When Bjorn Gulden arrived at Adidas AG following the implosion of its Yeezy collaboration, the new chief executive officer found one pleasant surprise: The classic Samba sneakers that celebrities had started wearing last summer appeared ready to take off.
(Bloomberg) — When Bjorn Gulden arrived at Adidas AG following the implosion of its Yeezy collaboration, the new chief executive officer found one pleasant surprise: The classic Samba sneakers that celebrities had started wearing last summer appeared ready to take off.
At the time, the plan was to slowly build up production of the shoes, which were suddenly in hot demand from the US to UK to China. But seeing that factories in Asia were looking for more orders as product inventories around the world slow the shoe industry, Gulden’s new team rewrote their Samba ambitions.
“We went to the factories, and said, ‘OK, do you have free capacity?’” Gulden said on a call with reporters Friday. When the answer was yes, the German company asked for much more production. “As of May, June of this year, we are starting to get hundreds of thousands of pairs in the right distribution channels. The Samba alone will be millions of pairs by the end of the year.”
That shift signals Gulden’s broader effort to speed up decision-making at Adidas, which struggled during the pandemic under former CEO Kasper Rorsted. Earnings have lagged behind pre-Covid levels, especially after Adidas cancelled the lucrative Yeezy collaboration in October following a string of antisemitic rhetoric from rapper and designer Ye, formerly Kanye West.
Adidas shares rose as much as 8.4% in German trading, the biggest intraday gain since December, after the company’s first-quarter results suggested its turnaround is beginning.
Read more: Adidas Gains as First Turnaround Steps Trump Yeezy Overhang (2)
Gulden, who started at the sneaker maker in January, expressed optimism about more of Adidas’s so-called lifestyle offerings, including old models like the Gazelle and Campus. Demand is also reviving for the Superstar basketball shoes that — together with the Stan Smith tennis shoes — helped fuel growth last decade. Adidas probably over-distributed those sneakers in the end, creating the need for discounts and killing the popularity, Gulden said.
Now Adidas is again seeing interest in Superstars in sneaker resale markets and in trend magazines, he said. So the company is creating new marketing plans for the model.
Gulden declined to confirm news reports that Adidas has decided to end its partnership with the performer Beyonce later this year. There will be a product launch of Beyonce’s Ivy Park line in both May and September, Gulden said.
“We will see what the market is doing and what she wants to do,” Gulden said. “As soon as there is an agreement that is final, to extend or not to extend, we will tell it.”
(Updates with shares in fifth paragraph)
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