Goal oriented

Kicking it at Adidas

Author

The Axe
March 28, 2024

Good morning, pace setters. This is your Stock Market Rundown for March 28th, 2024. Thanks for joining me once again. Let’s dig in:

TODAY’S TOP STORY: PITCH-PERFECT PROFITS

The iconic three-stripe logo is recognized worldwide. But even if you sport Stan Smiths, you may not know that Adidas was born out of a feud between two brothers—both of whom went on to build athletic-shoe empires.

In 1924, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler founded the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory in their hometown of Herzogenaurach, Germany. American sprinter Jesse Owens was wearing their shoes when he won gold at the 1936 Summer Olympics—possibly the first-ever collab between a footwear company and an athlete.

But the Dassler brothers were playing on different sides of the pitch. Their disagreements ended the partnership, and they formed separate independent businesses. Adolf, nicknamed “Adi”, named his firm after himself—Adidas. And Rudolf called his Ruda, which was later rebranded—Puma. 

The brothers’ rivalry drove them to create two of the world’s top running-shoe companies, but with the passing decades, Adolf’s business grabbed the trophy in both innovation and athlete endorsements.

In recent years, though, Adidas has been caught offside. It’s still selling down inventory of Yeezy shoes, left over from its now-cancelled partnership with Kanye West. Worse yet, the German national soccer team just announced it’s switching its kit supplier from Adidas to Nike. How unpatriotic!

But Adidas may be starting to find the back of the net. Management is forecasting solid growth for 2024, thanks to classic sneaker styles like the Samba and Gazelle being back on trend.

As for Adolf and Rudolf, no members of the founding family are still involved with Adidas or Puma. But Adidas’ headquarters is still located in Herzogenaurach—where the brothers are buried at opposite ends of the local cemetery.

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SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

  • US regulators are investigating whether Amazon allowed the sale of illegal radio frequency jammers, which block WiFi networks. I should get one of these and use it to jam the WiFi in our house so my son Jaden will get off Discord and finish his math homework.

  • A system outage hit McDonald’s locations worldwide, blocking eaters from their Big Macs for up to 12 hours. Maybe when they plug back into the Matrix they can get the ice cream machines running again too.

  • US prosecutors are investigating whether Meta profited from sales of illicit drugs by users of its social-media platforms. Given their demographics, I’m guessing Instagram’s top-selling drug is Ozempic, and Facebook’s is Metamucil.

  • The IRS is planning to boost its workforce to over 100,000 employees over the next 3 years. I still can’t believe they said my riding lawnmower wasn’t a legitimate business expense. 

Signing off for today, champions; see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe

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