Adidas Brand Analysis

2.31 Adidas, a giant leader in sports goods industry

Adidas, founded in 1949 in Germany, one giant of leading brands in sporting industry, designs and manufactures sports clothing, footwear, sport accessories and equipment. This global organization hires more than 53000 employees in over 160 countries and produces more than 660 million product units every year. Net sales amounted to about 16.92 billion Euros in 2015. As an international leading sports brand, Adidas never misses chances to expand itself in the whole world. It came to China in 1997, and has won great popularity of Chinese people step by step. In 2015, Adidas has opened over 9000 stores in more than 1000 cities in China. Its turnover in China was about 2.47 billion Euros in

What’s the secret behind such a successful leading brand? First of all, Adidas rediscoveries the heritage and its rich history hidden behind in this brand in order to create great stories and meet targets future needs. Company leaders finally realized that it had a distinctive history with vivid memories, rich experiences, and signature processes that could be used to design the future, not through an adherence to tradition, but through thinking differently about product performance, product innovation, and company strategy. When leaders rediscovered the founder’s philosophy: to be close to athletes and hold intimate understanding of their needs, which had created a stream of innovative products and these products enhanced athletic performance at his time. After 1990s, Adidas Group used this point to make it be reabsorbed into the organizational culture, and come to define the company’s strategic choices. As Adidas found, the key is not only reconnecting with the past, but also knowing how to use it effectively to meet the future needs of consumers. At Adidas, founder’s philosophy, heritage and stories in the past drive innovation and give the brand authenticity, which in turn, influences employees’ sense of identification, the reputation of the business, and consumer choice. Adidas Group focuses on products innovation, which target at its main customers so that the organization has also been continuously going ahead in path of innovation, producing shoes that give maximum comfort to its users. Illustrating an example from Adidas basketball shoes first sold in 2005, Adidas introduced the basketball shoe named Adidas One, the first ever production shoe to utilize a microprocessor. This shoe automatically adjusted the shoe’s level of cushioning to suit its environment. Later on in the year, it produced the next version of Adidas One with an increased range of cushioning in order to