Adidas Puma Brother Split
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A story about how Adidas began and became one of the first companies to use sports promotion through athletes.
"Two brothers' father owned a leather shoe factory. The sons wanted to do sports shoes instead of leather shoes, so they created the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. Adi would design the shoes, and Rudy would handle sales and marketing.
After a 10-year grind building the business, the 1936 Olympics came to Germany. They got their shoes on German athletes, but also hustled to get them on non-German athletes, including Jesse Owens. Owens went on to win 4 gold medals at those Olympics, beating the Germans in front of Hitler who was promoting white supremacy at the time. This became considered the first time an entrepreneur used sports to promote their products.
They continued this strategy - you'd see photos of Ali versus Frazier, both wearing Adidas. Nike later took this strategy and did even better with it.
Business was great until 1940 when World War 2 started. The factory got seized by the German military for war goods, and the brothers were enrolled in the army. After the war, Adi restarted with 50 people, but somewhere along the way, the brothers split up. One brother started Adidas, the other started Puma - literally moved across the river and started a competing factory within earshot."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.