The year 2024 is a special one for sporting goods manufacturer adidas: on August 18, the Herzogenaurach-based company celebrates its 75th anniversary. With great sporting events such as the Olympic Games in Paris, the European Football Championships in Germany and the Copa America in the US, the 2024 year of sports provides a perfect setting for the anniversary. When Noah Lyles wins the Olympic gold medal in the 100-metre sprint with high-tech spikes, the Spanish national football team triumphs in jerseys with three stripes at the European Championships or Lionel Messi wins his third title with the national team – all these successes are closely linked to adidas. Adi Dassler founded the “Adolf Dassler adidas Schuhfabrik” in Herzogenaurach, Franconia, in 1949 with 47 employees. Today, the company employs 59,000 people across all five continents, and the brand with the three stripes is known worldwide. Many adidas products are firmly anchored in sports history.
Adi Dassler, a trained baker and passionate sportsman, began developing specific sports shoes in his mother’s laundry room in the early 1920s and later attended the technical shoemaking college in Pirmasens. In 1924, he founded the “Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik” with his brother Rudolf and specialized in the manufacture of sports shoes. They celebrated their first Olympic success as early as 1928: Lina Radke, an athlete equipped by the brothers, won the gold medal in the 800-meter race at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam.
After the Second World War, the Dassler brothers split up and Adi Dassler had the “Adolf Dassler adidas Sportschuhfabrik” entered in the commercial register on 18 August 1949. The young company immediately gained international fame when the German national football team became world champions for the first time in 1954 in the Swiss capital, Bern, wearing innovative football boots with screw-in studs. The company’s close connection to football continues to this day. For example, the German national football team prepared for the 2024 European Championship at “Home Ground” on the adidas company premises. There are optimal training conditions there, which top international clubs such as Juventus and Arsenal FC also regularly use for their preparation – and give adidas employees the opportunity to watch professional footballers train during their lunch break.
Alongside football, the company was characterized above all by running. The Dassler brothers were in contact with the American sprinter and Olympic champion Jesse Owens in the 1930s and exchanged ideas with him at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1967, the American Katherine Switzer was the first woman to run a marathon, which she did in adidas shoes. She had only registered with her initials K. V., as female athletes were not allowed to participate at the time. More than 50 years later, the Ethiopian Tigist Assefa officially improved the women’s marathon world record by more than two minutes in September 2023 – also thanks to the adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 1, currently the lightest running shoe, at 138 grams.
The passion for sport and the goal of making every athlete better have been firmly anchored in the global company from the Franconian province since Adi Dassler’s beginnings in his mother’s laundry room in Herzogenaurach. At the Paralympic Games in Paris, which begin at the end of August, the German team will have a special collection at its disposal for the first time, which includes training clothing for athletes who do sports in a sitting position or in a wheelchair.
At the same time, the company has grown far beyond the world of sport. Back in the 1980s, the US hip-hop band Run DMC opened the doors to the lifestyle sector for the brand with their hit “My adidas” while prominently wearing the Superstar basketball shoe. The company’s rich history continues to serve designers as inspiration for new products. The current bestseller adidas Samba, for example, began as a football shoe for snowy and icy surfaces, evolved into an indoor shoe, and is currently worn as a leisure shoe.
