The form follows the fiction - brand one online

The founder determines the heart of a company, but the shape determines the market.This story is about Adidas, and its founder is called Adolf Dassler.His heart beat for sport, that was the market: the world of the winners and losers, jumpers, fencers, soccer players.Lonely runners, pumping athletes, concentrated floor gymnasts.Competition, passion from a thousand throats, decathlon becomes feather -light heroes.Endurance, talc pudder, three stripes.In the heart of this world there is performance, skill, perfection.The form of the company, the passion's passion, was one: Adidas is sport, and sport is Adidas.But what if the founder dies?

Adidas Litt twice.Only the father died, the son nine years later, then the family sells.Grief.Paralysis.Nobody says how it goes on.First the marketing department moves into the Dassler villa.Then assemble the three-leaf logo from the factory roof, the landmark of Herzogenaurach, and put it on the lawn between the work and villa, do not know where to put it.The form follows the function, only what happens if nobody can remember?

But companies don't lazy as quickly as fall fruit.The older you are, the harder your core, the brand.It does not live in the locker, but in the minds of people, sometimes also in their hearts.And sometimes a fan comes over, gets out the old things, rummages in the archives, blows the dust from the pictures and takes a look at old days, old size.

Michael Michalsky looks back this day because he designs the new form of Adidas.Adi Dassler would be a hundred years old in November, his company gets fit, and that is also time.The "efficiency and growth program" costs 75 million marks.The long -term goal: Nike overtake, Adidas is supposed to become the world market leader again.Not an easy job.Nike makes over 20 billion marks sales, Adidas stagnates at just under eleven, but promises rapid growth after the fitness cure, i.e. from 2002. In the center of the program: Marketing and Design."Design is a leadership task," says marketing board member Erich Stamminger and says Michalsky's job.

Adida's inspiration from the past Michael Michalsky has been addicted to the future, and when asked what that means, he says: "Life on the sidelines of the nervous breakdown, every day."Like Jörg, he talks from "Big Brother", he is difficult to see him, and just like Jörg, he puts his arms in his pockets while talking and stuck her on his long body.A small bacon sausage runs around his stomach, it looks new.There is still hope for less work and more movement between the changeover to a larger pants.He has been creative director since February 2000.Before that, he brought the textile sector from 35 million parts sold worldwide to 155 million in six years.He wants to go on vacation again next year, he says.

Michael Michalsky is 33 years old and doesn't have much to do with sport.But before they brought him to Herzogenaurach, 30 pairs of Adidas stood in his shoe cabinet.Smoking is allowed in his office, which is nowhere possible in the Herzobase, an converted Ami barracks, between the fields in front of Herzogenaurach.Now it is called "World of Sports", houses management level, design department and the room in which we sit on three floors: eight square meters, a table, four chairs and 50 T-shirts and training suits that hang on clothing racks.Old flea market parts, everything Adidas, inspiration from the past that they buy back in masses, addicted to the future.At that time, textiles had to stay outside in the Adidas archive, admission was only for shoes.

Michalsky does not love the brand for sport, technology, perfection.This is "a giva," he says, of course.He loves her like so many others - and that's why he understands her so well - for what only really big brands can do: she accompanied his life.Where he was, Adidas was.

Just like the three stripes marked his decisive steps, her founder accompanied the sport in Germany.Adidas is sports and Adi Dassler had them all.Emil Zatopek, Ilie Nastase, Eusebio, Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer.When Germany became a soccer world champion in 1954, Sepp Herberger welcomes the victory trophy.Team captain Fritz Walter, on the right, stands on the left of him, Adolf Dassler, the "witness manager of the nation".The 74-year-old Dassler is still on the bench with Helmut Schön's football team from 1974 and screwed on the tunnels of the player sports shoes.Finally he invented her.

He started as a cobbler.At the age of 20 he wanted to give every sport the right shoe.After the war he separates from his brother Rudolf, who founds Puma.Adolf, the engineer of the sports shoe, quickly passes his brother.In 1948 he registered the user pattern for Adidas, "the brand with the three straps".At that time it was straps, no stripes, they ran through laces that improved the shoe's hold on the foot.The shape of the brand follows the function.

The famous three-leaf logo is developed for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.The leaves should remind of the two -dimensional representation of the globe as you know them from atlases.Three stripes run through the continents, Adidas vision itself as a global brand and launched textiles for the first time.In 1978 Adolf dies.Adidas is the world market leader.700 patents and utility patterns are registered until then, most of them rotate around the perfect shoe.But four years later, a newcomer passes Dassler's life's work: Nike.

