Adidas Strategy

Introduction

Description of the organization

Adidas, founded in 1949 by Adofl Dassler, is a sports apparel manufacturing company. They started with athletic footwear such as running shoes and soccer shoes and they currently own a wide range of products such as bags, watches, shirts and accessories. They are the second largest sportswear manufacturer, behind Nike. Adidas Group is made up of three companies, Reebok, TaylorMade Adidas Golf Company and Rockport. The company's clothing and shoe designs typically feature three parallel stripes, and this same motif is incorporated into Adidas's current official logo.The current mainstream marketing slogan for Adidas is "Impossible is Nothing".

Adidas is the second biggest player in the sporting goods industry, offering a diverse and differentiated product line that serves a wide range of consumers in many global markets but mainly in Europe.Even though Adidas is a promising company that has been successful in the pastand still in the lead after Nike, it is important to evaluate their strategy and how they look towards the future and address the threats and front burner strategic issues they are currently facing in order to maximize the potential of the company knowing that Adidas needs to continue to develop and deliver the best products possible to consumers in order to yield exceptional results on a business level. Their 14.88 billions of Euros with a six percent growth in 2012 was impressive, but the current frontrunner sits atop with a 24.1 billion and a 16 percent growth during the same year; there's room to grow.

Description of the company's strategy

It is important before talking about the key strategic issues to talk about the strategy itself. Adidas has established a plan over 5 years (2010-2015) called "Route 2015". This plan prioritises their investments under six strategic pillars.

1- Diverse brand portfolio

Adidas embraces a multi-brand strategy in order to create a value for each customer basis.

2- Investments focused on highest-potential markets and channels

It is important for a company in this type of industry to set their eyes and focus on the leading market position in all markets in which it competes, while picking the right market to focus on more to be the best. And Adidas does the same. They're expanding activities in emerging markets particularly China and Russia as well as United States.

3- Creating a flexible supply chain

The key strategic priority isto shorten creation and production lead times by continuously improving our infrastructure, process and system.

4- Leading