adidas is a German sportswear company founded in Herzogenaurach in 1949, and in India its core shoes sell between roughly ₹9,000 and ₹18,000. It is the second-largest sportswear company in the world and, unusually, one of the few global brands that prices India below its home market. Strip out consumption tax and a Samba OG costs less in Mumbai than in Munich. That is not what anyone expects, and it is the most useful thing in this audit.
adidas is the second-largest sportswear company in the world and the third-largest in India, behind Decathlon and Puma. It is also the rare global brand that charges Indians less than Germans: strip out consumption tax and a Samba OG works out at about ₹9,321 here against about ₹11,207 in Germany. It absorbs the 38.5% import duty rather than passing it through, which makes it the best value of the imported sneaker brands.
Snapshot
- Founded
- 18 August 1949, Herzogenaurach, Germany — as Adolf Dassler adidas Sportschuhfabrik, with 47 employees
- Founder
- Adolf “Adi” Dassler
- Headquarters
- Herzogenaurach, Bavaria, Germany
- Current owner
- adidas AG — listed on the Frankfurt exchange, a DAX constituent. No family or controlling stake; BlackRock is the largest disclosed holder at about 8%
- Global revenue
- €24.81 billion in 2025, up 13% currency-neutral; net income €1.34 billion
- India entity
- Adidas India Marketing Private Limited, incorporated 22 December 1995, Gurugram
- In India since
- 1995
- Category
- Footwear and sportswear
- Price band in India
- ₹4,999 to ₹19,999 for shoes; Samba OG ₹10,999, Ultraboost 5 ₹17,999
- Available in India
- Official — adidas.co.in, own stores, franchise stores and authorised marketplace storefronts
How it started
The company that became adidas began as a family shoe workshop. Adolf and Rudolf Dassler registered Gebrüder Dassler Sportschuhfabrik in the Herzogenaurach commercial register on 1 July 1924, making spiked running shoes and football boots in a Bavarian town of a few thousand people. Adi was the maker, Rudolf the salesman.
Two founding stories get repeated about this period, and both need handling carefully.
The first is that Jesse Owens won four golds in Dassler spikes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The Dassler family foundation states it plainly. adidas itself does not. Its own corporate magazine says: “Evidence of what happened after that meeting is inconclusive, but legend has it that Jesse wore the Dassler shoes.” When a company hedges its own best story, so should we.
The second is that adidas bought the three stripes from the Finnish brand Karhu in 1952 for the equivalent of €1,600 and two bottles of whisky. It is charming and it is undocumented. The best write-ups of it say “it is said that”, name no source, and cannot say which whisky — and the euro did not exist in 1952, which tells you the figure has been retro-converted through several retellings. adidas’s own account traces the stripes to a 1948 football boot with three stabilising straps. We have left the whisky out.
What is documented: on 18 August 1949 Adi registered Adolf Dassler adidas Sportschuhfabrik with 47 employees. The name is “Adi” plus “Das”, with a handwritten “i” added because “addas” was taken.
The split that created two companies
The Dassler brothers’ break is the most retold and least accurately reported story in sportswear, so here is what the record supports and what it does not.
Both brothers joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and held NSKK membership. In late 1943 the factory was converted to war production, spot-welding parts for the Panzerschreck anti-tank weapon, using French forced labourers. After the war, Adi was first classified as a regime profiteer and then reclassified a nominal follower on appeal. The brothers denounced each other before denazification committees. That is the documented mechanism of the rupture — not a single wartime insult.
The popular version — an air-raid shelter in 1943, a muttered remark about “the dirty bastards” — appears in no primary source and neither company’s history mentions it. Nor could we find documentation for the tale that Herzogenaurach became “the town of bent necks”, with rival pubs and bakeries. It may be true. It is not evidenced.
The dates are solid, and almost everyone gets them backwards. In December 1947 the brothers agreed to dissolve the joint company effective 1 January 1948. Rudolf registered his firm first, as RUDA, on 23 January 1948, renaming it PUMA that October. Adi registered adidas on 18 August 1949. Puma came first, by nineteen months.
