The early years

A COMPUTER FOR YOUR FEET
It sounds quite common today, but back in the ‘80s, a computer did not belong, much less fit, in your shoe. Didn’t stop adidas from putting it in there. An innovation ahead of its time, the Micropacer featured a system that provide performance statistics to athletes.

THE MERGE OF ARTS AND SPORTS
When US-based hip hop group Run-D.M.C. released ‘My Adidas’ it was about setting the record straight about hard working people in troubled neighborhoods and pure enthusiasm about their sneakers. adidas itself only found out about this love story when the band held up the 3-Stripes shoes during a concert in front of 40,000 fans – one of these concertgoers was an adidas employee. The song became a hit and Run-D.M.C. and adidas unexpected and unique partners. This merge of art and sports not only set the everlasting street fashion trend off but also marked the birth of non-athletic promotions in the sporting goods industry.




END OF THE DASSLER ERA
Horst Dassler’s sudden death in 1987, three years after his mother Käthe passed away, meant troubled waters for adidas. In 1989, adidas became a stock corporation and Adi Dassler's daughters sold their shares in 1990. After the Dassler daughters exited the company, the change in leadership and questionable strategic decisions caused a record loss in 1992 and brought the company close to bankruptcy. But who doesn’t love a comeback story?

A SLEEPING GIANT’S NEW MASTER 
Robert Louis-Dreyfus. The new CEO made an almost impossible job seem easy. Together with his partner Christian Tourres, he understood that the almost bankrupt adidas did not need to be reinvented, it simply needed a new direction. He turned the sleeping giant from a sales- to a marketing-driven company and steered adidas back on the growth path. In 1995, six years after becoming a corporation, adidas went public and its new marketing slogan could not sum it up better: “We knew then, we know now”.