Year: 2017

The store was launched by cricketer and adidas athlete, Rohit Sharma. The new store located at Express Avenue Mall, spanning across 7,100 sq.ft. introduced the international retail concept – ‘HomeCourt’ to the city

adidas on Thursday opened its new HomeCourt store in Chennai, the first-of-its-kind concept in India which integrates a consumer experience zone.

The store was launched by cricketer and adidas athlete, Rohit Sharma. The new store located at Express Avenue Mall, spanning across 7,100 sq.ft. introduced the international retail concept – ‘HomeCourt’ to the city. The store used sports as a centrepiece for storytelling which manifests in the physical space – whether it’s the material used for architectural purposes or the design of the store.

Speaking at the opening, Director-Heartbeat Sports & Outdoor Business Unit, adidas Group India, Dhanashree Sowani said, “We always commit to bring cutting-edge innovation and unique experiences to our consumers in India, keeping that in mind we are very excited to introduce a new HomeCourt store in Express Avenue Mall, Chennai. With this concept store we will be able to provide a relevant range of products to our consumers matching their sporting needs with an advanced experience centre.”

The Chennai HomeCourt allows the athlete to take the experience to the next level, not only do consumers can wear and feel the product, but also put it to test at the football zone. At the Print Shop the user journey gets completed, they get their name and number customized on the football jersey. For the runners delight consumers simply put the running shoe on and step on to the treadmill.

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Cricketer Rohit Sharma at a promotional event for Adidas after the inauguration of a store in Chennai.

Flamboyant India batsman Rohit Sharma feels cricketers have a short shelf life and they shouldn’t complain about burnouts.Stating that he doesn’t believe in taking a break citing tight schedule as excuse, Rohit said: “Cricketers have limited careers, we cannot play till the (age of) 60, 70. We have to make the most of the time we have.

“There can’t be excuses of burnout, tight match schedule.”

Asked whether he would like to take a break at some point given the tight schedules, the Mumbai batsman, who holds the record for the highest ODI score (of 264) said: “Not really. I am coming back from an injury. I don’t see myself doing that, I want to play as much as possible. Whenever I get the opportunity I want to be there on the field.”

He also said cricketers these days are used to tight schedules.

“We are all used to tight schedules. It is not happening now, it has been happening for a while now. We all understand how to take care of our bodies and there are specialists (physios/trainers) to help us out,” said Rohit, who is here for the first ODI of the India-Australia series to be held on September 17.

“Because of the schedules, you see a lot of rotation happening. Whenever we play a series we have to make sure that the guys are 100 per cent fit and the trainers take care of that.”

Asked about India’s plan to contain Australia captain Steve Smith, Rohit said: “We have to make sure he doesn’t score too many runs.”

Rohit, who is coming off a good ODI tour of Sri Lanka where he scored 302 runs including two centuries and a 50, said he hoped to continue the good form against the visiting Australians.

“I will be happy if I can come up with the same performances as last time. Things have changed, team dynamics have changed. The venues will be different. I have to start afresh and not think about what happened in the past. I will be happy to get the same performances out again,” he said.

Rohit had scored 491 runs in the last home series against Australia in 2013 which India won 3-2 with two games being abandoned due to weather conditions.

Asked to compare Ravindra Jadeja, who was rested for the limited-overs leg of the Lanka tour and from the first three ODIs against Australia and Axar Patel, Rohit said both are different.

“I would have to see a lot more of him (Axar) before I can comment. He has done well so far. Yazuvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav are good too and leg-spinners are always helpful in getting us breakthroughs,” he said.

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Quarterly profits at Adidas rose by nearly a third as world’s second biggest sportswear group notched up rapid growth in its key North American and Chinese markets.

The German group said that in the three months to March net profits had jumped 30 per cent to €455m, while sales rose 19 per cent to €5.7bn. Analysts had expected €421m in net profit, according to a Reuters poll. Adidas’s shares rose 3 per cent on the news to €187.64 in early morning trading in Frankfurt.

Adidas last year hired Kasper Rorsted as chief executive from consumer goods group Henkel with a goal of improving the group’s margins and closing the gap on arch rival Nike, which has left Adidas trailing in its wake in recent years.