- Gebrüder Dassler SportschuhfabrikRegistered 1 July 1924 by Adolf and Rudolf
- The brothers dissolve the firmAgreed December 1947, effective 1 January 1948
- RUDA, renamed PUMA that OctoberRudolf registers first, 23 January 1948
- adidas SportschuhfabrikAdi registers 18 August 1949, 47 employees
The order is the part everyone gets wrong: of the two brands, adidas is the younger.
The turning points
1954, and the myth adidas built on it. The company’s own history says: “1954 — World Cup victory with revolutionary screw-in stud boots.” The story is that Adi changed West Germany’s studs at half-time in the Bern final and they beat Hungary 3–2. It is the founding legend of the entire brand.
The German Patent and Trade Mark Office disagrees. Its published record shows Alexander Salot applied on 24 August 1949 and was granted patent DE 815 761B on 9 August 1951 for “football boots or the like with replaceable anti-slip cleats”. Adi Dassler registered only a utility model — a lesser right — on 21 November 1952, for a socket to mount studs under a sole. The patent office’s own wording is that Dassler became national team outfitter and “was later able to knit the legend” that his invention won the 1954 World Cup, concluding the screw-stud boot “has many fathers”.
adidas did not invent the screw-in stud, and a German state patent office says so. The boots were real, the win was real, the invention claim is not.
1967, and the accidental invention of athleisure. adidas calls the Franz Beckenbauer tracksuit its first piece of apparel. Until then a sports company sold shoes. Deciding that what an athlete wore between events was a product created a category that is now larger than performance footwear.
1977 onwards, the terraces. This is the part adidas did not plan and did not control. From the 1977–78 season, Liverpool supporters travelling to European finals — Liverpool reached one every year from 1976 to 1978 — brought home adidas trainers that were not sold in Britain. The Samba came first, then the tennis range: Stan Smith, Nastase, Rod Laver, Forest Hills. The Face only named the look “Casuals” in 1983, six years after it started. Scarcity made those shoes desirable, and the scarcity was an accident of adidas being a European company with European distribution.
1990–93, near death. Adi Dassler died in 1978 and the company drifted. In 1990 the French businessman Bernard Tapie bought adidas; by 1992–93 he was forced to sell to the state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais. Robert Louis-Dreyfus took over as chief executive in 1993 and adidas listed in 1995. The sale spawned one of France’s longest-running financial scandals: a 2008 arbitration awarded Tapie around €400 million after finding the bank had deliberately undervalued adidas, a court annulled the award in 2015, Tapie was ordered to repay in 2017 and acquitted of fraud in 2019, and Christine Lagarde was found guilty of negligence in 2016 for sending the case to arbitration in the first place, though no sentence was imposed.
2013, Boost. Developed with the chemicals company BASF, Boost broke EVA’s monopoly on midsole foam and started the industry’s foam arms race. Note the pattern: adidas licensed the chemistry rather than inventing it. The Ultraboost followed on 11 February 2015 as the first shoe with a 100% Boost midsole.
2015–2022, Yeezy. Covered in the controversies section, because that is where it ended.
2023–2025, the terrace revival. The Samba was named shoe of the year in 2023. Chief executive Bjørn Gulden said terrace shoe sales went from “a couple of hundred thousand pairs a month at the start of last year to millions of pairs a month”. One analyst estimated terrace models at around €1.5 billion of 2024 sales, roughly 7% of revenue. What is interesting is the restraint: Gulden said of the Superstar, “we will not push it globally in huge volumes. We will hold it back and let the consumer decide.” Having watched Yeezy volume collapse, adidas chose to under-supply on purpose.
Reebok: the €1 billion round trip
adidas announced the purchase of Reebok on 3 August 2005 at $59.00 a share — $3.8 billion, or €3.1 billion — and closed it in January 2006 after European clearance. The logic was scale against Nike in North America.
On 12 August 2021 it announced the sale of Reebok to Authentic Brands Group for up to €2.1 billion, part deferred and contingent. Sixteen years, and roughly a third of the purchase price destroyed in nominal terms before you adjust for inflation.
