In 1929, a young man named Adolf Dassler was converting his mother’s laundry room into some factory site with pedal machine and piles of leather. He convinced his mother and assured her success in this new setup. This young man would never have thought what his mother’s laundry room could become. Adi as be was called, worked day and night with his brother Rudolf to make his venture a success. In a small town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, these two brothers worked tirelessly to stitch nice and athletic shoes out of those piles of leather. They were into shoemaking business and named their venture Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory.

Soon they tried experimenting with their design by adding spikes to it. They majorly focussed on making athletic shoes and spikes prove to be very helpful when it comes to grip and balance. This development of their factory became an outstanding standard for athletic shoe styles. Dassler convinced Jesse Owens, a sprinter from the United States of America to try their newly designed shoes with spikes in his 1936 Summer Olympics performance. And from their journey started. Success could not keep the two brothers together and both of them ended separating on assets and shares. Adolf established ‘Adidas’ and Rudolf came up with ‘Puma’. This separation in 1949 created the two most profitable and successful businesses ever in history.

Their separation was upsetting but their struggle was paid off. In the starting years, electricity was a serious issue in the town and the timings for the trip were unpredictable. They had installed a pedal system in their nascent factory which was connected to a stationary bicycle. Whenever there occurred any electrical glitch, the bicycle was at rescue. They used to pedal it to generate energy for their machinery to work. Long were their days of struggle and hard work.

During the First World War, their factory was suspected of being helping the German troops. The suspicion was put by the United States military troops. Several lookouts were tried to convince them that their factory just makes shoes and nothing else. It was the intervention of Adolf Dassler’s wife which came out to be fruitful. She convinced the GIs, also known as ‘galvanized irons’, used for US military troops, that the factory is only interested in making shoes.

The 1949 split seeded and watered a never-ending rivalry between the companies of the two brothers. Hernauganruch became to be known as ‘the city of bent necks’ as every person was keen to know what brand the other person is wearing. That was the ‘charisma’ of the two companies. The rivalry has not ended till date. Both the multinational corporations deal in shoes, clothing, and accessories evoking a neck to neck competition between the two. Adidas has a net worth of €21.915 billion with a net income of €1.702 billion and total assets of €15.612 billion. On the other hand, Puma has a met income of €187 million and total assets of €3.2 billion.

From mother’s laundry room and pedaling a bicycle for electricity to this status seems like an impossibility but these Dassler brothers proved it wrong.