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Adidas Versus Puma: A Tale of Two Brothers · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, friends and neighbors. Thanks for tuning in.
0:26
Speaker 1: We have two developments that we'd like to tell you
0:29
Speaker 1: about that occurred outside of the studio only, one of
0:32
Speaker 1: which is tangentially related to today's episode. First is that
0:38
Speaker 1: it is my trusty co host Noel Brown's birthday today.
0:44
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I was running in place um birthday resolution
0:48
Speaker 1: with my new Adida's track shoes. Right yeah, that so
0:52
Speaker 1: happy birthday, Noel. I'm Ben. Let's say hello to our
0:56
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegrum and the set can. Development, which
1:01
Speaker 1: is I guess at best tangentially related to today's episode,
1:04
Speaker 1: is that, for the first time in years, I bought
1:07
Speaker 1: a pair of tennis shoes. You sure did, and Ben,
1:09
Speaker 1: thank you for the birthday wishes. I was the endorphins
1:11
Speaker 1: were flowing through me so much I I didn't even respond,
1:14
Speaker 1: uh politely, and I do apologize. Let's talk about your shoes.
1:17
Speaker 1: Yours are tigers though, right right right? Lions and tigers
1:22
Speaker 1: and bears and pumas, and yes, yes, that is the
1:26
Speaker 1: tangential relationship today. So one of the most well known
1:30
Speaker 1: popular tennis shoe brands is Nike today, right, very true,
1:36
Speaker 1: very very true, just do it. But other brands are
1:40
Speaker 1: still in the international sphere and very very well known,
1:43
Speaker 1: like Adidas and Pumas and um I don't know, we
1:47
Speaker 1: can just spoil this part of the story in advance.
1:49
Speaker 1: Nike kind of blew up as a result of Dita's
1:53
Speaker 1: and Pumas kind of being distracted with sort of the
1:56
Speaker 1: topic of today's episode and not really paying attention to
1:59
Speaker 1: this impending shoe mcgeddon that Nike brought on. Yeah, absolutely absolutely,
2:05
Speaker 1: because well, like, have you ever owned a pair of
2:08
Speaker 1: Adidas or a Puma shoe? I have an Adidas hoodie
2:11
Speaker 1: that I'm quite fond of, um uh, And I think
2:15
Speaker 1: I've owned a Puma a pair of Puma shoes. Don't
2:17
Speaker 1: think I've ever owned any Adidas shoes, but fan of
2:19
Speaker 1: the hoodies. I think I've only owned a track suit
2:23
Speaker 1: from Adidas. It was a different life. I could never
2:26
Speaker 1: I could not picture track it was it was for
2:29
Speaker 1: a show, it was unrelated. But I haven't own the
2:33
Speaker 1: shoes either, which is, you know, not super unusual for us,
2:37
Speaker 1: because neither of us are especially sneaker heads as they're called.
2:40
Speaker 1: But but they are very very popular shoes and they
2:44
Speaker 1: have a very strange story behind them. I guess to
2:49
Speaker 1: start off today, we should go ahead and just be
2:53
Speaker 1: upfront about the pronunciation in the name of this town.
2:56
Speaker 1: Should we have a pronunciation off and then we can
2:58
Speaker 1: check four of O and see who was closest. So
3:00
Speaker 1: you're using four vo, right, that's okay? Is that your
3:03
Speaker 1: go to pronunciation guide of choice? It is because it's
3:06
Speaker 1: crowdsourced and it's usually from natives, so I find it
3:10
Speaker 1: to be pretty reliable. And if they're if the word
3:12
Speaker 1: isn't there, then I just, you know, roll the dice.
3:13
Speaker 1: But this one, in fact was there. So let's how
3:16
Speaker 1: about we spell it first so everyone knows where we're
3:18
Speaker 1: coming from. It's h E r z O G E
3:22
Speaker 1: in A U R A c h. So let's see
3:27
Speaker 1: would that be who's ogan? Who's ok? Why do you
3:32
Speaker 1: give you a shut well man? I may have told
3:34
Speaker 1: you that in the past life I was once a
3:37
Speaker 1: young German boy. That's true. I would defer to your pronunciation.
