Puma and adidas: their factories are across the street and the founders are siblings

Two factories, which are practically across the street from each other, produce seemingly the same thing, and their owners are two quarreling brothers who divided production and became each other’s enemies and main competitors. No, this is not the plot of the advertising of a well-known chocolate bar, this is the story of the emergence of the brands Adidas and Puma.

The start of production

In 1898 in the town of Herzogenaurach, in the Dassler family was born the third child – Rudolf, two years later he had another brother – Adolf. As they grew up, the children, at first, helped their mother, who worked as a laundress, they helped with washing and ironing, as well as delivering clean linen to customers. Then the sons took a job at the shoe factory where their father worked. When World War I broke out, the older brothers were drafted to the front. Adolf was not suitable in age, and his parents arranged an apprenticeship in a local bakery. Rudolf was sent to the Western Front, in Belgium, where he spent the entire war, Adolf still could not avoid the draft, but he was called up at the very end of the war. He was able to return home at the end of 1919, and together with his father he started to manufacture shoes, including special shoes for the disabled, which were in great demand after the war. The country was struggling to recover after the end of the conflict, the population had almost no money, so it was pointless to produce high-quality and therefore expensive goods. Shoes were made from discarded military uniforms, and soles from automobile rubber.

Rudolf’s fate was different, after the war he went to Munich, where he graduated from police courses and even got a job in the police, but he did not stay there long. He changed several companies, where he worked in sales, and in 1924 his younger brother offered him to start a production of shoes for athletes, the venture was risky, but Rudolf agreed. Unlike his brother, who made good money from the joint production with his father, he had no money. Therefore, the older brother contributed a typewriter as his part of the start-up capital. In “Gebrüder Dassler” (Dassler Brothers), that was the name of the new company, Rudolf did the same as before – sales, Adolf in turn was focused on production.

The first success

The shoes produced by the brothers’ firm very quickly began to gain popularity among athletes, largely due to the new invention of Afolf – spikes, which were produced by special order by the blacksmiths Zelein brothers. The spikes gave athletes more stability, and the orthopedic insoles made the shoes more comfortable. In 1928, this invention was patented by the brothers’ company. Rudolf also did not waste time, thanks to his work at the first Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928 after the company appeared, a number of athletes performed in shoes produced by the brothers. During the next Olympics, a German athlete wearing Dassler shoes won a medal.

The change of power in Germany contributed to the development of the company, the ruling party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Which paid a lot of attention to sports, and therefore shoes, which created the company of brothers became even more in demand. In 1936, the Berlin Olympics were held and the brothers made another very bold decision: they signed a contract with a dark-skinned athlete from America – Jesse Owens. In a country where interracial marriages were forbidden and the children of dark-skinned Entente soldiers living in the Rhineland were subjected to forced sterilization, such a collaboration was risky indeed. But the risk was worth it, Jesse won four gold medals in the new shoes and set a world record, this made the brothers famous all over the world. The company became more and more successful, the brothers could afford to hire more and more employees, so they bought the building they were renting, added a third floor, and then built another factory. The company produced 1,000 pairs a day, providing shoes for athletes competing in 11 disciplines.

Schism

At the same time the brothers had their first serious disagreement, in 1933 they both became members of the ruling party. But the story of Jesse Owens did not pass for them in vain, Adolf had doubts about the ideology of his country, his brother did not share his views, this was the cause of the first conflict. A serious blow to the company hit the Second World War, the crisis began, the second factory had to be closed, for its maintenance was banal lack of money. Both brothers again fall under mobilization, the company is confiscated in favor of the state to produce shoes for the military. But the production can not be launched on the necessary scale, so Adolf is recalled from the regular army, he heads once his factory.

Rudolf again had a hard time, in order not to get to the front, he imitated chicken blindness, but it does not help, he was assigned to the typing office in the Polish city of Tuszyn. In 1945 he deserted, but was arrested by the Gestapo, he was sent to a concentration camp, but even there he was not destined to get, during transportation he was freed by American soldiers. But Rudolf’s troubles did not end there, after the end of the war he was arrested again. This time for collaboration with the Gestapo, the occupation authorities sent him to an internment camp.

Arrest

During his arrest, Rudolf was informed that someone had denounced him, he suspected his brother and held a grudge. When he learned that denazification proceedings had begun against Adolf, he began to testify. According to him, Adolf had initiated the production of military equipment in their factory, and his brother had been personally involved in agitating the workers by giving speeches to them. Knowing Adolf’s disagreements with the party, and his love of sports, because of which he and opened production, it is hard to believe, but despite this he received two years of probation. The factory was obliged to produce hockey skates and send them to the United States, things gradually improved, the workers were no longer given firewood and yarn instead of wages. But relations between the brothers continued to deteriorate, and after the death of their father in 1948 they decided to split the production. The employees were given a choice, and most of them decided to stay with Adolf. They decided not to produce separately left and right sneakers, instead they opened two full-fledged companies. So in one city very close to appeared two competing factories – Addas from Adolf Dassler and Ruda from Rudolf Dassler, later the firms were called Adidas and Puma. The younger brother stayed in the old building, and those employees who remained loyal to the older one moved to the new one, which was closed due to the war.

A life of separation

Each company sought to outdo the other, there was a real war between the brothers, the workers refused to sit at the same table with those who worked in the competing factory. The town was literally divided into two camps. Companies regularly sued each other, over slogans, on suspicion of industrial espionage. Rudolph’s shoes first had interchangeable spikes, he began distributing them to soccer clubs in local leagues, before the World Cup – 1954, representatives of the national team came to him to provide the team with boots, but the company did not have the physical capacity to do so.

In the end, “shoe” the national team Adolf, he sat with the team on the bench during the final match, and it was he who convinced the players to replace the spikes, which ultimately played a decisive role in the victory of the German national team. After this triumph, Adolf negotiated with the Olympic Committee to place advertisements in the stadiums. Both brothers actively included their sons in the production, at one point Rudolf’s son Armin and Adolf’s son Horst made a secret agreement: they agreed not to take away each other’s athletes, as well as not to sign a contract with Pele, so as not to raise advertising prices. But when Puma attracted almost all the players of the national team, Pele had quite logical questions and Armin broke the agreement, so the feud passed on to the next generations of Dasslers. Brazil eventually won the World Cup, and Pele’s contract had a separate clause stipulating that before the start of one of the matches, in the center circle, he had to tie his shoelaces so the whole world could see what he had on his feet.

Although the brothers held secret meetings several times, they never reconciled. Rudolph was soon diagnosed with lung cancer, before his death a priest called Adolf and asked him to come over, Adolf refused but asked him to tell Rudolph that he forgives him, and Adidas issued an official release, “The family of Adolf Dassler would like to make no comment on the death of Rudolph Dassler.” He did not show up at his brother’s funeral either, and passed away four years later himself, having not recovered from a stroke. The brothers are buried in their hometown, in the same cemetery, at different ends of it, and now no one will ever know what really caused their quarrel. And a movie was made about this story in 2016.

So whose side are you on?