All Day I Dream About Sport = ADIDAS = :P

Adolf (“Adi”) Dassler started to produce his own sports shoes in his mother’s wash kitchen in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, after his return from World War I. In 1924, his brother Rudolf (Rudi) Dassler joined the business which became Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory) and prospered.

At the 1928 Olympics, Dassler equipped several athletes, laying the foundation for the international expansion of the company. During the 1936 Summer Olympics on Berlin, Dassler equipped quadruple gold medal winner Jesse Owens of the U.S. with his shoes.

Late in World War II, the shoe factory shifted to production of the Panzerschreck anti-tank weapon.

The brothers split up in 1948, with Rudi forming Puma, and Adi forming adidas.

The company formally registered as adidas AG (with lower case lettering) on 18 August 1949. The phrase All Day I Dream About Sport, although sometimes considered the origin of the adidas name, was applied retroactively. The name is actually a portmanteau from “Adi” (a nickname for Adolf) and “Das” (from “Dassler”).

After a period of trouble following the death of Adolf Dassler’s son Horst Dassler in 1987, the company was bought in 1989 by French industrialist Bernard Tapie, for 1.6 billion French francs (now €243.918 million), which Tapie borrowed. Tapie was at the time a famous specialist of rescuing bankrupt companies, an expertise on which he built his fortune.

Tapie decided to move production offshore to Asia. He also hired Madonna for promotion. He sent Walter Head, from Christchurch, New Zealand, a shoe sales representative, to Germany and met Adolf Dassler’s descendants (Amelia Randall Dassler and Bella Beck Dassler) and was sent back with a few items to promote the company there.

A pair of adidas “Samba” football trainers.In 1992, Tapie was unable to pay the interest from his loan. He mandated the Crédit Lyonnais bank to sell Adidas, and the bank subsequently converted the outstanding debt owed into equity of the enterprise, which was unusual as per the prevalent French banking practice. Apparently, the state-owned bank had tried to get Tapie out of dire financial straits as a personal favour to Tapie, reportedly because Tapie was Minister of Urban Affairs (ministre de la Ville) in the French government at the time.

In February 1993, Crédit Lyonnais sold Adidas to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, a friend of Bernard Tapie for a much higher amount of money than what Tapie owed, 4.485 billion (€683.514 million) francs rather than 2.85 billion (€434.479 million). Tapie later sued the bank, because he felt “spoiled” by the indirect sale.

Robert Louis-Dreyfus became the new CEO of the company. He is also the president of the Olympique de Marseille football team, a team Tapie owned until 1993.

Tapie filed for personal bankruptcy in 1994. He was the object of several lawsuits, notably related to match fixing at the soccer club. During 1997, he served 6 months of an 18 month prison sentence in La Santé prison in Paris.

In 2005, French courts awarded Tapie a €135 million compensation (about 886 million francs).

= wiki =