Biography of adi dassler

1. Birth and Early Life
2. Post-War Beginnings
3. Invention of Spiked Football Boots
4. Olympic Aspirations
5. International Success
6. Nazi Affiliation
7. Post-War Struggles and Company Split
8. The Three Stripes
9. Diversification and Marketing
10. Birth of Sports Advertising
11. Golden Era
12. Family Feuds
13. Adidas-Salomon AG

Birth and Early Life

Adolph Dassler, co-founder of the legendary sportswear company Adidas, was born on November 3, 1900, in the small Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach. His mother worked as a laundress, while his father was a baker. Growing up, Adi, as Adolph was known in the family circle, was a quiet boy. When he was 14, Germany entered World War I, but Adi was too young to fight. However, his passion lay elsewhere: football, which had recently become the most popular game in Europe.

Post-War Beginnings

In 1918, the war ended with Germany's defeat. The country was plagued by devastation and inflation, and millions of soldiers returning from the front swelled the ranks of the unemployed. The Dassler family fell on hard times. After struggling with odd jobs, the Dasslers decided in early 1920 to establish a family business making shoes.

With typical German thoroughness, they approached their venture. Their mother's laundry became the workshop. The resourceful Adi converted a bicycle into a machine for splitting hides. His sisters and mother made patterns from canvas. Adi, his older brother Rudolf (or Rudi as he was known), and their father cut the shoes.

The family's first products were bedroom slippers, with uppers made from discarded military uniforms and soles carved from old car tires. Rudi took charge of marketing the shoes, while Adi focused on organizing production and devising new designs. Within four years, twelve workers, including family members, were producing 50 pairs of shoes a day. In July 1924, they founded the "Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory."

Invention of Spiked Football Boots

By 1925, business was going so well that Adi could afford to indulge a minor fantasy. As an avid football player, he designed and made football boots with spikes that a local blacksmith forged for him. Thus, the spiked sports shoe was born. Proven both comfortable and effective, the football model, along with gymnastic slippers, became the Dasslers' main products.

Production quickly outgrew their backyard workshop. In 1927, the Dasslers rented an entire building for their factory. By now, their workforce had increased to 25, and they were producing 100 pairs of shoes a day. Soon, they were able to buy the factory they had been renting, and the entire family moved into a mansion nearby.

Olympic Aspirations

Adi no longer remembered his brief aspiration to become a baker. He was now consumed by the possibilities of developing sports shoes and testing them in actual competitions with his friends. The success of the spiked football boots inspired him to create specialized footwear for elite Olympic athletes. Dassler shoes made their first Olympic appearance at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. At the next Olympics in 1932 in Los Angeles, German runner Arthur Jonath placed third in the 100-meter race.

But 1936 marked a pivotal moment for Adi. His first child was born, and at the Berlin Olympics, African-American runner Jesse Owens won four gold medals and set five Olympic records wearing Dassler shoes from start to finish.

International Success

From that moment forward, Dassler became the de facto standard for athletic footwear. Adi's marketing prowess was evident. In the year of the Berlin Olympics, the Dassler Brothers Factory's sales exceeded 400,000 German marks. In 1938, the Dasslers opened a second factory in Herzogenaurach. Together, their enterprise was now producing 1,000 pairs of shoes a day.

Nazi Affiliation

By this point, both Dassler brothers were fervent members of the Nazi Party. When Germany launched World War II in 1939, they converted their production to military footwear. This marked the end of their shared sense of duty towards their country. Rudi went off to fight, while Adi remained to manage the family business.

Post-War Struggles and Company Split

When Germany lost the war, Adi faced his own share of national disaster. In 1945, Herzogenaurach fell under American occupation. While the Dasslers' factory sent hockey skates to the United States as reparations, the family mansion was requisitioned as comfortable quarters for the Yanks. To provide for her family, Adi's wife dug up the garden and tended livestock. But this was short-lived. The Americans left after a year, and brother Rudi returned from a prisoner-of-war camp.