This matters directly to Indian readers, because Reebok is a familiar brand here and almost nobody knows what happened to it. Reebok has not been an adidas brand since 2022. Authentic Brands Group owns the trademark and licenses it out; in India, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail took a long-term exclusive licence announced on 14 December 2021 covering India and its neighbours, and the business now sits with Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands. In June 2026 that company said Reebok’s India sales had roughly doubled in three years, with more than 210 stores and about 30% growth in the March 2026 quarter. adidas has no stake in any of it.
- 2005adidas agrees to buy Reebok, €3.1 billion
- 2006Deal closes after European clearance
- 2021Sold to Authentic Brands Group, up to €2.1 billion
- 2022Reebok India runs under Aditya Birla licence
Sixteen years, and roughly a third of the price destroyed in nominal terms.
How adidas came to India
Adidas India Marketing Private Limited was incorporated in Gurugram on 22 December 1995, which makes adidas a thirty-year resident — its India managing director Neelendra Singh said as much in January 2025. A separate entity, Adidas India Private Limited, followed in 1996. In 2018 adidas obtained government approval to run fully owned single-brand retail and cash-and-carry wholesale under one roof.
The Indian business has grown fast and then stopped converting that growth into profit:
| Year to 31 March | Operating revenue | Profit after tax |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | ₹913.5 crore | ₹45.5 crore |
| 2022 | ₹1,509.7 crore | ₹149.9 crore |
| 2023 | ₹2,506.8 crore | ₹257.9 crore |
| 2024 | ₹3,020.2 crore | ₹177.2 crore |
Registry data puts FY2025 revenue at about ₹3,258.7 crore. Note what happens between FY2023 and FY2024: revenue rises 20% and profit falls by nearly a third. Growth is being bought.
A figure of ₹3,114 crore circulates widely for adidas India and we could not trace it to any source or year-end, so we have not used it.
On stores, adidas disclosed 75-plus own stores across 12 cities plus 370-plus franchise stores in June 2023, with digital above 40% of the business, and about 80 own stores a year later. No current national total is published.
In May 2023 adidas replaced Nike as the Indian cricket team’s official kit sponsor, in a multi-year deal running through March 2028 covering the men’s, women’s and under-19 sides. Neither the BCCI nor adidas disclosed the money. Press reports put it at ₹75 lakh a match, over ₹250 crore across five years, plus a ₹10 crore annual merchandise royalty — reported, never confirmed. What did get reported is the commercial outcome: half a million India jerseys in nine months, three-quarters of them the cheapest ₹999 fan tier.
What happened to Reebok in India
In May 2012 adidas disclosed “commercial irregularities” at Reebok India.
The cost was real: a €25 million goodwill impairment, up to €70 million off 2012 group operating profit, Reebok brand sales down 26% in one quarter, a plan to shut roughly a third of about 900 Indian Reebok stores, and a store network that fell from over 800 in 2013-14 to around 250 by 2015-16.
Who owns it now
adidas AG is listed in Frankfurt and sits in the DAX. There are 180 million shares and no controlling holder. The largest disclosed positions are BlackRock at about 7.97%, Norway’s sovereign fund at 5.11% and the Egyptian businessman Nassef Sawiris at about 4.20% through NNS Holding. The Dassler family has no reported stake. The idea that adidas is still family-owned is simply wrong.
Bjørn Gulden became chief executive on 1 January 2023, arriving directly from the same job at Puma — the other half of the Dassler split, from the same small town. Under him 2025 was a record year: revenue €24.81 billion, up 13% currency-neutral, operating profit up 54% to €2.06 billion, net income up 75% to €1.34 billion, 61,952 employees.
India is not broken out anywhere in adidas’s reporting. It sits inside an “Emerging Markets” segment worth €3.51 billion and is not named once in that segment’s commentary. Any India figure has to come from Indian registry filings, not from adidas.
