Sunday, October 3, 2010
Four years later 12 workers including the family members were producing 50 pairs of shoes per day. In the year 1924 Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory was established. In 1925 Adi, an inveterate football player, designed cleats. It was then that both canvas shoes and cleats became the main production of the company. The company was doing so well that several years later the brothers leased the whole building as a shoe factory, took new workers on the staff and increased double the production. With the outbreak of World War II the times were hard for the brand. Dassler brothers Shoe Factory was confiscated and the brothers had to go to the front. However, one year later Adi Dassler was returned to Herzogenaurach to produce training footwear for German soldiers. In 1945 the town became a part of an American occupation zone and Rudi was put into prisoner-of-war camp. The Dasslers, being imposed a war indemnity, had to work for the USA. At that time the company manufactured hockey skates and received in return written-off accoutrements of the US army and old baseball gloves. When Rudi returned home the brothers began to work together again but they no longer understood each other. They had to start their shoe business from scratch. In 1948 after their father’s death the brothers decided to demerge the company into two separate companies. Moreover, the brothers agreed not to use the name and the logo of the former company. That’s how the well-known at that time brand disappeared …Adi named his company Addas and Rudi - Ruda but as soon as several months later Addas tuned into Adidas (abbreviatin for Adi Dassler) and Ruda into Puma. One year later Adi broke the agreement regarding the company’s logo: he added the third stripe to the two stripes of Dassler company’s former logo and in 1949 took out a patent for the new logo. The brothers were no longer speaking to each other till their death and Puma and Adidas became brand competitors. In 1954 German team with Adidas spike football boots on won for the first time the World Soccer Championship. This year the company began to manufacture Adidas sports bags and tracksuits with a three stripes logo on the sleeve.