Mr Rorsted took on the top job in October, and in March ratcheted up Adidas’s targets for sales and earnings growth for the five years to 2020. Hitting those targets, which include average annual sales growth of 10 to 12 per cent, will depend in part on how Adidas performs in the US, where Nike’s advantage is most entrenched.

Adidas made good progress on this front in the first quarter, with revenues in North America rising 31 per cent once currency moves have been stripped out. This was significantly faster than Nike, which grew just 3 per cent in North America in its most recent quarter, albeit starting from a much higher base.

Adidas’s revenues also rose quickly in China, where they were up 30 per cent, and Japan, where they rose 21 per cent, and John Guy, an analyst at MainFirst, said that the results amounted to a “strong beat”. “The market share gains in North America and Greater China are impressive,” he said.

Herbert Sturm, an analyst at DZ Bank, said that Adidas’s spending patterns had also played a big role in the better than expected results.

“The major reason for this positive surprise: operating expenses as a percentage of sales decreased to 39.1 per cent [from 40.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2016] due to significantly lower marketing expenditure,” he said.

Mr Rorsted said that demand for Adidas’s products had been “strong across the world”, while ecommerce revenues — which Mr Rorsted aims to quadruple by 2020 — jumped 53 per cent in the first quarter.

“Building on this performance, we are confirming our full-year guidance,” he said. “We aim to deliver double-digit revenue growth and an over-proportionate profitability increase in 2017 yet again.”

Adidas expects its sales to increase between 11 and 13 per cent, and net profit to rise between 18 and 20 per cent this year.

News Courtesy: The Financial Times

Adidas AG aims to increase its sales by 40 million pairs of sneakers annually, to more than a half-billion by 2020, largely by appealing to fashion-conscious teens and urban hipsters. At the heart of that effort: a decades-old shoe named after a retired tennis player who lives in South Carolina and hasn’t won a major singles tournament since 1980.

The shoe is the Stan Smith, a white-leather number with pale green accents introduced in 1971, the year before Stan Smith (the player, now 70) earned his second and last Grand Slam singles title. Thanks to a well-orchestrated promotional blitz, this unlikely hero has made one of the greatest comebacks in marketing history, from a declining brand popular with suburban dads into a must-have for the ­fashion-savvy. As they rev up an effort to catch Nike Inc., Adidas executives are seeking to replicate parts of the campaign to stoke interest in other shoes. “We wanted to position it anew with fashion designers and trendsetters,” says Arthur Hoeld, who heads Adidas’s brand strategy and business development. “This is part of the concept — to push boundaries, to experiment.”

As Adidas was planning the Stan Smith revival about five years ago, the shoe was still selling, though it was showing up more often at discount stores. The feeling around the company was that the model had lost its mojo, but Hoeld and a handful of other executives saw its potential, their confidence bolstered by reports that Phoebe Philo, creative director of the Céline fashion house, had been spotted sporting Stan Smiths at her shows. So Hoeld’s team outlined a campaign designed to look grassroots but which was in fact choreographed from start to finish with a goal of making the shoes de rigueur for people whose parents may be too young to recall the last time Smith played at Centre Court.

Personal Touch

The first step was counter­intuitive: Adidas pulled the shoe from the market in 2012, leaving customers with the impression the move was permanent. By mid-2013, Stan Smiths were almost impossible to find, prompting angry letters from fans — and spurring Smith and some on Hoeld’s team to question the wisdom of the plan. Late that year, Adidas began shipping a new version to dozens of celebrities it had worked with, including singer A$AP Rocky, designer Alexander Wang, and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres. The freebies included a personalized touch intended to get the stars to wear them: A drawing of Smith on the tongue was replaced by an image of each recipient. Adidas struck gold in November 2013, when French Vogue featured model Gisele Bündchen sporting nothing but a pair of white socks — and Stan Smiths. About the same time, Adidas released a two-­minute web video featuring actors and sports stars waxing poetic about the sneakers. “People think I’m a shoe,” Smith laments in the clip, recalling that his son once asked, “ ‘Dad, did they name the shoe after you or you after the shoe?’ ”

