PFBI Case Studies

< Back

The DASSLER FAMILY

Source : Family Wars – Grant Gordon & Nigel Nicholson

The Origins

The family lived in Northern Bavarian town – Herzogenaurach. This town was the centre of producing shoes for centuries. Father Christoph was a shoemaker and to help make ends meet, mother ran a small commercial laundry. The family was not well off, but very hard working. Adolf Dassler, born in 1900 was a young lad and an active sportsman; running races and competitions.

Adolph – with his two elder brothers joined the world war to fight on the front and returned safely. Adolph (Adi) with his ambition set up a shoe workshop and experimented this with his experience in running. At first he and his friends were the only customers.

By 1920 the venture was showing promise and the Adolf Dassler Shoe Company was set up. Football was emerging as a great sport and Adi starting selling the shoes to players and clubs. Adi managed to capture the attention of German Olympic football coach in 1928 in the run-up to 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. This was the springboard for the company becoming a leading supplier of athletic shoes.

Siblings - Adi & Rudi

By 1923, Adi was feeling the strain of success and turned to Rudolf to join the firm to focus on business development. Rudolf’s (Rudi) expansive manners proved unsuitable to this career choice. The brothers became official partners in 1924, incorporating Gebruder Dassler, Sportsschufabrik, Herzogenaurach.

Rudi married Friedl in 1928 and moved to a large villa that the family shared. She established good relationship with her in-laws.

Adi married Kathe in 1934, a more assertive & hard headed character, she found it a struggle to integrate into the family home.

The climate in the family started to become an emotional cauldron through the chemistry of contrasting personalities and the heat of their close proximity. There was also an Ideological divide between brother around political beliefs & loyalties.

Both brothers became party members. While Rudi openly supported the ruling party & Adi was non- committed. In the business too Rudi was becoming more assertive. Tension between the siblings was on the rise. Rudi felt counting impatience with his brother’s detail conscious tinkering whereas Adi felt increasingly ill at ease with his brother’s brashness and dominance.

The Split

World War II proved the breaking point in their relationship and the brothers decided to divide the firm’ assets. By the war’s end, the brothers had split the company and waged a war of their own — in the business arena. Adolf, who preferred to be called Adi, named his business Adidas, combining his first and last names. Rudolf tried the same with his firm called Ruda, though he later changed it to Puma. It’s said that the brothers never spoke again, and their bitter rivalry even divided the town of Herzogenaurach, where they built their competing factories on the opposite banks of the town’s river.

While no one is sure what caused the riff, it’s said to be a result of miscommunication.

After an Allied bomb attack, Adolf and his wife took cover in a bomb shelter already occupied by Rudolf and his family. “The dirty bastards are back again,” Adolf said, apparently referring to the planes, but Rudolf thought the comment was an attack against his family.

The fight that set Adi and Rudi Dassler at each other’s throats was to reach even greater heights as the second generation started to join the business. The second generation was standing in the wings to continue when the first generation protagonists had left the stage. It wasn’t until September 2009, long after the brothers’ deaths, that the companies put aside their feud and faced off in a friendly game of soccer - an appropriate meeting for two companies who’ve become independently famous in the field of sports shoes.