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EVENTS
Did You Know? A History of Adidas & Puma
The famed shoe companies, Puma and Adidas were originally one business, owned by a pair of brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler.
With Adolf crafting the shoes and Rudolf being the salesman, the business was doing quite good for itself, and despite joining the Nazi party, they still managed to get Legendary African-American track runner, Jesse Owens to represent them by wearing their shoes in the 1936 Olympics.
Owens’ success in four gold medals resulted in the brothers’ business skyrocketing to international exposure. As successful as they were though, this created tension between the brothers.
Their relationship, both personal and business really ceased to exist when the Americans were bombing their home, and as Adolf and his wife ran to the bomb shelter, Rudolf and his wife commented saying, “The bastards are back again” referring to the Americans, this was misconstrued and split the brothers up for good.
Adolph ended up selling his shoes to the American G.I.s, this coupled with his technical knowledge as well as knowing the athletes allowed him to become more renown, allowing him to finally form Adidas (combination of first and last names).
Rudolf, having formed Puma, whilst having the sales staff to move more products, didn’t have the widespread success of Adidas and so was left always playing catch up to Adidas.
The feud didn’t end until 2009, and even in death, the brothers’ bitterness towards each other continued as they were buried at the opposite ends of the cemetery.