The first new models, priced at about $90, hewed closely to the simplicity of the original, with a white body and a touch of color on the tongue and heel. In early 2014, Adidas started shipping them to shops catering to hardcore sneaker fans, followed by specialty footwear retailers and, months later, department stores and big-box outlets. Later that year, the company steadily added spinoffs — Stan Smiths in high heels, faux crocodile skin, and honeycomb leather, as well as 10 pairs hand-painted by singer Pharrell Williams and sold at the Colette fashion boutique in Paris for €500 ($545). In 2015, Adidas introduced variants aimed at specific age groups and tastes: simulated ostrich leather, Velcro closures, white with pink accents, blue pony hair heel tabs — even one featuring Kermit the Frog. “We want a consumer to buy three or four or five pairs,” says Eric Liedtke, Adidas’s global brand chief.

Adidas aims to increase revenue to more than €25 billion in 2020, from €19.3 billion in 2016. The Stan Smith has been a big help. Sales of the shoe jumped dramatically, to 8 million pairs, in 2015, bringing total sales over the past four decades to more than 50 million. While the company hasn’t released figures, researcher NPD Group Inc. estimates U.S. sales rose fivefold last year. Adidas says sales of its Originals collection, which includes the Stan Smith and another top-selling retro model called the Superstar, popularized by rappers Run-DMC, increased by 80 percent in the U.S. last year, more than three times faster than footwear for team sports such as basketball and American football.

Analysts estimate that the company will report a 13 percent increase in first-quarter sales when it provides a financial update Thursday, helped by strong momentum for shoes from the Tubular, NMD and Boost lines.

Dipping into the archives isn’t rare in sports fashion. Adidas created the Originals line more than a decade ago, selling everything from shiny ’70s track suits to Gerd Müller soccer shoes. Smaller rival Puma SE went further by collaborating with designers such as Alexander McQueen. As the concept of sports fashion became ubiquitous — Prada SpA, Louis Vuitton, and other brands now sell luxury sneakers — Puma alienated serious athletes looking for shoes aimed more at improving performance on the track than the runway. Over the past decade, Puma’s profit margin has collapsed from more than 25 percent to about 5 percent today.

As sales of the Stan Smith and the Superstar start to wane, Adidas plans to pump up other throwbacks from the back of its closet: the 1950 indoor soccer shoe Samba, the suede Gazelle dating to the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics, and the Campus, worn by one of the Beastie Boys on the cover of 1992’s Check Your Head. Adidas has “great retro shoes in the vault,” says NPD analyst Matt Powell. And at least one former skeptic has come around to the idea. “I thought there was no way 14- to 24-year-olds would relate to me, so I thought it was a bad strategy,” Smith says. “I’ve been proven wrong. Big time.”

News Courtesy: Bloomberg Pursuits

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Another step in the company’s commitment to create one million pairs of shoes made from Ocean PlasticTM in 2017.

• adidas set to release three new Parley running shoes on May 10.
• adidas x Parley Run for the Oceans digital event brings the movement closer to its global community.
• Four Major League Soccer (MLS) teams to wear jerseys made from Parley Ocean Plastic™ on pitch this weekend as a sign of support for the oceans.

adidas today reiterated its commitment to help end marine plastic pollution as part of its partnership with Parley For The Oceans. On May 10, adidas is set to release three new running shoes, created with Parley Ocean Plastic™, making adidas x Parley footwear more readily available to consumers around the world. Two years into its partnership with Parley, this product launch is yet another step in the company’s commitment to create one million pairs of shoes made from up-cycled marine plastic in 2017.

“At adidas, our core belief is that through sport, we have the power to change lives. This becomes particularly relevant when we talk about the impact we have with our sustainability work. We are one of the very few companies that integrate sustainability into their business model, which becomes most visible in the fact that we take sustainability to the product level.”KASPER RORSTED, ADIDAS CEO

“But we do not stop there. We not only see sustainability as an opportunity to get a competitive advantage. We see it as an obligation for us as a global company to do business in a responsible and sustainable way”, commented Kasper Rorsted, adidas CEO.

