Collectible Adidas Shoes

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Like most great sporting achievements, Adidas shoes were born of intense competition—in this case, between two siblings. In the 1920s, brothers Rudolf “Rudi” and Adolf “Adi” Dassler founded the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe...
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Like most great sporting achievements, Adidas shoes were born of intense competition—in this case, between two siblings. In the 1920s, brothers Rudolf “Rudi” and Adolf “Adi” Dassler founded the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory), a small-town shoemaking business in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Adi was an athlete and trained cobbler who focused on designing innovative shoes, receiving his first patent for a pair of running shoes in 1925, while his brother Rudi handled sales and business development. As the Nazis rose to power, both brothers became card-carrying members of the party, and Rudi eventually joined the German military forces. Connections to Germany’s ruling party helped fuel the brothers’ shoe business, particularly leading up to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, as Adi sought access to the influential coaches and athletes attending the global sporting event. The glad-handing paid off—Adi was able to get a pair of the company’s spiked leather track shoes onto the feet of American runner Jesse Owens, who broke several world records and won gold medals in four different events. Though the Dasslers were selling more than 200,000 pairs of shoes a year by the end of the '30s, the brothers increasingly butted heads over their business, and when World War II ended, Rudolf left to start his own company just across the river. In 1949, the duo formally established their new companies, respectively named Addas and Ruda (though they were eventually rechristened Adidas and Puma). With the stakes thus raised, the Dassler family feud permeated their entire hometown, as employees and neighbors chose sides in the battle of the two shoe manufacturers. After Rudi had a falling out with West Germany’s head football coach, Adi saw another great partnership opportunity. He had already made the Samba, created as a football training shoe in 1950, so he was familiar enough with the sport to be named the West German team’s uniform manager. When West...
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