Adidas and Advanced Materials

Adidas and Advanced Materials

Consumer sales of sporting goods in America were over $63 billion in 2015 and until 2020 this industry is supposed to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 3.4% The biggest segment of this market is ball sports equipment (23.7%)

Adidas is one of the biggest companies in the global sporting goods industry. The famous three stripes can be seen in a wide range of products from casual street wear to professional goal keeper gloves.

Adidas main challenges are related to marketing -  like Adidas’s North America president said: “Adidas isn’t cool in America, and cool is what sells sports gear”; and related to the fact that even though Adidas has a revenue of almost 15 million euros it’s still only number two as it continues to live under Nike’s shadow.

With the advent of advanced materials Adidas should look into ways of improving its sports gear. Advanced materials can make sports equipment even lighter, more resistant, can prevent injuries or even help cure injuries.

In football for example, a 100g lighter shoe would mean that a player could do 10 more sprints in a game and that there would be a 20cm advantage over an adversary for every 10m dash for the ball.

Adidas could also use some advanced materials for its street wear lines for example using piezoelectric materials in shoes that would create power that could be used to charge an iphone’s battery for example, or even shoes made with self healing materials for example made from synthetic biological material that can react to pressure and movement when running, providing extra cushioning if required and that after a run are put in protocell liquid that helps the shoe repair itself.