The story of the world's leading sports brands.
Love for sports is a never-ending joy. We all played sports in school and college.
Do you remember 2 brands, which are the most popular brands in the sports industry ?
Yes, Adidas and Puma, these brands, made a mark on the world with their quality sports shoes by providing to the Nazi Army.
Two brothers from Germany who established a shoe factory as their father was a shoe worker. Eddie and Rudy, who were sports enthusiasts and the Nazi army were about to start sports across Germany. Both the brothers understood the gap between soldiers, common person and sports. all used to wear the same type of shoes for same work.
So both the brothers established a shoe factory which was manufacturing shoes for the Nazi army and contributing to the World War through providing quality shoes. When World War I began, the shoe demand was growing and soldiers needed them. The popularity of brother's increased rapidly as Hitler's government also promoted it. People started recognizing them and the factory became busy and had high profits.
Adi was interested in business, sales and marketing as Rudy had vast knowledge of sports and manufacturing. Both had a perfect match between their skills at producing shoes. They both realized that for sports there are no particular shoes which are soft and stylish. The soldiers' shoes were different and had strong war-based protective shoes.
They started sporting shoes for everyone and it quickly gained momentum and growth.
During this incident, an unfortunate incident happened where Rudy was called to recruit in the war. The requirement for soldiers for the nazi army was a must. This incident broke the bond between both brothers as Rudy thought Eddie was behind his name in the Nazi army. This friction was the first step towards enmity among both brothers.
The two brothers who started the business ended up differentiating boundaries and divided the business. Rudy spent 1 year in jail too, which even made his heart crumble against his own brother, who was doing great in business. Adi made ties with the Nazi army as he was providing shoes for war. The German government eventually increased the profit market of Adi. When all these things were heard by Rudy things became ugly.
The establishment of Adidas and Puma.
Rudy came back from prison and started fighting against Adi for what he did against him ? The argument became bitter and turned into fist fights. Eventually, they both agreed to part ways against each other.
Both began to start their own brands and established factories in their own hometown.
It was situated in the location where a river was crossing between the villages. The division where factories were established, both villages stopped crossing and visiting each other. People who wore Puma would never talk to each other and, in fact, marriages were also stopped between both brands who wore differently. It became a conflict of 2 brands, 2 villages and two brother. The conflict between these brands was spoken around the entire Germany.
The competition between both brands.
As time passed, the rivalry increased and jealousy was at its peak. Trying to drag each other down for control of the sports industry. In Berlin, the Olympics was being organized, and it was being published on television for the first time. When this news circulated and was totally related to sports, both started bidding aggressively to dominate the market. From sponsorship to governments, they tried all the procedures to win the race to make it popular. Rudy hired all the sports athletes who performed well in which his brand, Puma, became popular. The market price rose to 10x higher than Adidas. This literally disturbed Adi, and he started bidding for the FIFA World Cup, where he hired legendary football player Pele with Adidas shoes to wear in the match. At that time, Pele was asked to tie his shoes before the match exactly in front of the camera. Guess what, he did exactly were camera captured him with shoes being tied and it became the most viewed advertisement for those days.
Adidas became a popular brand in football across the world and countries started buying Adidas-branded shoes for every match. Those shoes which Adidas made were comfortable for football matches.
Business Models
Adidas and Puma have a rivalry of 45 billion dollars, but Adidas is a much bigger entity than Puma. The model of Adidas is a franchise-based model which is much bigger than Puma, whereas Puma worlds around 120 countries and employs over 20,000 globally.
The entry of the Nike brand also made a significant impact on Puma, which replaced the fight between Adidas and Nike.
*Adidas adopted innovative ideas based on the present world and Puma adopted fashion and targeted the younger population.
* Adidas frequently changed celebrities as per time and stardom and invested in digital and data-driven campaigns as Puma used minimal presence compared to Adidas.
*Business models are both different. The focus of markets was different, specific to particular things only by Puma and were as Adidas launched multiple things for normal citizens, not only sports.