The models that matter
adidas lists about 1,922 shoe styles on adidas.co.in as of 20 August 2026, alongside 3,312 clothing and 510 accessory lines. The company’s commercial reality is that a handful of shoes designed between 1950 and 1970 are carrying it.
| Model | Launched | What it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Samba | 1950 | A football boot for frozen pitches. Proved a football shoe could live off the pitch — and became the biggest sneaker in the world in 2023-24 |
| Gazelle | 1966 | Put suede on a performance shoe and made colour a product decision rather than a finish |
| Superstar | 1969 | The shell toe. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar endorsed it; hip-hop then took it without being asked |
| Stan Smith | mid-1960s | The reference object for every plain white leather sneaker since. 22 million pairs by 1989 |
| Campus | 1970s | Originally “the Tournament”, a basketball shoe. Became the defining B-boy shoe, and out-sold the Samba in some markets in 2024 |
| Ultraboost | 2015 | First 100% Boost midsole. Made the running shoe a lifestyle object and started the foam arms race |
Two things the Stan Smith story gets wrong
The world’s most famous tennis shoe was not originally his. It launched in the mid-1960s as the Robert Haillet, named for a French player. Shoes carrying Stan Smith’s name appeared in 1973, and for a period the shoe carried both names. adidas dropped “Haillet” only in 1978. Smith did not design it, and it wore another man’s name for its first decade.
And what Run-DMC actually did
“My Adidas” was released on 29 May 1986, and the endorsement deal followed it. An adidas employee saw a Madison Square Garden crowd hold their own unlaced Superstars in the air during a Run-DMC show, and the company signed them afterwards. Guinness World Records recognises it as the first sneaker endorsement given to people outside sport, at $1.6 million.
The group has always been clear about the sequence. Run: “We wasn’t hired to promote adidas; we were just doing us.” adidas did not discover hip-hop. It noticed hip-hop had already discovered it, and paid to formalise the relationship. Every non-athlete sneaker deal since — including, eventually, Yeezy — descends from that contract.
What adidas costs in India
This is where adidas breaks the pattern, and the finding is the opposite of what everyone assumes. Prices checked on adidas.co.in, adidas.com and adidas.de on 20 August 2026, converted at the European Central Bank reference rates of the previous day.
| Model | India | Germany | United States |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samba OG, sticker price | ₹10,999 | €120, about ₹13,335 | $100, about ₹9,576 |
| Samba OG, stripped of consumption tax | about ₹9,321 | about ₹11,207 | about ₹9,576 |
| Ultraboost 5, sticker price | ₹17,999 | €180, about ₹20,003 | $180, about ₹17,237 |
| Ultraboost 5, stripped of consumption tax | about ₹15,253 | about ₹16,810 | about ₹17,237 |
Indian MRP includes 18% GST. German prices include 19% VAT. American prices exclude sales tax, which is added at the counter. Strip the consumption tax out and compare like with like, and on both models India is the cheapest of the three markets — meaningfully cheaper than Germany, adidas’s home country, and marginally cheaper than the United States on the Ultraboost.
That is a real finding and it should change how Indian buyers think. An imported sneaker still pays 20% basic customs duty plus an 18.5% cess on landed value — 38.5% before margin — so the duty is not imaginary. What it means is that adidas is absorbing that duty rather than passing it through. It does not price India as landed cost plus duty plus margin.
adidas prices India to what India will pay, not to what it costs to land the shoe.
One pattern worth knowing before you shop. In every market, adidas holds the current hero at full price and discounts the generation behind it hard. On the day we checked, Samba OG and Ultraboost 5 were at full price in India, Germany and the US, while Ultraboost 20 and Ultraboost 1.0 were half price in India — ₹18,999 down to ₹9,499 and ₹17,999 down to ₹8,999. If you want value rather than the current silhouette, buy one generation back and you will pay roughly half.
- Samba OG in Germany, stripped of VAT
- about ₹11,207
- Samba OG in India, stripped of GST
- about ₹9,321
- Gap
- 17% cheaper in India
- Checked on
- 20 August 2026
Who adidas is actually for
adidas is for the buyer who wants a design that has already survived fifty years. That is not a marketing line — the Samba, Gazelle, Superstar, Stan Smith and Campus are all pre-1975 designs, and they are the reason the company is growing. If you want a shoe that will not look dated in three years, this is the safest ₹10,000 in the category.
