Adidas Is Going To Make Big Moves To "Move The Knife" In Sports Performance And The North American Market.

The United States is the largest market for Adidas (followed by China and Russia), and is also a battleground for sports brands. It covers nearly half of the world's sales of sports shoes and clothing, the most powerful place for sneakers and the birthplace of the latest movement.

And even the Hoodie in the United States is different from any other country's cultural meaning. In addition to its birthplace, it also equals "cool" and "rebellious".

Adidas, which has been abandoned for a long time in the professional field and the US market, has started with a series of sports jacket.

According to Kate Ridley, training vice president of Adidas North America, the series takes into account the trend elements and functionality.

"We can not say that a factor is more important to customers, because today's consumers will not compromise, if it is a high-performance product, it can not be ugly, must also be very stylish, while satisfying functional."

At the gate 550 of Washington street, Manhattan, New York, about more than 300 people queued up.

Adidas has called the global media to launch a new category called Adidas Athletics, which is called "sports series" in Chinese slogans.

The huge white space, called Skylight Clarkson SQ, is one of the largest events in New York today, covering an area of more than 5500 square meters.

In the space, 8 concept devices were set up to show how many endorsements athletes stay focused before playing.

Next to it is an exhibition room showing the first season products of the Athletics series.

Adidas emphasizes that the new series is designed for athletes.

And the "star single product" that they push is a white Hoodie.

Adidas has spared no effort to publicize the new series.

A Adidas New York staff, who is distributing a white Hoodie for visitors, said that the activity was initially confined to New York, and "somehow" expanded to the invitation of 300 worldwide.

In addition to the media of all countries, it also includes New York's fashionable and popular bloggers, as well as a number of executives and employees of Adidas.

The price of the hat is 100 dollars, the full name is Z.N.E (zero negetive energy) Hoodie.

It claims to be able to shield noise, reduce visual interference, ensure comfort, and help athletes stay focused.

The headphones can be worn in the hat, and "take care of the habit of listening to music before playing."

In the public relations manuscript issued by Adidas, NBA James James is wearing this hat.

On the night of the event, harden was said to be there, but eventually it did not appear, and the interview process changed. The party music became the focus and the drinks were not limited.

{page_break}

Kate Ridley's training training series has been increasingly valued by Adidas in recent years, but its product line is still numerous, including men and women training clothes, ladies.

And other sportswear, but even so, you can hardly find the obvious entrance of this product line on Adidas's official website. It is arranged in the gray small character after the main entrance such as basketball and football.

At the same time, you can hardly find the obvious time of this series.

Inside Adidas, it never seems to be a star.

Out of the consideration of "breaking away from the training complex system", Athletics has become an independent series, but it still belongs to training.

Kate Ridley stressed: "we have two different brands to locate different groups of people.

Original pays more attention to street fashion and street culture. We (training) pay more attention to sports.

Therefore, Athletics is also very concerned about the performance of athletes in product design.

The athletes in the Ridley mouth are very broad in the definition of Adidas.

"Even if you only run once a week, you are also an athlete."

"If you want to say that you are an athlete who runs once a week, then no problem, this product will show you the side of your movement," said Sigrid Buehrle, a senior director of global products at Athletics category, in an interview with curiosity daily.

Similarly, there is a similar existence in Adidas's main competitor Nike, which is called "everyday athlets" by Nike. However, Nike is not associated with ordinary people when they emphasize the professionalism of products, they always talk about professional athletes.

In New York, with a Hoodie as its flagship, Adidas, a German company, has been interpreted by many media as "trying to revive the US market", even though its contribution to revenue is far below that of footwear.

In the 2014 year, Adidas's revenue in North America dropped to 2 billion 210 million euros (about 2 billion 460 million U.S. dollars), and rose to 2 billion 750 million euros (about 30.7 billion dollars) in 2015. By contrast, Nike's home advantage is very obvious: in 2015, North America's revenue was 13 billion 740 million dollars.

The United States is the largest market for Adidas (followed by China and Russia), and is also a battleground for sports brands. It covers nearly half of the world's sales of sports shoes and clothing, the most powerful place for sneakers and the birthplace of the latest movement.

And even the Hoodie in the United States is different from any other country's cultural meaning. In addition to its birthplace, it also equals "cool" and "rebellious".

When an athlete's strong face conceals beneath his cap, a single tone of color can always create an atmosphere of both athletic performance and coolness. Nike's last year's autumn and winter's high-end sportswear series, Look book, is almost the same.

In the following week, ADI hopes that this atmosphere will soon spread to the global market.

In September 10th, around 20000 athletes from around the world will publish photos on social media in their respective countries, wearing this white Hoodie as a huge gangster on the Internet to display their arms.

Ridley stressed that this way and scale have never been tried before.

It is worth mentioning that many of these athletes may have been recruited by Adi in the past two years. Earlier this year, Adidas announced that it would increase the number of players sponsoring NFL (National Football League) from 95 to 250 by 2020, and increase the number of NBA sponsorship players from 70 to 100.