In 1984 that the son Horst has now taken the lead, the over -stake is still blowing from all tubes in an old tradition. At the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, 140 nations start in Adidas products. But around the stadium, Nike, number one with the image of an underdog, torches one of his typical guerrilla marketing campaigns. At the end of the games, 37 percent of the Americans believe that Nike is the main sponsor of the Olympic Games. Sales in the Los Angeles area alone increase by 30 percent. This is not insignificant, even then the United States accounted for almost half of the world market for sporting goods. At the 1996 Olympic Games in 1996, it gets worse: 70 percent of the American population thinks Nike is the top sponsor. The shape of the market follows its core and that is called competition. In 1997 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) whistled back the large sports manufacturers. The games should not deteriorate to the brands. That harms sport, and it is the business.

The brand loses the hold globally - and becomes hip the hipper, whoever blames Nike alone for the aggressive tactics, is wrong.Nike founder Phil Knight likes to call his business "war without balls" and Adidas the "enemy".But it was Adi's son Horst Dassler, legendary thread puller who was the first other strings.He put on the first major sponsorship contracts with athletes, invented modern sports marketing, enthroned Juan Antonio Samaranch as President of the IOC, and also the IOC, the IOC marketing agency, is his invention.Adolf Dassler loved the sport and his heroes.His son Horst shakes the hands of the officials.In 1987 Horst Dassler died, "before the implementation of his visions", as it is officially called.

But in fact, Adidas is already too caught up in associations and officials in Horst Dassler's time in order to be movable.The sales of the brand stagnates at a high level before his death.The product managers design technocratic on the market, and there is no time and strategy for marketing the innovations.Adidas has lost contact with the core of sport and his passion.

But the more the brand loses globally, the hip it becomes at the bottom.In the clubs and pubs.There Michael Michalsky meets her.In 1984, athletes won a total of 259 medals at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in the three-strip dress.He doesn't care.The then 16-year-old is turning his hair red, lives in Bad Oldesloe, a suburb whose number of license plates in the nearby Hamburg is the goal of the usual landing joke.MTV is his window to the world and there the rappers of Run DMC sing about Adidas Superstar, whose shoelaces leave them open.Adidas is cool because of Europe.

At the weekend he made a pilgrimage to the Hamburg "Front", one of the first house clubs in Europe. Sweat runs from the walls. Adidas is also comfortable here. Broing to dance stays deep into the nineties out; Adidas delivers the look for this. In 1987 Michalsky graduated from high school, then he goes to London. There he wants to do something with fashion. He goes out seven days a week, becomes the bouncer of the hottest clubs in the city, knows "every fashion Victim, every pseudo-pop star". Because the St. Martin's College fashion school does not take him, he studies design management at London College of Fashion. He shares the apartment with a yoga -break called Hardy Blechman. With Blechman he imports "embroidered garbage"; For "Rum Jungle", the brand was called, Blechman still feels good today. Years later, Blechman is called "Maharishi" and invents the mostly copied pants of the nineties, sloppy play pants for big boys and girls with a carabiner hook on the sides and camouflage look for the pockets.

After completing his studies, at the beginning of the nineties, Michalsky started at Levi Strauss Germany.The functional brand with the rivets slowly becomes hip, it needs a trend nose.Michalsky becomes chief designer, moves to Frankfurt, he continues to spend the weekends in London, works as a picker: he is the man with the guest list.The next trend comes later: Britpop.The focus is on bands such as Oasis, Blur and Supergrass, all football fans, everyone wears adidas.The brand is sign of honesty.Below.

Shoes in a limited edition for 1949 Mark - If you are buying in 1994 Michalsky moved to Herzogenaurach and takes over the textile area.He gives his DJ idols from old days with coveted new editions.From then on limited editions are: Boris Dlugosch, Mousse-T, Armand van Helden, Roger Sanchez, Pete Heller, Danny Rampling.Michalsky lists the names, gets a golden box.This is the next special edition.Brown shoes.The shape is reminiscent of the classic Samba, the seams are made of light brown yarn, the shoelaces turned hand turned, the leather butter soft."Stroke leather," says Michalsky, "Edition worldwide: 1000 pieces."And the price?"1949 Mark, shop price" - if the noble pieces make it until then.Most are sent to models, pop stars and opinion leader, they come to the magazines, on television, perhaps with his shoes, and again the polishing lobe sweeps over the brand's image.