It is also, on the numbers above, the best-value global sneaker brand in India, because you are not paying a foreign-market premium. Against Campus or Sparx at a third of the price the gap in construction is real, though for gym-and-errands wear it is not ₹8,000 of real.
Skip adidas if you want performance running. The Ultraboost is a lifestyle shoe that started as a running shoe, and at ₹17,999 there are better tools for a marathon. Skip it too if you are buying the terrace or hip-hop association — those subcultures adopted these shoes decades ago, in Liverpool and Queens, and buying a Samba in a Gurugram mall in 2026 is buying the aesthetic, not the membership. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you know it.
Reputation and controversies
Yeezy. adidas terminated its partnership with Kanye West on 25 October 2022 with immediate effect, saying it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech” and calling his comments “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous”. It warned of up to €250 million off 2022 net income, was left with around $1.2 billion of unsold stock, and posted its first annual loss since 1992.
What it did next is more interesting than the split. Having considered destroying the shoes, adidas instead sold them in batches — €750 million in 2023 and €650 million in 2024, about €1.3 billion in total, generating roughly €500 million of profit on directly product-related costs. It committed over €250 million to donations, including €200 million to a new adidas Foundation and €50 million split between the Anti-Defamation League, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and the Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change.
adidas won the Oregon investor suit over what it had disclosed to investors about West’s conduct between 2013 and 2018. The case was dismissed on 16 August 2024 and dismissed with prejudice that September, on the ground that adidas’s risk disclosures were “broad, hypothetical” and “aspirational rather than guarantees” — not the concrete statements securities fraud requires. Read that precisely: the court did not find adidas behaved well, only that it made no legally actionable misstatement.
The three stripes are weaker than the marketing implies. On 19 June 2019 the EU General Court declared adidas’s European trade mark for three parallel equidistant stripes invalid, holding it an ordinary figurative mark rather than a pattern, and finding adidas had not proved distinctiveness across the EU — it submitted surveys from only five member states. adidas holds many other three-stripe registrations, so this invalidated one mark, not the stripes as a whole. But it kept losing. A New York jury found Thom Browne not liable over four-stripe designs in January 2023; the UK High Court rejected adidas’s claims in November 2024, with the judge observing that “the average consumer will not be able to tell the difference between three and four stripes”; and on 23 October 2025 the Court of Appeal upheld that and invalidated six adidas marks.
Greenwashing. On 2 April 2025 the Regional Court of Nuremberg-Fürth held adidas’s advertised claim that it would be “climate neutral by 2050” misleading and unlawful, because adidas did not explain how — in particular whether through actual reductions or offsetting. adidas’s own 2025 numbers show why the question bites: Scope 1 and 2 emissions are down 22% against a 70% target for 2030, but Scope 3 — the supply chain, which is nearly all of it — is down just 5% against a 42% target.
Labour. adidas has declined to sign the “Pay Your Workers” agreement.
Counterfeits in India. adidas enforces here and wins — in Adidas AG v Keshav H Tulsiani, decided by the Delhi High Court on 19 July 2024, it obtained a permanent injunction against a trader using the identical mark on textiles, who had claimed the name derived innocently from “Adi” and “Das”. But adidas asked for ₹20 lakh in damages and the court awarded ₹3 lakh, for want of proof of actual loss. Injunctions are cheap for infringers to absorb, which is a large part of why the fake market persists.
What it gave sport and fashion
adidas has a habit of inventing a category and then watching somebody else monetise it.
It made sportswear into clothing. The 1967 tracksuit was, by adidas’s own account, its first apparel product; everything now called athleisure descends from a German company deciding that what an athlete wore between events was worth selling.
It gave the world the plain white leather sneaker. The Stan Smith is the object every other plain white court shoe is arguing with, and 22 million pairs had sold by 1989.
It supplied a subculture it did not create and could not control. Terrace culture was built by Liverpool supporters buying shoes abroad that they could not get at home. Scarcity did the work, and the scarcity was accidental.