3:40
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give it a go with the help
3:42
Speaker 1: of four vo, and then I'll check check myself. Hatzelgan
3:44
Speaker 1: Alla hats Olgan got close close. I think I overpronounced
3:52
Speaker 1: the gen again. So they're more like hat solgan al yeah,
3:56
Speaker 1: g and kind of like just right. So you know
4:00
Speaker 1: this is let's call it, what do we say, ben heart,
4:02
Speaker 1: So that's what the locals call it. It's gonna be easier,
4:06
Speaker 1: so I heard. So it has a storied sneaker past. Yes, yes,
4:11
Speaker 1: our story begins with the Dozzler brothers, Rudolph and Adolph.
4:18
Speaker 1: But Rudy and a ADDI to their friends and to
4:21
Speaker 1: us and to us for the purposes of this. So
4:25
Speaker 1: Addie is the younger brother. He's a cobbler. He's an inventor.
4:30
Speaker 1: He's a bit of an entrepreneur. His favorite thing in
4:34
Speaker 1: the world is to sit at his workbench and tinker.
4:38
Speaker 1: And he starts making shoes. So I thought I thought
4:42
Speaker 1: a shoemaker was a cobbler. It was a tinker. Is
4:45
Speaker 1: a tinker as a thing too. There's tinker Taylor Soldier
4:48
Speaker 1: Spine in that movie What's a Tinker? So you could
4:51
Speaker 1: tinker with things. But the old profession is someone who
4:56
Speaker 1: travels from place to place mending things like pots and pants. Right,
5:01
Speaker 1: So he is a tinker and a cobbler. I would
5:03
Speaker 1: say he's a tinkerer. So he's a tinkering cobbler, and
5:07
Speaker 1: he's cobbling at his tinker bench, uh, and what does
5:11
Speaker 1: he make? Ben there there's a little bit of more
5:12
Speaker 1: of a story here too. This was after World War One.
5:16
Speaker 1: Things were pretty dire in Germany um Bavaria where Hartzo
5:21
Speaker 1: is located, and his the brother's mother had had a
5:25
Speaker 1: laundry business that was no longer operational, and so that's
5:30
Speaker 1: where Oddi set up his shop. He was eighteen years
5:35
Speaker 1: old when he returned from World War One in nineteen eighteen,
5:39
Speaker 1: and Harzo was a Northern Bavaria oddly enough to Shoemaking
5:44
Speaker 1: was the biggest industry in the area at the time,
5:47
Speaker 1: so it was a natural fit for him to go
5:50
Speaker 1: into this empty laundry shed and begin making shoes. Right.
5:54
Speaker 1: There's a great, great article that we're gonna pull some
5:57
Speaker 1: good stuff from from Vice Sports by Brian Blickenstaff that
6:01
Speaker 1: sort of mentions the idea that even in those kind
6:05
Speaker 1: of salad days, uh, post World War One, when folks
6:08
Speaker 1: were returning back home and things were kind of a
6:11
Speaker 1: little bit um, getting by by hook or by crook.
6:15
Speaker 1: You you might not have to buy the nicest clothes,
6:17
Speaker 1: but you had to have functional shoes, right, you got
6:20
Speaker 1: you gotta have shoes, And there's there's an excellent article
6:24
Speaker 1: depicting his experience making his first pair of shoes over
6:28
Speaker 1: on Today I found out folks. You may notice we're
6:30
Speaker 1: avoiding giving you the headlines of these articles right now.
