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Adidas did the biggest birthday present.Just in time for its 70th anniversary, the sporting goods manufacturer presents itself in its new group headquarters, the “Arena” on 67 weird stilts.

The building, which is like a football stadium, is the largest and last on the corporate campus in Herzogenaurach, which Adidas calls the World of Sports.In 1949, the disputed brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler shared their “Gebrüder Dassler Sportshuh factory”, founded in 1924.

Adolf, nickname "Adi", first gave his company the name "Adolf Dassler - Special Sports Show Factory Addas".When he had the company entered in the commercial register on August 18, 1949, he added an I in the form.Because his initials addas were too similar to an existing company for children's shoes.47 employees from the previous factory stayed with Adi, 13 decided on Rudolf, who founded Puma.Since then there have been two sporting goods giants in the small Middle Franconian city that have brought it to world fame.In Herzogenaurach it is convinced that the competition in the same place made the success of the two global players possible.

A year earlier, Adi had developed a soccer shoe that showed three straps on the side.What should actually contribute to stabilizing the shoe and foot also brought a memorable recognition effect and made the three stripes the ingenious brand symbol.From the laundry room of the mother, in which Adi Dassler, who first learned a baker and then Schuster, sewed his first shoes, to the largest sporting goods producer, the brand with the three stripes has produced numerous innovations: from the "racing shoes" with spikes over the interchangeable vice stollen, with which the World Cup of 1954 won the title, and the legendary World Cup ball named after the Satellite Telstar from 1970 to shoes with upper material from recycled plastic bottles.

But 70 years of company history are not only characterized by success and new product generations - shoes, clothes, bags, balls - which are preserved in the Adidas archive at a constant 18 degrees Celsius and 55 percent humidity for posterity.Especially in the 1980s, Adidas lived through difficult times and was even about to end as the Adi and Käthe Dasser Memorial Foundation documented in their company chronicle.

When the company patriarch Adi Dassler, born in 1900, died in 1978, his wife Käthe took over the business.On New Year's Eve in 1984 she succumbed to heart disease.Three years later, son Horst Dassler also died surprisingly at 51, his mother's successor.The four daughters of Adi and Käthe handed over the operational management of the company to a management.Under the new leadership, Adidas got into an existential crisis.The market for sports shoes had become saturated and the competition had become stronger.In addition to permanent rival Puma, US competitors Nike and Reebok also pushed to Europe.In 1989 Adidas wrote a loss in the high double -digit million range.

To save the company, the daughters decided for sale.The French entrepreneur Bernard Tapie became the main owner of 80 percent.But he was also unable to bring about the turn.Only Robert Louis-Dreyfus, who became the owner and chairman of the board in 1993 and led the company to the stock exchange in 1995, brought Adidas back to the road to success.

Like few other manufacturers, Adidas has managed to produce products that shape the zeitgeist of entire generations - not just from athletes.The Queen musicians around Freddie Mercury wore the three stripes at the legendary band AID concert in London.Madonna appeared in Adidas boots.Shoes such as the "Handball Special" or the "Stan Smith" reborn on the retro wave blew up the limits of the sports actually intended to them.Stan Smith, who was once number one in the Tennis world in the 1970s and still personally known to company founder Adi Dassler, is only known for current generations about the sports shoe of the same name.His book is entitled "Some People Think I am A Shoe" ("Some people think I'm a shoe").

But the current company boss Kasper Rorsted knows that nostalgia is only a nice extra bread.With the new headquarters in Herzogenaurach for a whopping 350 million euros, he wants to show how future -oriented adidas is.He tries to further develop Adi Dassler's motto, the athletes as possible.Dassler has experimented with shoe soles on an over -frozen tennis court - today it is robots that should guarantee the best as possible grip and the cheapest trajectory of a football.

Rorsted wants to present Adidas as a global player with solid roots at home.«We are a German company.It is extremely important that we keep the roots to be a German company, »says the Dane at the head of a group, whose everyday language is now English and on whose campus the 5,600 employees from 140 nations are composed.

The global company in Germany only achieves almost five percent of its turnover of around 22 billion euros.A total of around 90 percent of the 57,000 adidas employees worldwide does not have a German passport.Various teams enrich the work environment and increase productivity, you are convinced at Adidas.

Customers should not only achieve their sporting goals with increasingly sophisticated products, the products should also be produced more and more sustainably.A 100 percent recycle shoe is scheduled to come onto the market in 2021.The vision: Disused shoes will go back to Adidas in the future, are melted down and the yarn will be spun from the mass for the new sneaker.Ideally, an eternal cycle of the shoes should be created.Adi Dassler, who registered hundreds of patents and utility patterns, would have joy in this technical achievement.

Adidas Group

Adidas company history

Adi & Käthe Dassler Memorial Foundation