Adidas was founded in 1949 by Adolf “Adi” Dassler in Herzogenaurach, Germany, after he fell out with his brother Rudolf, who went on to found Puma across the river. The brand made its name quickly, and never more so than at the 1954 World Cup final – the “Miracle of Bern” – when West Germany beat Hungary on a soaked pitch wearing Adidas boots with screw-in studs.
The three stripes are now among the most recognisable marks in the world, at home in sport, in music and on the street in roughly equal measure.
What happened before 1949
The 1949 date is a restart, not a beginning. Adi and Rudolf had been making shoes together since 1924, as Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, and they were good at it early: Jesse Owens ran in Dassler spikes at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The brothers fell out during the war, and in 1948 they divided the business between them. Rudolf took his half across the river Aurach and called it Puma. Adi registered his the following year.
Herzogenaurach spent decades as a town with two employers who did not speak to each other. The local joke was that you could tell a person’s loyalty by looking at their feet – which is how the place earned the nickname “the town of bent necks”.
The stripes were bought, not drawn
The mark everyone recognises was not a studio idea. Adi bought the three stripes in 1952 from the Finnish sports company Karhu, which had been using them on its own shoes. It is my favourite detail about the brand: the most valuable piece of design it owns came off the shelf of a competitor who needed the money more than the stripes.
Off the track and onto the street
The Superstar arrived in 1969 as a basketball shoe, with the rubber shell over the toe that gives it its other name. Basketball moved on; the shoe did not. By the mid-1980s it belonged to hip-hop, and in 1986 Run-DMC recorded My Adidas without being asked or paid to. The endorsement deal came afterwards – the first of its kind between a music act and a sportswear company, and the start of a habit the whole industry now has.
The bad years, and the way out
Adi died in 1978 and his son Horst in 1987, and the company spent the years that followed losing ground it had taken decades to win. It was sold to the French businessman Bernard Tapie in 1990 and floated on the stock market in 1995 under Robert Louis-Dreyfus, which is the point at which it started behaving like a modern business again.
What followed was a long argument with itself about how wide to spread. Salomon was bought in 1997 and sold again in 2005; Reebok was bought in 2006 and sold in 2021. Both ended where they started, and the money and attention went back into the core.
The thing that actually turned the running range around was material. Boost launched in 2013, developed with the chemicals company BASF: thousands of fused capsules instead of a block of moulded foam. It felt different enough on the first step that every competitor spent the next five years answering it – which is why so much of what is sold today as a super foam traces back to that one decision.
The technologies that mattered
Then
- Screw-in studs (1954): interchangeable studs for football boots, and a decisive advantage on a wet pitch.
- Torsion System (1988): a thermoplastic arch through the middle of the sole, letting the forefoot and the heel move independently for better stability.
- EQT (1991): the Equipment line, stripped back to function alone – “everything that is essential, and nothing that is not”.
Now
- Boost: foam made of fused eTPU capsules, with energy return few materials have matched since.
- 4D: a midsole printed with light and oxygen rather than moulded, tuned lattice by lattice.
- Lightstrike Pro: a very light, very elastic foam, reserved for the brand’s fastest racing shoes.
The models worth knowing
My pick of the Adidas range for 2026:
Adidas Ultraboost Light
Why it stands out: the lightest Ultraboost yet. The reworked Boost foam makes it exceptionally comfortable for everyday runs and long walks alike.
Adidas Adizero Adios Pro 3
Why it stands out: the marathon racing shoe at the top of the range. Carbon rods in a super foam make it very fast and very efficient – and not much use for anything else.
Adidas Terrex Free Hiker 2
Why it stands out: half trainer, half walking boot. Light but sturdy, with a waterproof membrane – which in this country is the point.
Questions I get asked about Adidas
Is Boost still worth paying for?
For everyday running and long days on your feet, yes – it is durable and it keeps its feel for a long time, which is not true of every foam that beat it on paper. For racing it has been overtaken by lighter materials, including Adidas’s own Lightstrike Pro. Buy it for comfort over months rather than for a time on a watch.
What is the difference between Lightstrike and Lightstrike Pro?
They are two different materials with a shared name. Lightstrike is the firmer, cheaper EVA-based foam used across the mainstream range. Lightstrike Pro is the light, springy racing foam, and it appears only in the Adizero shoes near the top of the range. If a shoe lists only “Lightstrike”, it is not the racing material.
Do the Energyrods do the same job as a carbon plate?
They are aiming at the same thing from a different direction. A plate is one stiff sheet; the rods are five separate carbon elements laid out along the line of the metatarsals, so the shoe resists bending without being uniformly rigid. Whether that suits you is a question about your foot, not about which is better engineering – and it is why I would always run in both before paying for either. There is more on the idea in the carbon plate story.