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The world's first sports shoe brand
There is a product behind every brand, and there is a person behind every product. Sports shoe is a brand product, and the maker of Adidas is Adolf Dassler (1900-18). Eddie Dassler lived in a small village in Germany. He had a dream at the age of 20 that all the sportsmen of the world play games wearing shoes made by them. It was indeed a big dream! It was so big that it could not be fulfilled till today. EDDIE used to stitch hand-made shoes with his brother Rudolf in a 20 square meter room. Of course, he didn't know that two big companies were being established.
Dassler did the same thing that every company should do to popularize its brand: Focus on customers. Dassler focused on players. He used to make his product by taking advice from these players. In 1925, on the advice of the players, he made shoes with spikes. Since then, Adidas became inseparable from the world of sports because nobody goes to the office or school wearing shoes with spikes.
In 1928, athletes wore Eddie Dassler's shoes at the Amsterdam Olympics for the first time. In 1936, Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, wearing Dassler's shoes. Later, the shoes became very popular (the shoes were called Dassler at the time). In 1927, the Dassler brothers established a shoe factory. In 1948, after the end of World War II, both brothers separated due to an internal dispute in the family. After the split, Eddie Dassler launched the 'Adidas' brand, and Rudolf Dassler launched 'Puma.'
When Eddie Dassler died in 1978, Adidas was making 45 million shoes a year, and he was the undisputed king of the world of sports shoes. It was the first time a non-American had been inducted into the American Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame for notable contributions in the world of sports. In 1990, Dassler's daughters sold their share of the company, but the brand is still alive today. In 2006, Adidas consolidated its position by acquiring their rival Reebok at $3.8 billion (USD). Today, the company employs about 43,000 people. In 1920, if you had been asked whether it was possible to build a company like Adidas? Probably, you would have come up with a negative answer. But this impossible also became possible just because of the dedication of Eddie Dassler. Maybe that's why Adidas has had a new tagline since 2004 -"Impossible is Nothing."
Height of Rivalry
The two brothers, Adolf and Rudolph, became bitter enemies after a heated argument broke out. The locals in their area took full advantage of this quarrel, and some naughty people knowingly met Rudolph wearing Adidas shoes. Seeing this, Rudolph used to get angry and give them Puma shoes for free.
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