Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sport
The fascinating story of the enemy brothers behind Adidas and Puma, whose rivalry shaped the modern sports business
Adidas and Puma are two of the biggest global brands in sports, paying stars, clubs, and competitions to show off their labels in stadiums and across magazine pages.
In Sneaker Wars, journalist Barbara Smit reveals the dramatic, character-driven story of these two power-houses. Started in their mother's laundry room in Germany, Adi and Rudi Dassler's shoe business was an instant success, their spikes worn by Jesse Owens in the Berlin Olympics. But a vicious feud soon pulled them apart: by the end of World War II, the brothers split the company, dividing their family and hometown.
Adidas and Puma revolutionized the world of sport, their rivalry introducing behind-the-scenes deals and multimillion-dollar contracts. From Pelé to Joe Namath, Walt Frazier to Boris Becker, Muhammad Ali to David Beckham, they all contribute to the roller-coaster rise, near collapse, and revival of the two brands. A page-turning narrative, Sneaker Wars is a riveting blend of family drama, business, sports, and history.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
It's a long road between the Nazi spectacle of Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympic Games in Munich and the media frenzy of David Beckham's 2007 move to Los Angeles, but there has been one constant during the intervening years of athletic history-sports shoes. This book traces the evolution of Gebrüder Dassler, a Bavarian shoe company founded by two brothers whose vicious feud led to the creation of two rival, iconic businesses: Adidas and Puma. Smit, an international business journalist, delivers a fascinating story of the complicated intrigues in the lives of both companies, as well as the founders and their descendants. The tale encompasses almost ever major sports figure in modern times, from Jesse Owens, (who wore Dassler shoes during the 1936 Games, unaware that the two brothers were members of the Nazi Party), to basketball legend Walt Frazier, whose signature Puma "Clydes" sold "well over one million pairs throughout the Seventies," kick starting the sports shoe-as-fashion statement trend. Overall, Smit provides a necessary account of how the growth in sports-related businesses has moved athletics "from jolly amateurism to unapologetic greed."
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Review
"As a history of how so much of the world came to be shod in running shoes, SNEAKER WARS is a book you’ll read at a sprint. Drawing from dozens of interviews and stacks of documents, Ms. Smit reconstructs an anecdote-rich history of competition, commercialism and corruption." -- Wall Street Journal
"Barbara Smit deserves high praise." -- Sunday Telegraph
"SNEAKER WARS is great for understanding the ins and out of the industry." -- Bobbito Garcia
"Smit brings a keen reporter’s eye to the schism between Puma and Adidas. The book also ably tells the broader story of the red-hot global sneaker trade." -- Conde Nast Portfolio
"What does David Beckham’s superstardom have to do with a pair of warring Bavarian brothers in the early 1900s? More than you think, according to this compelling book." -- Time Magazine
About the Author
Barbara Smit has written for The Financial Times (London), The International Herald Tribune, The Economist, and Time, among other publications. She lives in France.
Customer Reviews
Three Stripes. Three Stars
Three stripes. Three stars.
Smit bills her book, "Sneaker Wars," as the story of the family and corporate competition behind Puma and Adidas, but this is an Adidas book and the story of the legendary footwear house divided. Brother versus brother. Father versus son. France versus Germany. Old World versus New World.
Smit begins with skeletal biographies of the founding Dassler brothers: Adolf (Adidas) and Rudolf (Puma). The brothers worked and lived together, but after a World War II falling out, Rudolf struck out across the river on his own, and a rivalry was born. It was a rivalry that would play out over 50 years and three generations; but, one that was dominated by the Adidas corporation and the Adidas personalities, and they equally dominate Smit's work.
The book follows the Adi/Rudolf split and then move on to the division that emerges within Adidas as Adi's son, Horst, sets up a subsidiary - if often antagonistic - France-based branch. Horst cuts his own deals, sets up his own side businesses to inflate his bottom line, and provides the hustle that takes Adidas from a European sporting goods outfitter to a global fashion empire. But, remaining closely-held for many years by some combination of Dassler family members and confidantes, Adidas is a multi-million dollar conglomerate often operating on a shoestring. The family dynamic provides the arc of conflict that sustains Smit's narrative, and her gracious portrayal of Horst Dassler as a visionary 21st century kind of global businessman in a still-flat world is the center of gravity that grounds the meat of the book's middle portion.
Horst emerges as an almost surreal character: gifted and tireless, but perhaps less than ideal in his moral approach to family and business. The story of Adidas during his life is about a house divided between his operation - run mostly autonomously out of France - and his parents' in Germany.
That division theme runs throughout the narrative as surrounding this interesting portrayal of Horst Dassler are the stories of (earlier on) the drama around the split of his uncle and his father, complete with Nazi intrigue and Olympic escapades; and (later on) the series of ownership and management changes that transitioned Adidas from the small family-owned German cleat maker into one of the Western world's most recognizable and marketable brands, and saw conflict between the Old World ownership and US-based management.
There are side trips off into some interesting characters (Muhammad Ali, Pele, Joe Namath, Kobe Bryant), but these fail to deliver in any meaningful way and it becomes clear that Smit really sees this as a Dassler story. That said, she does avoid focusing even on some of the more controversial elements of the Dassler story, for example, the founding brothers' documented ties to Nazism.
Amazing shenanigans
Great technical background on the family issues, but after reading i felt as if i had sat through an Adidas marketing presentation. So much of the competitive side (Nike/Reebok) and the financial collapse was glossed over as no big deal. Nike ate their lunch by being a better company, and despite all the immoral and illegal acts by the founding family they couldn't hold on.
So-so
The book was ok but I felt that it read like an camouflaged advertisement for Adidas. The author was clearly one-sided. It also seemed to go into irrelevant details and was boring at times.
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