Adidas and Puma

I came across this interesting passage in an article I was reading about how sports got so big. I never knew that Puma and Adidas originate from the same family.

From More Intelligent Life...

In 1924, in a small Bavarian town called Herzogenaurach, two brothers set up a business that started an industry. Adolf Dassler was a cobbler and amateur athlete, his brother Rudolf was a salesman, and their business was making sports shoes, using leather and nails.

Later they fell out and their company, Gebrüder Dassler, split in two—forming Adidas and Ruda, which was soon renamed Puma. Both brothers were card-carrying Nazis and at the end of the war, each brother accused the other of trying to shop him to the Allies.

Their story is told in “Pitch Invasion: Adidas, Puma and the Making of Modern Sport.” Adidas ran on craftsmanship and love of sport to begin with, but came to run on rivalry: the fraternal battle with Puma, and then an Oedipal one, as Adolf Dassler’s son Horst moved across the border to set up Adidas France as a de-facto rival to the parent company. The story is Greek tragedy with trainers and tracksuits.