And it invented the non-athlete endorsement, by accident, in 1986 — the mechanism that every sneaker collaboration since has copied, and the mechanism that later produced Yeezy.
Set against that: it sold Salomon, destroyed roughly a third of €3.1 billion on Reebok, and made and lost a billion-euro business on one artist. Its three stripes have been ruled invalid in the EU and in the UK. And the screw-in stud its origin myth rests on was patented by another man. The most valuable thing adidas owns is a handful of shoes from the 1950s and 1960s that other people decided were cool.
Buying it in India
Buy from adidas.co.in, an adidas own store or franchise store, or the official brand storefronts on the major marketplaces. Franchise stores are legitimate — the franchise network is several times the size of the owned estate.
Counterfeit risk is high, second only to Nike among the brands on this site, and the Samba’s current popularity has made it the most copied silhouette in Indian markets. The tells: stripe edges that are not perfectly parallel or evenly spaced, a gum sole that is orange rather than honey-coloured, a heel tab where the stitching wanders, a tongue label whose font weight is slightly off, and a box style code that does not match the shoe. The Samba’s current popularity has made it the most copied silhouette in Indian markets, so check five things before you pay.
The stripes
The three stripes should be perfectly parallel and evenly spaced, with clean edges. Fakes wander by a millimetre or two, which is visible once you look for it.
The gum sole
A real gum sole is honey-coloured. An orange sole is the single most common giveaway on a fake Samba or Gazelle.
The T-toe overlay
On the Samba, the T-shaped toe piece is thin and crisply cut. Fakes almost always use thicker material and a softer edge.
The heel tab and tongue label
Stitching on the heel tab should run straight. Compare the tongue label’s font weight against adidas.co.in — fakes get the letterforms close but the weight wrong.
The box code
The style code on the box label must match the code printed inside the shoe. A mismatch means the box and the shoe did not leave the factory together.
Given the pricing above, there is no case for importing adidas. It is cheaper here, before tax, than in Germany. Buying abroad only makes sense for models adidas does not bring to India — and even then a returning traveller’s ₹75,000 baggage allowance, not a courier, is the sensible route.
Common questions
Is adidas cheaper in India than abroad?
Before consumption tax, yes. A Samba OG works out at about ₹9,321 in India, ₹11,207 in Germany and ₹9,576 in the US once GST, VAT and sales tax are stripped out. adidas absorbs Indian import duty rather than passing it to the buyer.
Does adidas still own Reebok?
No. adidas sold Reebok to Authentic Brands Group in a deal announced in August 2021 and completed in 2022. In India, Reebok now trades under a licence held by Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands, with over 210 stores. adidas has no stake.
Did adidas invent the screw-in stud football boot?
No. The German Patent and Trade Mark Office records Alexander Salot’s patent, applied for in 1949 and granted in 1951. Adi Dassler registered only a utility model in 1952. The patent office says the screw-stud boot “has many fathers” and that Dassler “was later able to knit the legend”.
Is adidas still owned by the Dassler family?
No. adidas AG is a widely held listed company on the Frankfurt exchange with no controlling shareholder. The largest disclosed holders are BlackRock at about 8%, Norway’s sovereign fund at about 5%, and Nassef Sawiris at about 4%. The family holds no reported stake.
Which is bigger in India, adidas or Nike?
adidas, by a wide margin, on filed accounts — about ₹3,020 crore in the year to March 2024 against Nike India’s ₹1,180 crore. Both are behind Puma India. Note that Nike runs much of its India business through distributors, so its Indian entity understates its presence.
Are adidas and Puma really from the same family?
Yes. Adolf and Rudolf Dassler were brothers who ran one shoe factory in Herzogenaurach and split it in 1948 after denouncing each other during denazification. Rudolf registered his company first; adidas came nineteen months later. Both are still headquartered in the same small town.
