved to a small mansion standing nearby.
Adi no longer remembered that a few years ago he was going to become a baker.
Now he was completely captured by the opportunity to make sports shoes, and then test them in sports games with his friends.
The success of studded football boots prompted Adi to make shoes specifically for the strongest participants of the Olympics.
For the first time, athletes performed in studded shoes "Dassler" at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
At the next Olympics in 1932 in Los Angeles, the German Artur Jonat became the third in the 100 meter race.
But the most successful year for Adi was 1936.
His first child was born, and at the Berlin Olympics, the black American runner Jesse Owen in Dassler shoes won four gold medals and set five world records.
Since that moment, "Dassler" has become an unrecognized standard of sports shoes.
The success of Adi's marketing was obvious.
In the year of the Olympic Games in Berlin, the sales of the "Dassler Brothers Factory" exceeded 400,000 German marks.
In 1938, the second Dassler factory was opened in Herzogenaurach.
In total, their company produces 1000 pairs of shoes every day.
By this time, both Dassler brothers were committed members of the Nazi Party.
However, despite this, when the Second World War began in 1939, the Dassler factories were confiscated by the Nazis and the brothers themselves went to the front.
At one of the factories, the Nazis tried to establish the production of hand held anti tank grenade launchers.
However, the factory equipment was not adapted for such production, so Adi was returned from the army a year later – to produce training shoes for German soldiers.
When Germany lost this war, too, Adi got her share of a national catastrophe.
In 1945, Herzogenaurach fell into the American occupation zone.
And while the Dassler factory supplied hockey skates to the United States on a contribution, the Yankees were comfortably located in the family mansion.
And Adi's wife, in order to feed the family, dug up the beds herself and took care of the cattle.
But it didnot last long.
A year later, the Americans left, and Rudy's brother returned from a prison camp.
The first factory of the Dassler brothers
The brothers had to raise the family business almost from scratch.
Dassler shoes were again made from the remnants of military ammunition, and 47 employees were paid in kind – firewood and yarn.
However, the former understanding between the brothers was no longer there.
And in the spring of 1948, shortly after the death of his father, they finally quarreled and decided to divide the company.
Rudy took one factory for himself, and Adi took another.
The brothers also agreed not to use the name and symbols of the family enterprise.
Adi named his company Addas, and Rudy named his company Ruda.
But after a few months, Addas turns into Adidas (an abbreviation of Adi Dassler), and Ruda turns into Puma.
So the world famous brand Dassler ceased to exist at that time.
The brothers themselves remained silent about the reasons for the quarrel until the end of their days.
Perhaps Rudy could never forgive Adi for not trying to rescue him from a prisoner of war camp after the war, using his acquaintance with American officers.
Or maybe they just couldnot share their father's inheritance.
In any case, after the collapse of the family business, the brothers did not talk to each other, and Puma and Adidas became the fiercest competitors.
Moreover, the enmity of the founders of "Puma" and "Adidas" spread to their hometown of Herzogenaurach.
Each company maintained its own football team in the city, their employees demonstratively drank different beers, and even the children of the employees attended different schools.
The headquarters of both companies are still located in Herzogenaurach, the tension between the companies is no longer the same, but, as one of the employees of Adidas says, " Now we certainly talk to each other, but you will never see me in their shoes."
After parting with his brother, Adi became the sole owner of his own company.
Now he didnot have to consult anyone.
Taking advantage of this "permissiveness", a year later he" slightly "violated the contract with his brother – not to use the symbols of the"Dassler Factory".
Adi took two stripes from the Dassler logo, added a third to them and patented the resulting ones as the "Adidas" symbol.
In order not to let his brother bypass him, Adi takes up his favorite business – invention.
In 1949, he created the first cleats with removable rubber spikes.
In 1950 football boots adapted for playing football in adverse weather conditions: on the snow and on the frozen ground.
At the same time, he recalls all the old ties with the National Olympic Committees.
At the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952, most athletes no longer wear shoes in Dassler but in Adidas.
At the same Olympics, Adi comes up with the idea of offering athletes other products under the Adidas brand.
The first test of diversification was the production of sports bags, which began a few months later.
And although sneakers remain the main production, Adi is looking for a partner who will take over the production of clothing.
By chance, at some party, Adi met the owner of a textile factory, Willy Seltenreich.
After drinking together, Adi ordered him a thousand tracksuits with three stripes along the sleeves.
The goods went well, and the partners liked each other so much that soon Seltenreich began to sew only for Adidas.
From year to year, Adi Dassler's shoes became more and more technically and technologically complex.
Some competitors have even begun to focus in their advertising on the simplicity of their models and their time tested quality.
But in 1952, at the Olympic Games in Helsinki, Emil Zatopek in Adidas sports shoes wins three gold medals within a week.
He wins at distances of 5000 meters, 10000 meters and in the marathon.
An achievement that has not been surpassed to this day.
Meanwhile, Zatopek's wife wins the javelin throwing competition.
And in 1954, the innovative Adidas shoes turned out to be out of contention at the World Cup the German national team shod in Adidas became the world football champion for the first time.
The nation was delighted – the Germans became the winners for the first time since the Second World War.
Adi personally attended the decisive matches in Bern.
Under his leadership, before each game, the football players ' boots were adapted to the ground and weather conditions with the help of a new technology of removable spikes.
This victory led Adi to the idea of advertising directly at stadiums.
In 1956, he signed an agreement with the IOC to advertise "Adidas" at the Olympic Games in Melbourne.
At the same time, Adidas began its international expansion in production – Adi signed the first license agreement with the Norwegian factory in Gjorvik, and soon Adidas began to be produced in France.
