Adidas and Puma are among the favorite brands of fashionistas. Today competitors, the two sports equipment manufacturers nevertheless have a common history.
When fashion finds itself at the heart of a family conflict… Leaders in the sports equipment market, Adidas and Puma are at the origin of the sneakers that the cool kids of the moment are snapping up. Stan Smith, Palermo, Easy Rider, Continental and Samba are some of the emblematic pairs marketed by the two brands. Today, they are direct competitors on the market, but they have nevertheless formed a single entity for almost three decades. It all began in 1920, when the brothers Adolf and Rudolph Dassler take over the family business specializing in slippers. Thanks to scraps of leather from the German army, they had the idea of creating their first pair of sports shoes. Very popular, the model of the company called Gebrüder Dassler OHG even allowed the athlete Jesse Owens to win four medals during the 1936 Olympics.
The success story of the German company could have continued like this, but when the Second World War broke out, disagreements definitively separated the two brothers, both supporters of Adolf Hitler. While Adi remains working in the factory, Rudi enlists in the Wehrmacht (the army of the IIIth Reich) and ended up imprisoned. Upon his return, differences of opinion remained and the siblings decided to close the company in 1948. Adolf kept the patents and the factory, which he renamed Adidas (a contraction of his first and last name). As for Rudolf, he opened his own sports shoe factory in the same city, which he named Puma. Far from burying the hatchet, the brothers will remain enemies until the end of their lives.
Two leading brands
When the 1960s arrived, Horst Dassler, Adi’s son, transformed Adidas into a successful multinational. Ten years later, the brand with the three stripes is even responsible for supplying the footballs for the Football World Cup. But running out of steam in the 90s, Adidas was bought by Bernard Tapis, then Robert Louis-Dreyfus, who both helped to restore its image. Collaborations with luxury brands (Gucci and Stella McCartney to name a few) and prestigious ambassadors (like actresses Selena Gomez and Jenna Ortega), the brand with the three stripes has, in the 21stth century, freed from its status as a sports equipment manufacturer to become a lifestyle, technical or cutting-edge brand, depending on the desires of its customers. A profitable strategy, since in 2023, Adidas had a turnover of 21.4 billion euros.
For Puma, on the other hand, development has not been as rapid. But after losing market share to Adidas, the company reinvented itself and became the sponsor of the Italian football team, then that of the sprinter Usain Bolt in 2003. In addition to athletes, the brand, which once belonged to the French luxury group Kering, has attracted rapper Shay and model Cara Delevingne. Puma also has a series of collaborations with big international names. The latest one? The one that links the label to the singer Rihanna. The Barbadian and the equipment manufacturer have already signed several collections that fashionistas particularly like.