Following last year’s launch of adidas’ first products made from Parley Ocean Plastic™, adidas today unveiled details on the upcoming Parley editions of UltraBOOST, UltraBOOST X and UltraBOOST Uncaged. Using intercepted marine plastic, adidas is turning threat into thread to create high performance products, including swimming and outdoor items that were released earlier this year. Find more information at adidas.com/parley.

In addition, two major activations are planned to continue to raise awareness for the state of the oceans:

• adidas is calling on its global community to sign up for the adidas x Parley Run for the Oceans, a global digital activation taking place around World Oceans Day 2017 (June 5-11). To find out more and sign up, please visit adidas.com/runfortheoceans.
• On Sunday, April 23, following the inception of the adidas x Parley Real Madrid and Bayern Munich jerseys in November 2016, four MLS teams will take the pitch in game jerseys made from Parley Ocean Plastic™. The unique kits will be worn when New York City FC host Orlando City SC and when LA Galaxy welcome Seattle Sounders at Yankee Stadium and StubHub Center, respectively.

“Every second breath we take is generated by the Oceans. And still, we are destroying them in rapid speed. Together with adidas we achieved the impossible and turned the severe threat of marine plastic pollution into an opportunity for the whole industry”, commented Cyrill Gutsch, Founder of Parley for the Oceans.

“We established Parley Ocean Plastic™ as a premium material, a symbol of change, a flag for a strategy that can end the problem for good: Parley AIR. Avoid, Intercept and Redesign.”CYRILL GUTSCH, FOUNDER OF PARLEY FOR THE OCEANS

The company also released its 2016 Sustainability Progress Report, the 17th edition published so far. The report is an annual overview of achievements and challenges, outlining adidas 2020 targets in reaching its six strategic priorities: from using more sustainable materials in its production, to tackling the ever-growing issue of water scarcity or the empowerment of its supply chain workers, among others. It is available on the company’s website.

ABOUT THE SUSTAINABILITY REPORT

Deeply rooted in the company’s core belief, the sustainability strategy — launched in 2016 — translates adidas’ sustainable efforts into tangible goals and measurable objectives until 2020. The annual Sustainability Progress Report informs about the sustainability strategy progress.

” No matter how far adidas has come with its sustainability efforts over the years, we know that we can always improve.”KASPER RORSTED, ADIDAS CEO

“For this reason, we are calling all creators, our own employees, our partners and consumers as well as suppliers to be a part of this important journey. We strive to give them the space their ideas and creative force need to improve our company’s sustainable efforts”, says Kasper Rorsted.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2016 SUSTAINABILITY PROGRESS REPORT:

• 2016 target to source 60% Better Cotton exceeded by 8pp, on track with company target of sourcing 100% sustainable cotton by the end of 2018.
• Elimination of approximately 70 million plastic shopping bags as a result of the global switch from plastic bags to paper bags in retail stores.
• Achievement of 23% water savings per employee on adidas sites (2008-2016).
• 736 employees spent a total of 33,000 hours volunteering.
• Increase of 47% in the number of BOKS schools, a free before-school physical activity programme, compared to 2015.
• Growth by 10% in the access to the Workers’ Hotline. The service is now available to 290,000 workers in 63
• strategic supplier factories across four countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China).
• adidas ranked second in the Apparel sector, and fifth in the overall ranking out of 98 corporations in the newly launched Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB). Also, it ranked first in the KnowTheChain evaluation of forced labour in the global Apparel and Footwear sector, mainly due to its best practices, including strong disclosure and supply chain risk mapping.
• The 2016 Sustainability Progress Report is available here.

For more information about adidas’ sustainability approach, click here.

To learn more about the adidas x Parley partnership, click here.

adidas’ results in the area of sustainability have been receiving continuous external recognition. For instance, in 2016, for the 17th consecutive time, the company has been selected to join the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI), the world’s first global sustainability index family tracking the performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.