6:34
Speaker 1: That's because we don't want to spoil things straight from
6:37
Speaker 1: the gate. So he makes his first shoes for just
6:41
Speaker 1: for his friends. But these shoes that he creates are
6:44
Speaker 1: made out of leather scraps salvaged from helmets and wartime
6:49
Speaker 1: uniforms another gear. These are like mad Max shoes. Yeah,
6:52
Speaker 1: that's a good description. And it turns out people really
6:57
Speaker 1: liked Addie shoes. His reputation spread far beyond Harzeh and
7:03
Speaker 1: pretty soon he had one of the best problems you
7:05
Speaker 1: can have when you start your own business. He had
7:07
Speaker 1: more work than he could handle. Yeah, I think it
7:09
Speaker 1: took him about three years to get to that point. Um,
7:12
Speaker 1: And that's when he enlisted the help of his brother Rudy,
7:16
Speaker 1: who was a little bit more of a business minded
7:19
Speaker 1: kind of guy, a bit of a brash kind of
7:22
Speaker 1: salesman type dude. And he really needed that because Addie
7:25
Speaker 1: was sort of the brains behind the product, and Rudy
7:29
Speaker 1: came in and became, you know, the power behind the throne,
7:31
Speaker 1: the kind of guy that pushed the product out into
7:33
Speaker 1: the marketplace. A bit. Yeah, Nree, Rudy joins. And we
7:38
Speaker 1: must emphasize just how different these two guys are. ADDI
7:44
Speaker 1: sounds to me like an introvert and Rudy definitely seems
7:48
Speaker 1: like the extrovert. And this this worked in the beginning.
7:53
Speaker 1: This was a fantastic partnership. I mean they had already
7:56
Speaker 1: grown up together, so they knew what to expect, and
7:58
Speaker 1: they worked pretty well in the early days. Uh. And
8:02
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four, things were going well enough that
8:06
Speaker 1: they said, you know what, let's make it official. Bro,
8:09
Speaker 1: Let's start a company. Yeah. They're called the Dossler Bros.
8:12
Speaker 1: Or Dossler the Dozzler Brothers Shoe Company. And they continue growing,
8:19
Speaker 1: so I believe it's in nineteen twenties six they say, Okay,
8:23
Speaker 1: this laundry shed operation isn't cutting it. We need an
8:26
Speaker 1: actual factory. Oh. We shall also mentioned before we get
8:30
Speaker 1: too far into the story. After World War One, Rudy
8:34
Speaker 1: had decided he wanted to become a policeman, and he
8:37
Speaker 1: actually he trained for it like a Gestapo type policeman.
8:40
Speaker 1: Interesting that you would mention that part that is going
8:43
Speaker 1: to come into play later, because yes, this is Germany
8:47
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen twenties at this time. Yes, yes,
8:51
Speaker 1: So where where should we go next? We're we're still
8:54
Speaker 1: in Harzoh right we are, and we're gonna we're gonna
8:57
Speaker 1: mainly stay there. Yeah, yeah, towards the end we I'd
9:00
Speaker 1: expand a little, but yes, this is a Harzos story
9:03
Speaker 1: through and through. Uh do you want to talk a
9:06
Speaker 1: little bit about what these shoes look like and how
9:10
Speaker 1: they differ from modern shoes? Yeah? I think we really should.
9:13
Speaker 1: There is a really cool blog post on a site
9:16
Speaker 1: called design Boom called History of Adida's Audi Dostler's first
9:20
Speaker 1: Track and Field Shoes, and it goes through a chronology
9:24
Speaker 1: of these designs of between the twenties and the thirties.
9:27
Speaker 1: The very first shoe, called the Model Viitzer from nineteen
9:32
Speaker 1: was a sprint shoe and it was actually worn at
9:35
Speaker 1: the Olympic Games in Amsterdam of that year, and it
9:39
Speaker 1: looks almost like a rudimentary, kind of very stark ballet
9:44
Speaker 1: shoe mixed with like a bowling shoe. But it's very
9:48
Speaker 1: very steeply angled from the heel to like where the
9:51
Speaker 1: ball of the foot might be, and then it flattens
9:54
Speaker 1: out and then has these cleats, these six pronounced almost
9:59
Speaker 1: like crocodile teeth looking cleats UM. And this was kind
10:02
Speaker 1: of um a revolutionary design because according to this blog,
10:06
Speaker 1: it was the first shoe to use a screw system
10:10
Speaker 1: in athletics, which were six handmade spikes that were cut
10:15
Speaker 1: pressed through these holes that were punched in the out
10:18
Speaker 1: sole of the shoe, and then we're screwed in um
10:21
Speaker 1: using a steel disk that attaches from the outsold the
10:25
Speaker 1: outside of the shoe. And there were some positives here
10:28
Speaker 1: and that it gave runners traction that they had lacked
10:32
Speaker 1: in the past. But it also they were a little
10:34
Speaker 1: bit heavy because there were a lot of weighty metal parts, right,
10:38
Speaker 1: and they were not manufacturing the actual spikes themselves. They
10:42
Speaker 1: did have help from a blacksmith operation, but the rest
10:46
Speaker 1: of it sourcing the material and assembling that that's that's
10:49
Speaker 1: all Dostler, And it's true, this stuff is revolutionary. People
10:55
Speaker 1: are loving it. We do need to mention that Adolf
10:59
Speaker 1: Hitler and the Nazi Party come to power in what
11:03
Speaker 1: round thirty three, and when this happens, both of the
11:08
Speaker 1: Dozzler brothers do join the Nazi Party. That's true. Um,
11:13
Speaker 1: they have been described, to their credit, I guess as
11:15
Speaker 1: not being the most uh adamant Nazis. I guess they
11:21
Speaker 1: were sort of low key Nazis. Yeah they were. They
11:24
Speaker 1: were not. Um, I guess they were fair weather Nazis. Yeah.