Currently, and that gives him the greatest headache, overtime and the associated abdominal bacon, they produce the "Visual Language Guide".He says how to proceed.Adidas should become uniform.Shoes, jackets, pants, logos - all one language.He takes the knowledge out of the old pieces, but the design of the future comes from elsewhere.Michalsky: "The form follows fiction."Börsen favorite Adidas loses its sympathy values to the DOT.coms exactly that the Dasler family would have needed bitterly when they sold the company in 1990 when it was hip below and broke up at the top, three years after Horst Dassler's death.The Frenchman Bernard Tapie reached, followed by the dark years.Adidas suddenly have street shoes and sunglasses.In October 1992, the former world market leader could not pay almost the salaries.A bank gets in at short notice, Frenchman Robert Louis-Dreyfus came in 1993, and the great time of the turnaround begins.

Louis-Dreyfus doubles the marketing budget that begins big brand battle.To this day, Adidas and Nike sponsor almost a billion annually for advertising and sponsorship.In 1995 Adidas went to the stock exchange.Louis-Dreyfus has now overturned Michalsky from Levi's, who is supposed to boost the business of the functional brand that has become cool again.In 1997 Adidas buys the ski manufacturer Salomon to have a brand for individual sports.Adidas is second in the world market, before that even the Jogging brand Reebok had passed the Herzogenauracher.Sales increased from 3.5 billion marks in 1995 to almost ten billion in 1998.

But as is the case in sport, the tide turns in 1998.Nike has just completed his savings program.Adidas digested Salomon, the analysts now evaluate the purchase as overpriced.Dot.coms seem to be more trained, their stock market proceedings are taking investor capital.Modern fashion brands such as GAP and Tommy Hilfiger break into the sports area, the sales of Nike and Adidas in the USA is falling - in addition to Asia, the main venue for the crucial round.

In autumn 2000, the course bumbled around 50 euros, Adidas threatens to fly out of the DAX.Louis-Dreyfus' successor Herbert Hainer announces the 75 million mark-expensive "efficiency and growth program '' on time for Adolf Dassler's birthday." The world only remembers number one, "said the sports teacher of Nike founder Knight.wants adidas.

What is Nike's magic, with its double lead?What exactly the inertia of Adidas?The difference is not in the shoes, but in the company itself. It is first in their form, only later in design.In 1978 the American Phil Knight Nike Inc. Seme Doctoral thesis anticipated the company idea: If you would have to be written there, he wrote there, a company that consists only of marketing.Production, sales and all cumbersome factors are outsourced.The company would remain slim, well -trained and adaptable as a marathon runner.

The first trend, on the Nike, comes from the USA and is called jogging.Volksport is moving around the world, and the brand that lays on it combines coolness and sport for the first time.Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, chases Adidas, the namesake of a brilliant hobbyist.In 1982 she was the world market leader.Marketing beats technology.

While Adidas has worldwide sponsorship contracts with every district league team, Nike "Just do it!"And hits the ravages of time: selfishness, departure.Adidas recovers tapie, but to stay in the race, a weight loss treatment must first be taken.Nike has long been at the next trend and relies on design.The sports shoe becomes fashion item, innovation comes from Beaverton near Portland/ Oregon.Adidas sets his development center right next to that of Nike, but only optical stragglers come out.

The core of the Nike company is the form, the management of the shell: marketing and design.In the core of Adidas there is the function: the team, the athlete, technology.But accusing the US brand of soullessness would be inappropriate.Nike's company idea was not hollow, Nike's strategy was the new content.The perfect vice roller has less soul than a well -made commercial.But it has an advantage: it is to touch, has function.Where Nike simulates, Adidas builds on innovation.Marketing against technology.

Anyone who recognizes the function manages the design exactly that should be the accelerator.Marketing board member is more money in television advertising and less in the clubs, but the "design", as I said, "is a leader".When Michalsky made fashion, he brought the graduates of the international fashion schools to Herzogenaurach.They came from St. Martin's, from the Royal College of Art and Armgartstrasse in Hamburg."Young people who love the brand and understand them like the people they buy."So that it doesn't get too tight for them, they travel.Once to New York or Tokyo, once Europe, twice Germany, per season.

Anyone who recognizes the function manages the design.The rest is a matter of form.The brand is redesigned."Performance" is the regular business.With new editions and remixes of the old models, "Heritage" keeps contact with the legacy, "equipment" should keep in touch with the athlete.Michalsky brings car and boat designers to the Herzobase.In November, the "Kobe", a basketball shoe, emerged in the USA, developed by the Audi TT designers.

In a warehouse on the edge of the site, Michalsky is presenting the winter collection, which is supposed to recapture shares of GAP, Replay and Diesel.The things are reminiscent of cotton jerseys from the fifties.The cardboard cards on the sleeves have small pennants.Small three-leaf logos, wide stripes, embroidered names.At the end of the warehouse there is big and unmistakable the old three-leaf logo.