Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sports [Paperback]

Barbara Smit (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2009

Sneaker Wars is the fascinating true story of the enemy brothers behind Adidas and Puma, two of the biggest global brands of athletic footwear. Adi and Rudi Dassler started their shoe business in their mother's laundry room and achieved almost instantaneous success. But by the end of World War II a vicious feud had torn the Dasslers apart, dividing their company and their family and launching them down separate, often contentious paths. Out of the fires of their animosity, two rival sneaker brands were born, brands that would revolutionize the world of professional sports, sparking astonishing behind-the-scenes deals, fabulous ad campaigns, and multimillion-dollar contracts for pro athletes, from Joe Namath to Muhammad Ali to David Beckham.

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."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Barbara Smit deserves high praise.” (Sunday Telegraph )

“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 )

“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 )

“First-class piece of investigative reporting... enthralling narrative tale... invaluable contribution to our understanding of shoes, sports, corruption.” (David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero )

“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 )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (March 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061246581
• ISBN-13: 978-0061246586
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #949,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A View into the world of sports shoes and attire, May 13, 2008

By 

Blue Roses "padelrath" (Rockies, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sport (Hardcover)

Between the pages of this book lie the family saga of two brothers who ended up being torn apart due to war, personality and family. There is not really a happy ending although there is reconciliation among the posterity. Developing a better shoe and running a company are not necessarily the same thing as the players find out in this biography of two major shoe giant companies: Adidas and Puma. Although the book was good, it felt tedious and drawn out in place. I'm sure the author was trying to make sure that all the major players were included but maybe some of them should have been left out in the editing process. This was an interesting read into the world of sports and the attire accompanying the players and teams. Look for everyone from the soccer great Pele' to David Beckham and Joe Montana. I did appreciate the thoroughness that the author devoted to this work.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stripes. Three Stars, January 9, 2009

By 

J. A. Walsh (Boston, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sport (Hardcover)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sneaker Wars by Barbara Smit, August 31, 2009

By 

Kathleen M. Niva (Kingston, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sports (Paperback)

A great read for anyone interested in the evolution of sports marketing.....
I have six competitive brothers, but the Dassler boys take the cake when it comes to being creative and vindictive with one another. Fascinating!