11:28
Speaker 1: It seemed like they were just doing it because they
11:32
Speaker 1: were fitting in maybe, which is a huge problem. It's
11:35
Speaker 1: a huge problem with the whole Nazi plague in general.
11:38
Speaker 1: It's like I was just following orders. I was just
11:40
Speaker 1: trying to fit in. That's not a discussion for today's episode.
11:44
Speaker 1: But all the while, they they're blending into the background,
11:47
Speaker 1: um while making these shoes, and it kind of comes
11:52
Speaker 1: to a head when one of their designs gets worn
11:56
Speaker 1: by a very famous African American UH sprinter by the
12:01
Speaker 1: name of James Cleveland Owens a k a. Jesse Owens,
12:06
Speaker 1: who wore these shoes and a very specific sporting event
12:09
Speaker 1: that we have talked about in episodes past. Yes, we
12:12
Speaker 1: were referring to the nineteen thirty six Summer Olympics, which
12:16
Speaker 1: were held in Berlin. UH. If you've checked out our
12:19
Speaker 1: earlier episode, then you noticed that Jesse Owens is a
12:23
Speaker 1: returning guest to our show. Jesse Owens was a track
12:27
Speaker 1: and field star, and given that the Dozzler brothers were
12:32
Speaker 1: already benefiting from the Nazi Party's use of sports as
12:36
Speaker 1: a propaganda tool, they saw the Summer Olympics as an
12:41
Speaker 1: opportunity to go into the international sphere and get recognition
12:46
Speaker 1: outside of Harzo and outside of Germany. So they pushed
12:50
Speaker 1: and pushed to get Dossler shoes on Jesse Owens. All
12:55
Speaker 1: they really seemed to care about in the Olympics, in fact,
12:59
Speaker 1: was getting je See Owens to wear these shoes. He
13:02
Speaker 1: did wear Dossler shoes and he won four gold medals, which, again,
13:06
Speaker 1: if you look at the way these shoes are constructed,
13:09
Speaker 1: is crazy because there you're not supposed to use your heel,
13:12
Speaker 1: You're just supposed to like dig in and run on
13:15
Speaker 1: your toes. And the plan worked. Owen's four medals gave
13:19
Speaker 1: the company huge amounts of international attention, and athletes from
13:24
Speaker 1: all across Europe started making their way to this village
13:27
Speaker 1: harz Oh, which is pretty tiny, whenever they passed through Germany,
13:31
Speaker 1: saying I gotta get a pair of one of those
13:33
Speaker 1: Dossler Brothers shoes. Yeah, and from that original design we
13:37
Speaker 1: talked about, from this one was much improved because it
13:41
Speaker 1: actually left out the metal plate um and it had
13:45
Speaker 1: very small islets where the and thin laces, which helped
13:49
Speaker 1: to reduce the weight of the shoe, which was really
13:52
Speaker 1: important for you know, sprinting. Absolutely in fact, instead of
13:56
Speaker 1: they had to get really creative with materials because instead
13:59
Speaker 1: of using that metal late they used something called vegetable
14:02
Speaker 1: tanned bottom leather or vash leather um and that significantly
14:07
Speaker 1: reduced the weight. So really forward thinking design work going
14:11
Speaker 1: into these shoes that continued to carry on, specifically with
14:15
Speaker 1: UH with Audi. Yeah, I look again, as we're going
14:19
Speaker 1: to see, neither of these guys are perfect, but all
14:22
Speaker 1: these innovations in the world of footwear are Audies. I
14:25
Speaker 1: want to highlight that because I feel like that's very
14:30
Speaker 1: important that Audi was the brains of the operation. Well,
14:34