News Courtesy:http://www.adidas-group.com/en/media/news-archive/press-releases/2017/adidas-reiterates-commitment-oceans-and-publishes-2016-sustainab/

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1. adidas strategically partnered up with Carbon to create the first performance footwear crafted with light and oxygen

• adidas strategically partnered up with Carbon to create the first performance footwear crafted with light and oxygen
• Digital Light Synthesis enables adidas to bring the most personalised performance products from imagination into physical reality
• adidas to create high performance footwear with scale and speed through Digital Light Synthesis, with more than 100,000 pairs by end of 2018

Through adidas’s obsession with helping athletes make a difference in their game, today, the brand unveils Futurecraft 4D, the world’s first high-performance footwear featuring midsoles crafted with light and oxygen using Digital Light Synthesis, a technology pioneered by Carbon. Futurecraft 4D is a fruition of adidas Futurecraft – the brand’s journey to define the future of craftsmanship through exploring new technology, design and collaboration in order to provide the best for each athlete. Futurecraft 4D’s midsole is born out of 17 years of running data, and brought to functional reality through a pioneering digital footwear component creation process that eliminated the necessity of traditional prototyping or moulding. With the new technology, adidas now operates on a completely different manufacturing scale and sport performance quality, officially departing from 3D printing, bringing additive manufacturing in the sports industry into a new dimension.

 

” With Digital Light Synthesis, we venture beyond limitations of the past, unlocking a new era in design and manufacturing. One driven by athlete data and agile manufacturing processes. By charting a new course for our industry, we can unleash our creativity – transforming not just what we make, but how we make it.”

ERIC LIEDTKE, ADIDAS EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL BRANDS

Digital Light Synthesis is a breakthrough process pioneered by Carbon that uses digital light projection, oxygen-permeable optics and programmable liquid resins to generate high-performance, durable polymeric products. Futurecraft 4D is adidas’s first application of the Digital Light Synthesis, and represents the brand’s step into athlete-data driven design and manufacturing. With an ambition to create the ultimate running shoe for all, adidas analysed its library of running data to shape functional zones into a midsole design crafted through Digital Light Synthesis. Unlike any traditional manufacturing technology, Digital Light Synthesis allows adidas to precisely address the needs of each athlete in regards to movement, cushioning, stability and comfort with one single component. Carbon’s unique programmable resin platform offers unparalleled performance with respect to material durability and elastomeric responsiveness. 5,000 pairs of Futurecraft 4D will be available at retail in fall/winter 2017 with further scaling in the coming seasons.

Digital Light Synthesis was created by Carbon, a Silicon Valley-based tech company working to revolutionise product creation through hardware, software, and molecular science. This new take on manufacturing enables adidas designers, sports scientists and engineers to bring even the most intricate designs of their imagination into physical reality. More importantly, it overcomes shortcomings of conventional additive manufacturing methods (i.e. 3D printing)- such as: low production speed and scale, poor surface quality, and colour and material restrictions. Without these limitations posed by traditional production methods, adidas can now bring the best and most innovative products to consumers faster than ever.

Through Futurecraft, adidas started exploring additive manufacturing as a tool to change the way products are created in 2014, and launched Futurecraft 3D Runner, the brand’s first 3D printed performance footwear a year later. Today, adidas has revolutionised additive manufacturing with Carbon, and is committed to scaling and mass-producing Digital Light Synthesised footwear. The brand will continue to work with Carbon in developing new material and machinery to bring about future innovations. Digital Light Synthesis will become an integral part of Speedfactory, providing consumers with bespoke performance products tailored to their individual physiological data, when and where they desire.

Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Carbon Co-Founder and CEO, said:
“Despite the influence of technology to improve almost every other aspect of our lives, for eons the manufacturing process has followed the same four steps that make up the product development cycle – design, prototype, tool, produce. Carbon has changed that; we’ve broken the cycle and are making it possible to go directly from design to production. We’re enabling engineers and designers to create previously impossible designs, and businesses to evolve their offerings, and Futurecraft 4D is evidence of that.”

 

” Our partnership with adidas will serve as an ongoing testament to how the digital revolution has reached the global manufacturing sector, changing the way physical goods are designed, engineered, made, and delivered.”

DR. JOSEPH DESIMONE, CARBON CO-FOUNDER AND CEO

For further information please visit adidas.com/futurecraft, or follow #futurecraft on twitter and instagram to join the conversation. For more information about Carbon visit: www.carbon3d.com

News Courtesy: adidas group