adidas

History:
Adidas ltd AG is a German Sports apparel manufacture, part of the adidas group. Named after its founder Adolf Dassler in 1948. He was nicknamed as Adi. He started making shoes in 1920 along with his brother Rudolf, who later formed a new shoe company named RUDA; which was than renamed as PUMA. On Aug 18 1949, the company registered as adidas AG. The company’s official logo consists of three parallel stripes.


Acquisition:
In 1989, the company was bought in by Bernard Tapie, for 1.6 billion francs with the assistance of Credit Lyonnais bank. Madonna was hired to promote the company. In 1982, Tapie found it hard to pay the loan interest and finally the company was sold to Robert Louis-Dreyfus in Feb 1983 for a much higher amount. In 1997, adidas AG acquired the Salomon group mainly specialized in ski wear. And later the official corporate name was changed to adidas- Salomon AG. Adidas than took over and acquired Taylormade Golf company and Maxfli which made it a strong competitor against its rival Nike.

Reebok Acquisition:
In Aug 2005, adidas purchased the British rival Reebok for $3.8 billion (US). And thus became the number two shoe maker of the world after Nike.

In the same year adidas introduced a shoe with a microprocessor embedded inside and named it as “The World’s First Intelligent Shoe”.

Sponsors:
To begin with- London Olympics 2012- adidas is the official Sportswear sponsor.
There is a huge list of people who endorse adidas. The master-blaster in world cricket Sachin Tendulkar is the brand ambassador for adidas. Adidas is also the official sponsor for the Australian Cricket team. It also sponsors a lot more in Tennis, Football, Golf, and Swimming etc.


Slogan: “Impossible is Nothing”.