The brothers had to rebuild their business from almost nothing. Dassler shoes were once again made from leftover military equipment, and the 47 employees received their wages in kind, with wood and yarn. However, the former camaraderie between the brothers had evaporated. In the spring of 1948, shortly after their father's death, they had a bitter falling out and decided to split their company in two. Rudi took one factory, while Adi took the other.

The brothers also agreed not to use the family business's name or logo. Adi named his company Addas, while Rudi named his Ruda. But within a few months, Addas became Adidas (an abbreviation of Adi Dassler), and Ruda adopted the name of the jungle cat Puma. Thus, the worldwide brand Dassler met its end.

To this day, the brothers themselves maintained silence about the reasons for their quarrel. Perhaps Rudi never forgave Adi for not using his connections with American officers to secure his release from the prisoner-of-war camp after the war. Or perhaps it was their inability to divide their father's inheritance. In any case, the brothers never spoke to each other after their company split, and Puma and Adidas became fierce competitors.

The Three Stripes

After parting ways with his brother, Adi became the sole proprietor of his own company. He no longer had to consult anyone. Taking advantage of his "carte blanche," he slightly violated the agreement with his brother within a year, promising not to use the Dassler Brothers' logo. Adi took the two stripes in the Dassler logo, added a third, and patented this as the Adidas symbol.

Determined to stay ahead of his brother, Adi pursued his favorite pastime: invention. In 1949, he created the first boots with removable rubber studs. In 1950, he developed football boots designed for play in adverse conditions such as snow and frozen ground. He also rekindled his old connections with national Olympic committees. At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, most athletes wore not Dassler, but Adidas.

Diversification and Marketing

At the same Olympics, Adi had the idea of offering athletes other products under the Adidas brand. His first foray into diversification was the production of sports bags, which he launched a few months later. Although running shoes remained his main product, Adi sought a partner to handle the production of clothing. At a party, he met Willy Seltenreich, the owner of a textile factory. After enjoying a drink together, Adi ordered a thousand tracksuits with three stripes along the sleeves from him. The product sold well, and the partners became so compatible that Seltenreich soon began sewing exclusively for Adidas.

Birth of Sports Advertising

Year after year, Adi Dassler's footwear became more technically and technologically advanced. Some competitors even began emphasizing the simplicity and time-tested qualities of their models in their advertising. But by 1954, Adidas's innovative shoes proved to be unrivaled in the world of professional sports. That year, the West German national team won the FIFA World Cup for the first time, wearing Adidas. The nation was ecstatic, as it was the first time Germany had been victorious since World War II. Adi was present at the decisive matches in Bern, personally overseeing the adaptation of the players' boots to the pitch and weather conditions using his new technology of removable studs.

This victory inspired Adi to place advertising directly in stadiums. In 1956, he signed an agreement with the Olympic Committee to advertise Adidas at the Melbourne Games. Thus, Adi Dassler ushered in the modern era of the commercialization of sports.

Golden Era

The 1960s and 1970s were the golden age for Adidas. The hated brother and owner of Puma remained far outpaced. Adi Dassler's company reigned supreme in the world of sports, and its influence was felt even behind the "Iron Curtain." In 1972, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to equip the Soviet Olympic team with Adidas.

Throughout this period, Adidas remained Adi's closed private company, managed by him personally until his death. However, towards the end of his life, he began to reflect that Adidas was not a goal for him but merely a means. "The only important thing in my life was sport," he remarked. Adolf Dassler died of heart failure in 1978, leaving behind a thriving company with a turnover of over $500 million that sold not only clothing and accessories but also 45 million pairs of shoes in 150 models annually.

Family Feuds

The Dassler family business was not to be. Just as Adi had quarreled with his brother over the Dassler Brothers Factory, his children now fought for control of Adidas. In less than ten years, they were forced to sell the company for only $390 million due to their business mistakes. Still a public limited company with no major shareholders, Adidas exists today, but it is an entirely different Adidas.

Adidas-Salomon AG

Today, Adidas-Salomon AG is a global leader in the sporting goods industry. The company