The Historical Resentment Of The Two Sports Brands Of Adidas And Puma

Few people know.

Heizo is a peculiar town in Nuremberg, southern Germany.

It was a German town in the middle ages. A small river winds through the town. The two sides of the river are the headquarters of Adidas and Puma.

Because of a family dispute that lasted for sixty years, the town has been divided into two parts, each having its own bakery, butcher shop, bar and school.

The emergence of Adidas and Puma, a world famous sporting goods company, is also closely related to this family dispute.

A pair of brothers from Germany, Adolf Darth and Rudolf Dassler, founded the two major sports brands of Adidas and Puma respectively in 1960s.

However, in the subsequent commercial competition, the two brothers were filled with deep-seated hatred and made the town a famous "city of bending neck".

Once hand in hand

Rudolf Dassler and Adolf Dassler were born in a small town in the southern part of Germany - a shoemaker family in heto.

Brother Rudolf, nicknamed Rudi, has a business savvy and loves to communicate with others. His brother Adolf is nicknamed ADI and has a keen eye.

Adolf is like an introverted artist, while Rudolf, who is good at speaking and witty in speech, is a born public relations man.

In 1919, after World War I, Adolf worked as a cobbler from his father.

With a very high understanding, Adolf's skills soon surpassed his father and his business became more and more prosperous.

The expansion of production and the shortage of manpower led to Adolf's idea of joining Rudolf.

Luckily, Rudolf's business intelligence is most effective here.

With his wisdom, customers are always willing to pay their bills and think they are worth buying.

In July 1, 1924, the brothers registered the Dassler brothers sports shoe factory to join hands in the world.

This small factory only processes slippers without any brand, and occasionally for the daring spikes of those who dare to run in the open air.

Superior material, fine processing and good durability are the main purposes of Adolf and Rudolf in shoe factories.

The sharp business acumen and scientific management strategy make the business of the sports shoe factory of the Darth brothers thrive, the factory building is expanding and the equipment is constantly increasing.

The good news is that the two Dallas brothers are not complacent, but do everything by hand, regardless of shoemaking or sales processes.

The expansion of business has made ADI worried: to keep business developing rapidly, we must work hard in shoemaking.

Under the arrangement of ADI, Rudolf took over the business in an all-round way, and Adi chose to study and study hard, studying the books of tanning, management and accounting carefully.

A painstaking study, one focusing on sales, and a shoemaking factory did a decent job.

The good reputation of Darth's shoes quickly spread to the ears of Joseph Weitzer, coach of the German track and field team.

With his help, the brothers successfully let their products enter the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

The Olympic Games became the Olympic Games of Jesse Owens, an African American athlete.

It seems to be against Hitler. Owens became the first track and field athlete to win 4 gold medals in the Olympic Games. He left behind those athletes with blue eyes, high nose and golden hair.

Behind the success is a secret, that is, Owens wears the running shoes made by Darth.

Since then, the Darth brothers shoe factory is widely known.

Brother splitting

However, the good times are not long.

The turbulent environment during World War II forced the shoe factories to stop production.

It seems that he was favored by lucky gods, although German cities such as Munich had been destroyed in ruins. However, there was no war in the town of hekshoen Olah, and the equipment and factory buildings of the factory were well preserved.

After the end of World War II, the family of the Darth family began to split.

In May 1945, the Nazi gave up unconditionally. Adolf and his elder brother Rudolf resumed their old jobs and the shoemaking factory was reopened.

After an investigation into whether the Dutch shoe factory had a problem with Nazi, Rudolf was exonerated and re owned the company.

Meanwhile, in the winter of 1948, two brothers had serious differences in their business.

Though they tried hard to coordinate, they could never solve it.

In January 1949, after realizing that the contradiction could not be reconciled, the two brothers were officially separated.

Brother Rudolf took half of his fortune and moved to another shore with the wife and two children on the other shore of the lake. He built new shoe factories with most of his salesmen, and everything started from scratch.

Most of the operators chose to stay and continue to run the shoe factory with their brother Adolf.

In August 1949, after careful deliberation, Adolf was formally registered in the local court by Adidas.

Subsequently, Rudolf's shoe factory was named "Puma" (PUMA).

The two brothers' business war started.

However, speaking of the reasons why the two brothers turned against each other, some older residents in HECHO's younger town have other arguments, such as the ambiguous relationship between their younger brother and sister-in-law, the disagreement between their sister-in-law, Rudolf's self treason and private treasuries.

The old man said the final collapse was due to an accident in 1943.

At that time, the two brothers lived in a shelter at home.

One day, the RAF flew over, and Adi said, "this beast is coming again."

Who wants to say this, Rudolf just went down to ADI and mistakenly thought he was scolding him, and the two brothers ignored each other.