Speaker 1: at this point, their success is bringing them to a
14:36
Speaker 1: more money, more problems sort of situation. Their relationship is
14:41
Speaker 1: becoming strained, and as the company is succeeding, Germany is
14:46
Speaker 1: inching closer to war and the brothers are experiencing a
14:51
Speaker 1: failure in their relationship. One that a huge animosity that
14:57
Speaker 1: extends to their wives, their children, their pair, it's their
15:00
Speaker 1: other siblings, because they did have other siblings, and weirdly
15:04
Speaker 1: both families lived together in the same villa, which seemed
15:08
Speaker 1: less than ideal considering that every source we've looked into
15:12
Speaker 1: has their wives just fighting like cats and dogs between
15:15
Speaker 1: each other. They were not peacemakers, not at all. And
15:18
Speaker 1: I'm sure that tension carried over into the brother's relationship.
15:21
Speaker 1: When you're trying to defend your wife in some sort
15:23
Speaker 1: of spat and take take their side, it probably soured
15:28
Speaker 1: relations between the brothers and less not forget moms in
15:31
Speaker 1: the picture too. So in nineteen forty, Addie gets the
15:40
Speaker 1: call he is asked to serve in the German military,
15:44
Speaker 1: and he does for about three months, but somehow he
15:47
Speaker 1: is able to get an exemption, and you'll hear different
15:51
Speaker 1: his story and speculate that this could have been due
15:54
Speaker 1: to Rudy's effort to maybe back in Harzel. He was
15:58
Speaker 1: pulling some strings to get his brother out to go
16:02
Speaker 1: back to the shoe business, and we'll probably never know
16:05
Speaker 1: for sure whether he was able to get that exemption
16:09
Speaker 1: due to Rudy, but we do know that whatever happened,
16:13
Speaker 1: it did not alleviate the tension between the families. As
16:17
Speaker 1: as the war kicked into full swing, the tensions between
16:22
Speaker 1: the families got worse and worse until they hit a
16:24
Speaker 1: tipping point. Yeah, this is one of the most divisive
16:28
Speaker 1: bits of the story. Um There there are various accounts
16:31
Speaker 1: of this, but it is something that comes up repeatedly,
16:33
Speaker 1: and so supposedly in when there was an Allied air
16:38
Speaker 1: raid on um Hartze, the brothers and their families found
16:44
Speaker 1: themselves sharing a bomb shelter um and supposedly Adolph made
16:51
Speaker 1: a comment that Rudy was never able to shake because
16:55
Speaker 1: he interpreted as being a direct insult to his family. So,
17:00
Speaker 1: as the story goes, Adolph and hearing the sound of
17:04
Speaker 1: the approaching um R a F Forces Royal Air Force
17:08
Speaker 1: British planes, said something to the effect of there come
17:13
Speaker 1: those pig dogs again or here come those bastards, The
17:16
Speaker 1: dirty bastards are back again, exactly to which Rudy uh
17:22
Speaker 1: heard that as an insult, lobbed at he and his
17:26
Speaker 1: family as they got into the shelter. And this was
17:31
Speaker 1: either a misunderstanding or grudge that both brothers would carry
17:37
Speaker 1: throughout their lives and refuse to reconcile. Later that year
17:41
Speaker 1: this Rudy himself gets called up for military service, and
17:46
Speaker 1: at this point he suspects that Audi had schemed to
17:51
Speaker 1: get him sent to the front to edge him out
17:54
Speaker 1: of the business, and he serves from nineteen p three
18:00
Speaker 1: to nineteen five. In Rudy deserts his post in Poland.
