The adidas brand shares a common origin with another legendary sports brand,Puma.

The Dassler brothers,Adolph and Rudolf,who each went on to found their separate companies,produced their first training shoe in Herzogenaurach,Germany,in 1920.Dassler shoes rapidly gathered a reputation for athletic excellence -Jesse Owens won his four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games wearing Dassler shoes-but following a row,the two brothers went their separate ways.

Rudolf went on to found Puma in 1948,while Adolph Dassler started a company called adidas-a combination of his nickname,Adi,and the first three letters of his last name. A lower-case’a'is always used to distinguish adidas from other brands.A year later,the famous’three stripes’were established for the company’s trademark,which are still used to this day on all its clothing and shoes. The adidas trefoil logo was introduced  in 1972,at around the same time as the Munich Olympics.This logo can be found on early shoe models such as the Superstar and Stan Smith,and on clothing such as the A-15Warm-Up tracksuits and the classic T-shirt.

Adolph Dassler died at the age of seventy-eight in 1972,leaving his wife Kathe to continue running the company.That same year,Dassler became the first non-American admitted into the American Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame.Kathe died in 1984,handing over the reins.th Horst,Dassler’s eldest,who took up the challenge until his death three years later.Keeping the company under the control of the Dassler family-something that is still the case today-enabled its output to be of consisrently high quality and ensured that the brand stayed true to its original guidelines.

One factor that helped adidas to become the dominant force in the world sports market was its sponsorship of legends,such as Muhammad Ali and the German national soccer team-which is quite literally the ‘adidas team’.That sponsorship and association with sporting excellence is still the case today-styles such as the popular a3 and ClimaCool ranges are worn by top athlets,including soccer players David Beckham and Zinedine Zidane.

Youth culture has always been another contributing factor to the success of the brand. In the 1980s,soccer terraces in the UK were crammed full of three stripes as the soccer’casuals’developed an obsession with one-upmanship over opposing teams’supporters,with trainers and styles such as the adidas Forest Hills and Trimm-Trab .

 In the US,1980s rap legends Run-DMC-who loves their shoes so much that they composed a song called My adidas-wore adidas shoes in their own distinctive style : no laces and with the tongue of the shoe sricking right out.Subsequently,this is a style that has been copied by the fashion world and has been linked back to the hip-hop scene ever since .Run-DMC’s shoe of choice (along with many leaders of the growing hip-hop community) was the adidas Superstar,or ’shell tones’as they are often known.The Superstar has become one of the best-selling and most recognizable sneaker models of all time.

Today,the adidas brand effectively consists of three sub-brands;adidas Originals,which is the’heritage’line;adidas Performance,with cutting-edge contemporary products for athletic excellence;and adidas Y-3,which is a sports/fashion collaboration between adidas and the fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto.Rob Strasser and Perter Moore of Sports Incorporated developed the Equipment concept for adidas.This footwear and apparel line was introduced in 1991.To tie in with this advancement,a new adidas logo was introduced,which evolvesd to become the adidas Performance logo featured on most adidas products today.

The continual development of the brand is down to the clever marketing of the key models,the forward-thingking of the adidas team and an awareness of the rich heritage of the brand.Sponsorship of events and the creation of limited products that go beyond simple shoe endorsements have meant that adidas is still one of the most exciting sports brands.