No matter how his family explained that Rudolf was not referring to him at that time, he did not want to believe it.

All in all, for a variety of reasons, the two brothers eventually split up and became old enemies.

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Endless struggle

In sports market, homologous Adidas and Puma, or bright or dark, or virtual or real fighting and confrontation, have never stopped.

For decades, the competition between the two brands has been uneven. Even the town of twenty thousand people has been split into rival camps.

Hei root and root also get a nickname, the city of bending neck.

Because the locals will bend their necks to see which company shoes they wear on their feet before they make friends. If they are not supporters of the same brand, they will never speak.

Taking a bus, if all the Puma seats are on the bus, then the ADI will have to rush their heads to wait for the next train.

In the decades of competition, the shoemaking factories of two brothers do not win or lose.

The first battle between ADI and his brother ended.

It was in the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland.

At that time, coach Sepp Herberg, who was despised by Rudolf, extended his friendship to ADI and established a good relationship with him.

ADI has prepared a sneaker specially designed for wet skating for West Germany to prevent players from slipping repeatedly on rainy days.

The effect is fully reflected in the competition.

The victory of the match is also the victory of ADI.

Because he conquered his elder brother and created a miracle.

But in the 1962 World Cup in Brazil, Puma took the lead and gave Adie a heavy blow back.

The two brothers not only split the market frequently, but also do not show weakness to the advertising business.

In 1958, Adidas launched its slogan, calling itself "the best sneaker in the world".

Rudolf sent a secret action to prevent his brother ADI from doing so.

In a rage, ADI showed his brother's behavior to the court, and Rudolf was defeated.

On the second day, ADI unexpectedly put the advertisement on his brother's office window, so he was angry.

In this way, until the two brothers died one after another, the competition is still fierce.

Although the two brothers met several times in their old age and had private conversations, the family finally maintained this painful division. The two of them even left their last wish to let their children continue to fight.

In 1974, Rudolf died of illness.

On the second day, Adie's letter of condolence appeared to be filled with joy: "in the heart of human sympathy, the Adolf Dassler family will not comment on his death."

4 years later, ADI also went away.

The graveyards of their brothers are located in the two ends of the small town. They are brothers, but the graveyard is the furthest.

Confusion of offspring

After the first generation of leaders quit the stage, the next generation continued to struggle.

Among the two brothers, Rudi is especially difficult to get along with. His relationship with his eldest son Amin is very stiff. He often rebukes Amin severely.

When Rudi deteriorated healthier in 1970s, he amended his will impulsively, deprived the eldest son Amin of his inheritance and set up his younger son GERD as the heir of property.

When Rudi died in 1974, when he announced his will, Amin was defeated by his last father's last surprise. He begged brother GERD, but he was rejected. Finally, Amin had to seek legal arbitration.

The ownership of family property was finally restructured, and Amin became the main shareholder of Puma, while GERD held only a small share.

Adidas is facing another confusion.

After ADI's death, his power was taken over by his eldest son, Horst Dassler.

Khost has an extraordinary talent for marketing. He pioneered the "Pyramid" promotion model for the brand. He pioneered Adidas sports products in visual connection with athletes, sports teams, major competitions and related sports activities.

Under his advocacy, Adidas became the first company to give free sports shoes to elite athletes. The first company to sign contracts with sports teams for a long time to provide sports shoes and socks is the first to enable athletes to see Adidas's new products on many feet in world-class competitions.

But the death of Horst Dassler in 1985 made Adidas lose a brand manager with brand vision, and Adidas brand began to waver.

Not the end.

When Puma was in decline, some celebrities made a positive contribution to its resplendence.

After retiring from tennis star Boris Becker, Madonna and Brand Pitt became the spokesmen for Puma's image and injected fresh blood into them to help them rally.

Nevertheless, Johan Zeiz, chairman of Puma's board of directors, was unable to stop the French PPR group's acquisition.

In 1989, Adidas was sold to a controversial French Frenchman, Bernard Tapil.

Tapil's political ambitions surpassed his business interests.

3 years later, when he found himself in financial trouble, he sold Adidas's control to a Bank Consortium in France.

At present, Adidas has returned to the German hands, is regenerating its past glory.

Barbara Schmidt, author of Adidas versus Puma, wrote in her book: "ironically, the grandson Frank of Puma founder Rudolf is now working for Adidas."

But many local people are reluctant to change.

After Frank switched to Adidas, two newspapers in the town said he had betrayed Puma and some of his relatives were annoyed at him.

The family struggle between Adidas and Puma ended up in their respective acquisitions.

This reminds us that in a distrust family, complete division, including non competition agreements, may be the only effective way to solve family conflicts.

At this time, I had to think of a poem by Cao Zhi: boiled beans to burn beans and beans to cry in the kettle.