References
- adidas Group, company history — 1949 registration, 47 employees, Samba 1950, 1967 tracksuit, Tapie era, 2023 Samba
- Adi and Käthe Dassler Memorial Foundation chronicle — 1924 registration, the name, the three straps, the Owens account
- adidas Group magazine, on Adolf Dassler — adidas’s own hedging of the Jesse Owens story
- German Patent and Trade Mark Office, on the screw-stud shoe — the Salot patent, Dassler’s 1952 utility model, and “knit the legend”
- PUMA corporate, on the RUDA registration — December 1947 dissolution and the 23 January 1948 registration
- Snopes, on the Dassler brothers’ wartime record — party membership, war production, denazification, mutual denunciation
- National Museums Liverpool, on terrace culture — the 1977–78 season, the Samba and tennis range, and The Face naming Casuals in 1983
- France 24, 3 October 2021 — the Tapie purchase, forced sale and the repayment order
- France 24, 29 September 2015 — the arbitration award and its annulment
- Euronews, 19 December 2016 — the Lagarde negligence verdict with no sentence
- adidas–Reebok announcement, SEC filing, 3 August 2005 — $59.00 a share, $3.8 billion, €3.1 billion
- adidas press release, 12 August 2021 — the sale of Reebok for up to €2.1 billion
- Authentic Brands Group, 14 December 2021 — the Aditya Birla licence for Reebok in India
- Business Standard, 14 June 2026 — Reebok India doubling in three years, 210-plus stores
- Adidas India Marketing Pvt Ltd, MCA record — incorporation 22 December 1995, registered office, directors
- Adidas India Marketing Pvt Ltd, filed financials — FY2021 to FY2024 revenue and profit
- Business Today, 12 May 2012 — the May 2012 disclosure and the store closure plan
- Business Standard, 7 March 2014 — the €25 million impairment
- Business Standard, 2 August 2012 — up to €70 million off group operating profit and the 26% Reebok sales fall
- adidas FY2025 results, 4 March 2026 — €24.81 billion revenue, operating profit, net income
- adidas Annual Report 2025, Emerging Markets segment — India is not disclosed separately
- adidas press release, 8 November 2022 — Bjørn Gulden’s appointment from Puma
- BCCI, 23 May 2023 — the kit sponsorship through March 2028, with no financial terms disclosed
- adidas newsroom, Stan Smith history — the Robert Haillet naming, the dual-name period, 22 million pairs by 1989
- Guinness World Records — first non-sporting sneaker endorsement, Run-DMC, $1.6 million
- Complex, on the Run-DMC deal — the Madison Square Garden moment and the group’s own account of the sequence
- adidas press release, 25 October 2022 — the Yeezy termination and the €250 million warning
- Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 7 March 2025 — €1.3 billion of Yeezy stock sold, €500 million profit, the donations
- The Fashion Law, on the investor suit — dismissal on 16 August 2024 and the reasoning
- EU General Court, Case T-307/17, 19 June 2019 — the three-stripes mark declared invalid
- Fieldfisher, on adidas v Thom Browne — the UK Court of Appeal upholding invalidity on 23 October 2025
- Deutsche Umwelthilfe v adidas, Nuremberg-Fürth, 2 April 2025 — the climate-neutral claim held misleading
- SCC Online, 26 July 2024 — Adidas AG v Keshav H Tulsiani, injunction granted, ₹3 lakh damages
- European Central Bank reference rates, 19 August 2026 — the euro, rupee and dollar rates used for conversion
How we research and verify brand audits:
our methodology.
adidas is the best-value global sneaker brand in India, and it gets there by not treating India as a place to recover duty. That is worth saying because it is rare and because the assumption runs the other way. On product, the argument is even simpler: the shoes carrying this company are fifty to seventy-five years old and have outlasted every trend that has been thrown at them.
The reason to keep some distance is the corporate record. This is a company whose founding invention claim is contradicted by a state patent office, whose defining subculture was created by customers without permission, and which lost a billion euros buying Reebok and another on a single artist. None of that makes the Samba worse. It does mean the heritage adidas sells you is a story it has shaped rather than a record it has earned.
Buy the shoes, which are genuinely good and genuinely well priced here. Do not buy the mythology, because a German patent office has already checked it.
