Adi and Adidas
Adi was a serious looking young man with tousled dark hair and self-assured eyes.
He lived in the small German town of Herzogenaurach, population 4,000, known at the time for a number of small shop cobblers, shoemakers, plying their trade. Adi’s father worked at one of the larger shoe factories, but he didn’t want his son to follow in his footsteps. He wanted Adi to be a baker.
Adi obeyed his father.
He began his bakery apprenticeship at 13, but his heart was never into baking. Adi was interested in shoemaking in a small town where shoemaking was prevalent trade.
Adi was also a keen athlete, excelling at a number of sports. He was adept in track and field, in soccer, and hockey in winter.
Adi was 14 when war began to ravage Europe. In 1918, the year the war ended, Ali was drafted. He served a year. When he was discharged Germany had been devastated with four years of war.
It was the war to end all wars, so it was said. But now jobs were scarce.
Adi rummaged through garbage to find material. He found there was much army surplus deemed worthless. Piles of steel helmets, canvas from pouch containers, leather belting.
Adi’s mind churned. There was a demand for sports shoes. Here was raw material being thrown away.
With his knowledge of shoe manufacturing absorbed from his father and visits to local shoe factories and cobbler shops, Adi decided now was the time to become a shoemaker. With his athletic background he believed he could design a better sports shoe. He took his designs and shoe samples to local sports clubs. He received orders. He turned a washroom in the family home into a factory.
With more orders he was able to move out of the family washroom into his own shop, but there was no electricity for production machines. Adi’s first employee was hired to ride a stationary bicycle to turn a belt powering a generator.
Adi brought his brother, Rudolf, into the business. They named it Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Factory. The brothers began churning out fifty pairs of shoes a day, including track shoes and shoes for soccer.
The shoes design included spikes for traction. Adi believed this would be an advantage for an athlete. He wanted to be able to prove it in the 1928 Olympic Games, to be held in Amsterdam.
He fitted a pair of spiked track shoes on the feet of a national track champion, Lina Radke, who didn’t start her athletic pursuit in track until she was 20. With her husband as coach, Radke had recently set two 800 metre world records. With her German championship and world records she was slated to represent Germany in the 1928 Olympics. For those games Adi and Rudolf fitted Radke with track shoes from the Dassler Brothers shoe factory. A key component of the shoes were that they were lighter and had six small spikes for traction.
Lina Radke made history, winning the gold medal in the 800 metres, setting her third world record in that event.
By the time of the 1932 Olympics, more athletes were wearing Dassler Brother’s track shoes. By the 1936 Olympic Games most track athletes were wearing Dassler Brothers sports footwear.
You know the story of Jesse Owens in the1936 Olympic Games, But you may not have known Jesse Owens won his four gold medals for the United States wearing Dassler Brother’s track shoes, by this time well known to be lighter than other track shoes and equipped with those six small spikes that had first spurred Lina Radke to her own Olympic win.
A key component of one of the designs were three straps to hold the shoe firmly on the wearer. The emblem of those three straps as a design component of the shoe, is now recognizable as the Adidas logo. The Adidas name, a derivation of Adi, was created after Rudolf left the business to begin his own brand, Puma.
