Adi Dassler's first shoe machine was powered by an employee pedalling a bicycle
Starting out in post-First World War Germany with no electricity, credit or reliable supplies, Adi Dassler scavenged army helmets and bread pouches for sole leather and parachutes for slipper silk. He belted a leather-milling machine to a stationary bicycle and had his first employee pedal it. The business became Adidas.
Dassler, born on 3 November 1900, treated shoemaking as an experiment. He tried shark skin and kangaroo leather in search of shoes both light and strong, and made some of the earliest spiked running shoes, with spikes forged by a friend's family smithy. His widow Käthe later said developing shoes was his hobby rather than his job. His older brother Rudolf joined in 1923, and on 1 July 1924 they registered the Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Factory in Herzogenaurach, working from a converted washroom. By 1925 they were making football boots with nailed studs.
A visit from Josef Waitzer, coach of Germany's Olympic track team, turned into a long friendship and gave Dassler access to top athletes. Lina Radke won gold at the 1928 Amsterdam Games in Dassler shoes. Politics entered too: both brothers became Nazi Party members on 1 May 1933, a quarter of a year into Hitler's chancellorship, and Adi coached and supplied Hitler Youth clubs; after the war he told denazification hearings he had kept to coaching and avoided rallies.
The Berlin Olympics of 1936 were his big showcase. Beyond the German team, he had his eye on the American sprinter Jesse Owens, sought him out, and made a wordless offer that Owens accepted. Owens wore Dassler shoes with two leather side strips while winning his gold medals.
The brothers fell out after the Second World War. Rudolf blamed Adi's wife Käthe, whom Adi had married on 17 March 1934, for meddling. In 1948 they split for good, Rudolf founding Puma and Adi founding Adidas. When Adi died on 6 September 1978, his company had 17 factories and annual sales of a billion Deutschmarks.
Source: Adolf Dassler