Enough and powerful athletes will be the basic guarantee for sports brands to play a role in the subsequent marketing charm of the US market.

{page_break}

On the same day as Athletics, Adidas announced the signing of the legendary quarterback Tim Tebow because he wanted to play baseball instead.

The executives of ADI, including Kate Ridley, are looking very excited. "You know, we have just been chosen recently.

Each of us has a long list of candidates, but my memory is so bad that I can hardly remember their names.

Dramatist, at the Athletics series New York conference, the 62 year old Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer is visiting Russia on the 2018 World Cup.

This is the last month before he left.

He said in an interview that Adidas has already found it.

The trick is: "we give brand managers more authority and responsibility.

They are now from design to R & D to the final product, and they are responsible for the entire supply chain.

In the past, our system was more like a little...

For example, "feudal."

Adidas's "German" conservative operation has been implemented for a long time.

Since 2012, the growth curve of Adidas has stopped abruptly, with a market value of only 1/5 of Nike.

In the 5 month of 2015, Adidas's global brand director and Eric Liedtke member of the board of directors told the media that the young athletes are no longer in pursuit of Adidas as they did ten or twenty years ago.

This is a sad place for me. "

Beginning in 2015, Adidas embarked on a series of major personnel changes, affecting 40000 of the world's 54000 employees, changing its organizational structure and firing up to 30 vice president seats.

Liedtke is a lucky winner. He has 16 people reporting to him directly.

"My team now has only one man to take possession of the football."

He said, "if he can't do it in 18 months, I have to replace someone.

I'm sorry, guys, now the company has implemented performance culture. "

Just released soon after the Adidas X KANYE WEST brand, as well as Adidas Athletics Athletics series, perhaps is the free brand manager during this period successfully launched the two "big project".

In the United States, Adidas has been associated with hip hop culture. Since the rap singer Run-DMC released the song of My Adidas in 1986, the track jacket and shell Superstar have become popular, causing the company to divide the clothing department into two parts of sports performance and fashion in 2002 years.

Now, faced with the crisis of share, Athleisure has become a life-saving straw.

Last year, when coconut shoes were in the ascendant, Hainer explained: "I think it can be said that sports have been promoted into a fashion, lifestyle and street wear.

I estimate that 80% basketball shoes may never be on the court.

Wear them just to show your attitude and act cool.

Sports are indeed related to lifestyle. Of course, we want to benefit from Adidas. "

Indeed, Adidas's performance has shown signs of rising.

In the past 18 months, most people who care about fashion know what has happened: Stan Smith is popular in the streets, coconut shoes are frying at high prices, and NMD queues are crazy.

If you care about the company, the news you hear may be Adidas's "new things" in "where".

It's a Speed Factory in Germany, or a new studio in Broolyn, New York, and more and more new products are being released in New York, the United States, from the Yeezy series to the new Ultra Boost, and now it's Athletics.

{page_break}

But considering that this is a company based on sports performance, Adidas's performance on the non sports product line may be suspicious.

According to the latest earnings report, Adidas continued its three quarter net profit growth of 99%, and its revenue grew 21% to 4 billion 400 million euros during the quarter.

Among them, lifestyle and footwear still contributed to the main profits, while Adidas originals increased by 36%, while sportswear increased by only 10%.

Few people now know that Adidas's iconic three lines are rooted in the technological innovation of Adi Dassler 1948, the founder of the brand name: the use of three sides of the shoe to make the sneakers more suitable for the athlete's feet; and this spring's burst NMD has actually used the two most advanced technology of Adidas sneakers: Boost soles and Primeknit vamp -- but don't expect this to help enhance Adidas's high-tech side, because almost no one will play the street ball with NMD and Yeezy Boost.

NPD group has released a survey that only 25% of Americans buy sports shoes for sports.

Indeed, the sports industry is just like off-road vehicles. High performance is the premise of people's consumption, but on the other hand, simply following the voice of Wall Street and the voice of market opinion may increase revenue in the short term, and in the long run, Adidas may miss the future.

Some analysts previously believed that

In the promotion of originals, it was too hard.

John Horan founder, founder of the Sporting Goods think tank, referred to beer when it mentioned Adidas's explosion: "imagine a glass of beer.

Your fashion business should be beer bubbles, and sports performance is beer itself.

They (Adidas) have a lot of beer bubbles and lack of enough beer. "

And the NPD group's sports market analyst and vice president, Matt Powell said, is more widely known: "you have to choose the driveway to decide who you want to be."

From the information disclosed at the press conference, Adidas still seems to have a lot of strength in its interpretation of technology.

When asked how to promote product technology to consumers, Kate Ridley said: "if our product contains a technology, such as Climacool, we will have a label on the clothes."

In this way, the whole sports industry, including Adidas, has spent at least 10 years or more.

"After a while, I think we have figuring out what to do in the United States."

Herbert Hainer told the Wall Street journal that in the past 18 months, the company has completely changed its management style.

At the beginning of 2016, the board of directors of Adidas asked him to leave in September, which was six months ahead of the end of his contract. He thought it was unfair.