Adidas and Puma are the biggest rivals in sport shoes industry. But did you know their founders were brothers? Adolf and Rudolf Dassler grew up in a poor German family. Their father worked in a shoe factory and mother ran a laundry service. The family sold home-made slippers to put food on the table.
In the 1920s, the brothers founded the Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe company in the small town of Herzogenaurach. Adolf Dassler was a quiet craftsman who designed and made the shoes. And his older brother Rudolf Dassler was the natural salesman.
Despite the fact that both brothers were members of the somewhat unsavory Nazi party, they managed to convince legendary Olympian Jesse Owens to wear their shoes. In the 1936 Olympic games, Owens won four gold medals. His victory gave Dassler shoes international exposure.
But all this success was not good for their relationship.
There is a lot of speculation about what caused the brothers to fall out. some say there was stealing, affairs or resentment.
After the World War II, the brothers eventually split their company into two.
- Adidas Sportschuhe. Adolf Dassler named his factory Adidas (short for ADI DASsler).
- RUDA. Rudolf attempted the same by naming his company Ruda (RUdolf DAssler). But later changed it to the more athletic sounding Puma.
It was nasty family feud that not only pitted the two brothers against one another, but also separated the people of their town into opposing factions for 60 years.
The split between the Dassler brothers was to Herzogenaurach what the building of the Berlin Wall was for the German Capital.
Most of the Herzogenaurach’s citizens were employed by one of Dassler brothers. If you worked for one company, you did not socialize with employees of the other. Herzogenaurach came to be known as the town of bent necks. Because people would first look at the person’s footwear and then greet or ignore them. the brothers sued each other many times over the years – speculating on all sorts of design and trademark issues.
Adi and Rudi both died in the 1970s. They are both buries in the same cemetery but as far as possible from each other.
The TWO never reconciled.
In business terms, it was Adi who has won. In Herzogenaurach, there is even a statue in his honour. Adidas is now a far bigger company, employing close to 39000, compared with Puma’s 9,000. But it is the nature of the Adi – and Rudi – driven rivalry that has given both firms their fighting spirit.
Relations didn’t really improve between the two firms until 21st September 2009 when they arranged a football match between workers of both factories. That started the process of healing decades of enmity. And new era of love and shoes started.
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