A brief history of adidas
After his return from the first world war, Adolf Dassler produced his first training shoe from the kitchen of his parents modest house.
Although Adolf trained as a baker, he had the vision to see that there was huge potential for leisure shoes and with the help of his father, who was working in the local shoe factory manufacturing spikes for running shoes, he pursued his passion.
In 1924, Adolf joined forces with his brother Rudolph and between them they formed Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik which translates into The Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory.
The business went from strength to strength and were averaging sales of over 200 thousand pairs of shoes right up till the late 1930’s.
Although the brothers had a strong and successful working relationship, on a personal level this was a different story. Eventually this got the better of the brothers and in 1948 they decided to part company and go their separate ways. Rudolf went on to form Puma and Adolf in turn started the Company adidas AG.
The name adidas being a derivative of Adolfs nickname “Adi” and his surname Dassler.
Although very soon after the company formation the phrase “all day I dream about sports” was used as a retronym for Adidas.
The Adidas company was still in the hands of the Dassler family right up until 1987 when following the death of Adolfs son, Horst Dassler, the company was purchased by the French Industrialist Bernard Tapie.
In 1993, following some turbulent times for Tapie, the company was repossessed by the Credit Lyonnais Bank for failure to pay back the loans borrowed to purchase Adidas. The company was subsequently sold onto Robert Louis-Dreyfus who is also the president of the Marseille football team. The same team which Tapie also owned untl 1993.