18:06
Speaker 1: He flees just ahead of the oncoming Russian army and
18:11
Speaker 1: he goes back to harriz Oh. He hurriedly gets a
18:14
Speaker 1: friend of his who is a doctor to declare him
18:17
Speaker 1: unfit for military service due to a frozen foot. But
18:21
Speaker 1: then frozen foot, Yeah, frozen foot Is that like a
18:25
Speaker 1: twisted ankle kind of it's you know what he was
18:28
Speaker 1: in a hurry? Is that like bone spurs? Yeah, it's
18:31
Speaker 1: just something to make you unable to walk? And so
18:34
Speaker 1: this doesn't pass muster with the Gestapo. They arrest Rudy
18:39
Speaker 1: Dostler for desertion and he blames that on Addie two.
18:43
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. We don't know whether Aidolph Dostler
18:47
Speaker 1: got his brother purposely sent into military service, but we
18:53
Speaker 1: do have pretty compelling, circumstantial reports that both Audie and
18:58
Speaker 1: his wife snitched on him. Yeah, I say, I see
19:00
Speaker 1: referenced in several places. Um, one of which is in
19:03
Speaker 1: a Fortune magazine article called the Hatred and Bitterness behind
19:07
Speaker 1: two of the world's most popular brands by Omar Aktar
19:10
Speaker 1: to a an American investigative report. Um, that was found
19:15
Speaker 1: and that's in Fortune, right, Yes, that's Unfortune. And so
19:19
Speaker 1: he's arrested first for dessert his post by the Gestapo,
19:23
Speaker 1: and then when he's released by the Gestapo, he's arrested
19:27
Speaker 1: by the Allies on suspicion of working for the Gestapo.
19:33
Speaker 1: And that American investigative report that you mentioned, NOL does
19:37
Speaker 1: give truth to his claims. And while he was languishing
19:42
Speaker 1: wasting away in a pow camp. Uh, Adolph Dostler is
19:47
Speaker 1: very hard at work. He's rebuilding the business and he
19:50
Speaker 1: is making a killing selling shoes, selling quote unquote Jesse
19:55
Speaker 1: Owen shoes. Two American soldiers who all know about the
19:59
Speaker 1: legend very summer Olympics and all want to have the shoes.
20:03
Speaker 1: And it feels to me this is a speculating but
20:07
Speaker 1: told me, tell me if you think this is true.
20:08
Speaker 1: Band that this is a really early example of this
20:11
Speaker 1: kind of endorsement culture in sporting goods and war and
20:15
Speaker 1: any kind of apparel. Right. I really do feel like
20:17
Speaker 1: this is kind of the model setter for that whole thing,
20:20
Speaker 1: and this is something that the company would continue to
20:23
Speaker 1: lean heavily into and it would become another sore spot
20:28
Speaker 1: between the brothers as time went on. Absolutely we should
20:31
Speaker 1: also point out I couldn't find anything about Jesse Owens
20:35
Speaker 1: getting any percentage of sales, So I think that was
20:39
Speaker 1: I think that was rough spot for him because he
20:41
Speaker 1: could have made millions. What was a different time, right,
20:43
Speaker 1: I mean it was like a cutting edge stuff. They
20:46
Speaker 1: were almost like, yeah, just give me the shoes so
20:48
Speaker 1: I can perform better because other companies weren't making anything
20:51
Speaker 1: that was quite up to this level of innovation, right, Right.
20:55
Speaker 1: So these guys at first their personalities complementing one another.
21:00
Speaker 1: Then their relationships became strained. Now they hate each other,
21:04
Speaker 1: They loathe and a bore one another, and they can
21:08
Speaker 1: barely stand each other's presence, which is weird because they
21:11
Speaker 1: still both live in the same, very very small town
21:14
Speaker 1: and we see this hate in the historical record. So
21:18
Speaker 1: Rudy is not taken this on the chin or turning
21:21
Speaker 1: the other cheek. He retaliates against his brother in nineteen
21:25
Speaker 1: forty six when Adolph Dossler is hauled before the Deed
21:30
Speaker 1: not Sification Committee and he could be classified as something
21:36
Speaker 1: called a belstetter or a profiteer, which means if he
21:41
Speaker 1: is proven to have made a lot of profit or
21:44
Speaker 1: having broken financial laws during wartime, he could have lost
21:48
Speaker 1: control of the entire company of Dossler Brothers. And that meant,
21:54
Speaker 1: at least in Rudy's mind, that he could be appointed
21:56
Speaker 1: to run the company. He could maybe even cut out
21:59
Speaker 1: his brother in entirely, which is brutal when you consider
22:02
Speaker 1: Rudy didn't make the shoes. This is this is very strange.