The "golden age" of Adidas is coming – at the 1960 Rome Olympics, most athletes rely on Adidas sports shoes.
Wilma Rudolph wins three gold medals in the sprint, despite suffering from polio in childhood, about the same thing happens four years later in Tokyo, and in 1968 in Mexico City, athletes equipped with "Adidas" won 37 gold, 35 silver and 35 bronze medals.
In 1972, Adidas became the title sponsor of the Olympic Games in Munich, and the German national team became the European Football Champion.
Two years later, German football players become world champions for the second time – and again at Adidas.
In 1975, Adi Dassler became an honorary member of the" American Sporting Goods Association " – the first among non Americans.
In 1976, the head of Adidas watched on TV the competition in the 400 meters at the Olympic Games in Montreal.
Suddenly, a slight inaccuracy in the movements of the Cuban runner Alberto Juantorena caught his attention.
While running, he barely noticeably bent his foot in the direction of its outer edge.
The athlete ran in Adidas "Spike" sneakers specially designed for this Olympics with adjustable removable spikes.
Dassler immediately called his assistant, who was busy at the Olympics, and ordered him to check the athlete's shoes.
It turned out that the Cuban on his own initiative replaced the spikes with longer ones.
Except for 76 year old Adolf Dassler, who was sitting in front of a TV screen thousands of kilometers from Montreal, no one noticed this.
The position of the spikes was immediately corrected, and Juantorena won gold in the finals of the 400 and 800 meters running competitions.
In total, at these Games, athletes equipped with "Adidas" won 75 gold, 86 silver and 88 bronze medals.
The record has not been broken so far.
In 1978, Adolf Dassler died and the management of the company passed to his widow, Katarina.
She quite successfully copes with this burden until her own death in 1984.
I must say that she was generally an outstanding woman, even during the formation of the company, while her husband was creating and understanding the general concepts of production, she performed essentially all administrative work.
After her, the company goes to Horst Dassler the son of Adi and Katarina.
He established strong relations with the International Olympic Committee and the International Football Federation and tried to make the first reforms at the enterprise.
However, the early death of 51 year old Horst made his own edits to the case.
The sisters tried to run the company, but quickly realized that they did not have the appropriate scope and competence, so in 1989 they sold 80% of their shares for only 440 million German marks to the French entrepreneur Bernard Tapie, the then owner of the French football club Olympique Marseille.
And they sold it, apparently, on time.
"Suddenly Adidas has aged ahead of time.
It began to be perceived as something boring, utilitarian, yesterday's, that dad wears when he washes the car in front of the entrance on Sunday morning, " writes Thomas Gad, author of the book 4D Branding.
By the 1990s, the situation of Adidas was simply catastrophic: losses reached the figure of $100 million.
Aggressive competitors breathed in the back: the American Nike and the British Reebok.
They were younger, more creative, more interesting.
But the main thing is that the world was changing, and with it the market.
However, the brand of the company itself represented an interesting potential for people who know that brands can be revived, and such a legacy as Adidas does not lie on the road.
Since 1993, a new team of specialists began to write a new history of Adidas.
The first thing that the new management did was to lure a fair number of managers and designers from Nike and Reebok.
Secondly, he gradually moved the production outside of Germany – now the company, like its main competitors, produces shoes at enterprises in Indonesia, China, Thailand: saving on cheap labor from third world countries has again made the products competitive on the world market.
A whole army of "Adidas" specialists decided to attack not only the professional sports market, but also the mass market involved in the world of real sports.
Adidas refused to work with retail chains and began to form a network of branded stores in order to avoid mass production and overstocking the markets of its products.
The results of efforts to create innovative products and a network of branded stores began to affect already in 1996, when Adidas once acted as the general sponsor of the Olympic Games – this stimulated an unprecedented sales growth: +50% per year.
The growth continues to this day, but the most important thing is that we managed to establish ourselves in the American market, where Adidas "bit off" a share of 12% of the sportswear market and 10% of the sports shoes market.
In order to be in the stream of time and find their consumers, Adidas managers showed close attention to new sports, for example, they brought streetball to Europe, actively began to work with new youth trends and trends, thanks to which they managed to win the sympathy of American and European hip hop and rap culture.
Modern Adidas store, Israel, Tel Aviv
Today, Adidas is represented on the market with the widest range of products, starting with basketball sneakers and football boots and ending with sportswear and shoes for tourism.
And in 1997, Adidas bought the French company Salomon, a leading manufacturer of winter sports goods, and now the concern is called Adidas Salomon Joint Stock Company.
This step allowed the company to become the second largest global manufacturer of sporting goods after Nike.
That's how, since the end of the last century, giant concerns have been fighting with varying success for their buyer.
Adidas is inextricably linked with such legendary names (in addition to those mentioned) like Muhammad Ali and Joe Fraser, Steffi Graf and Stefan Edberg, Bob Beamon and Gunde Svan, Lev Yashin and Valery Borzov, Michel Platini and Eisebio, finally Zenedin Zidane and David Beckham.
So, Adidas Salomon AG directly employs about 14,000 employees.
The company's sales amount to 6267 billion.
euro, profit – 260 million euros.
The concern unites such brands as Adidas, Salomon, Mavic, Bonfire, Arc'teryx, Taylor Made and Maxfli.
The headquarters is still located in the birthplace of Adi Dassler, in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach.
The American headquarters is located in Portland (Oregon).
In general, "Adidas" is fine, however this is a completely different Adidas.
Source: www.allfaces.ru
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