22:06
Speaker 1: So he tried to paint Adolph Dostler in a terrible
22:11
Speaker 1: light trying to get control of the company. But they
22:15
Speaker 1: still lived under the same roof. Yeah, so he was
22:18
Speaker 1: sort of like pointing the finger right at his right
22:21
Speaker 1: in himself. Um. And ultimately the Allies determined that neither
22:26
Speaker 1: of the Dostler brothers were problematic enough Nazis to really
22:30
Speaker 1: mess with. They had bigger Nazi fish to fry. Yeah yeah,
22:34
Speaker 1: And the American occupation forces. Actually it sees their villa.
22:38
Speaker 1: So all these this, these two families that hate each
22:41
Speaker 1: other are living in uh makeshift accommodations in the shoe factory,
22:47
Speaker 1: so this is funny. In nineteen eight, they officially split
22:51
Speaker 1: the company up and moved to opposite sides of the
22:55
Speaker 1: river that bisects this tiny little hamlet in uh In
22:59
Speaker 1: Bavaria River oroc. Yeah, and Audi names his company Adidas Adidas, right,
23:07
Speaker 1: which is a portman to we were on dangerous ground
23:12
Speaker 1: there of his first and last names. And Rudy tries
23:18
Speaker 1: to do something similar and at first he calls his
23:21
Speaker 1: company Ruda. Now to me, this is a big signpost
23:27
Speaker 1: of how uncreative and kind of like rip off e
23:31
Speaker 1: Rudy kind of was. That he immediately had to be like, oh,
23:34
Speaker 1: you're gonna make a portmanteau for your company name. Well,
23:36
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do the same thing, you know, And because
23:39
Speaker 1: Adidas is clever, that's a good idea and it sounds
23:42
Speaker 1: it sounds good. But you know, he did see the
23:44
Speaker 1: light and whether he was counseled by some smart young
23:48
Speaker 1: buck in marketing, he changed the name to the the
23:51
Speaker 1: now much more ubiquitous Puma, which couldn't imagine I mean Ruda.
23:54
Speaker 1: That sounds that's hard, that's not even fun to say.
23:57
Speaker 1: It sounds like years ago, I did an episode for
24:01
Speaker 1: Car Stuff on cars behind the Iron Curtain. Remember that
24:04
Speaker 1: I was the producer of that producer that's yeah, wow,
24:08
Speaker 1: we go way back. But the thing is, Ruda sounds
24:12
Speaker 1: like a kind of iron curtain car. It also sounds
24:15
Speaker 1: like the prefix for like rudimentary makes me think like
24:19
Speaker 1: they're kind of like crappy shoes. Yeah, it just sounds
24:22
Speaker 1: very plain, you know. Puma. On the other hand, I
24:24
Speaker 1: picture a powerful, you know, prowling beast with speed and
24:30
Speaker 1: precision and agility, something that leaps and pounces. Right. So, yes,
24:36
Speaker 1: correct decision on Rudy's part to us shed that name
24:40
Speaker 1: Ruda and go for something a little bit better. And
24:44
Speaker 1: here's something interesting. We mentioned earlier that harz Oh is
24:49
Speaker 1: in an area of Germany. It was known for shoemaking. Historically,
24:53
Speaker 1: it was one of the primary industries of the area.
24:56
Speaker 1: It's no surprise that shoe factories would take off here,
25:00
Speaker 1: but eventually most of the town, if not all of
25:04
Speaker 1: the town, ends up working for one of these two factories.
25:08
Speaker 1: These guys still hate each other, by the way, Oh,
25:10
Speaker 1: with a venomous passion, and that that passion extends this
25:15
Speaker 1: to me, this was one of the weirdest parts. It
25:17
Speaker 1: extends to the employees. Oh man, no, it is. It
25:20
Speaker 1: was they created this whole hat field in McCoy's kind
25:23
Speaker 1: of atmosphere, in this little town um that was literally
25:27
Speaker 1: divided by that river we talked about. I mean, there
25:30
Speaker 1: were restaurants, bars, grocery stores specifically designed to just be
25:36
Speaker 1: for employees of one company or the other. They were
25:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine it would have been codified
25:42
Speaker 1: in any kind of real way, but there was this
25:44
Speaker 1: unspoken idea that they never the twain shall meet. There
25:47
Speaker 1: shall be no coupling between Puma and Adida's employees, including yeah,
25:54
Speaker 1: romantic pursuits. Yeah, I think that's that's that's yeah, exactly right,
25:57
Speaker 1: And certainly marriage would have been hashtag for boating built in. Yeah.
26:03
Speaker 1: And there's there's an interesting split in terms of the
26:08
Speaker 1: internal workforce as well. So when the Dossler brothers split
26:13
Speaker 1: the company up, the employees essentially had to choose they
26:17
Speaker 1: could go to Adidas or they could go to Puma.
26:20
Speaker 1: Most of the technical people like the actual cobblers stayed
26:25
Speaker 1: with Adidas. Most of the salesforce and the admin folks
26:29
Speaker 1: went with Puma and it showed pretty quickly and man,
26:34
Speaker 1: making it even deeper bitterer family affair. Even the mom
26:39
Speaker 1: had to pick sides. Yeah, yeah, who who did she think?
26:44
Speaker 1: She went with the elder? Isn't that crazy? Which is
26:47
Speaker 1: so crazy because Oddi's the was the idea man. He
26:50
Speaker 1: was the Willy Wonka of this whole operation. He started
26:53
Speaker 1: it in her abandoned laundry. How could she forsake her
26:58
Speaker 1: her young son like at her bright young boy. Yeah,
27:03
Speaker 1: I think clearly we have chosen our horse in this race.
27:06
Speaker 1: We don't want to be too bias, but we do
27:07
Speaker 1: want to be transparent about that. Rudy seems like the worst.
27:11
Speaker 1: I'm on team Audi all the way. What about you, Casey.
27:15
Speaker 1: I gotta side with the run DMC and Corn. I'm
27:17
Speaker 1: going Adidas. It has been adjudicated, Casey on the case.
27:24
Speaker 1: I love that segment. Have you seen that shirt design
27:27
Speaker 1: that's floating around on the Facebook And no spoilers, guys,
27:30
Speaker 1: but it's happening and I think it's going to have
27:33
Speaker 1: some French on it. Check it out. Go to Ridiculous
27:36
Speaker 1: Historians our community page, where you can see some A
27:40
Speaker 1: plus memes as well. So let's let's pause for a
27:44
Speaker 1: second before before we get into even more approbrium. There
27:48
Speaker 1: is an interesting story about how they make how they
27:51
Speaker 1: decide the iconic shoes, right, because clearly the Adidas or
27:55
Speaker 1: the Pumas you buy today do not look like the
27:58
Speaker 1: shoes the Jesse Owens. Oh no, like I said, I
28:01
Speaker 1: mean you see on this amazing design blog design boom Um,
28:05
Speaker 1: just the evolution of these shoes. And even as far
28:09
Speaker 1: as it goes no, it's cool. You actually when you
28:12
Speaker 1: start when it becomes Adidas because this this uh, this
28:14
Speaker 1: site is particularly devoted to oddies designs, so they've obviously
28:18
Speaker 1: chosen sides as well, you start to see more of
28:20
Speaker 1: a fashion trend kind of coming into play. Spikes are
28:24
Speaker 1: less pronounced, spikes are less pronounced, there's more color. They
28:28
Speaker 1: have that like even in like sixty four um, you
28:31
Speaker 1: have the the designs that use that kind of more
28:34
Speaker 1: um Swede blue swede look. And then they've got the
28:38
Speaker 1: little kind of stripes along the side, much more traditional.
28:41
Speaker 1: Then you start seeing those like iconic like gold colored ones.
28:45
Speaker 1: It's called the Azteca Gold Model. Um, and that's as
28:48
Speaker 1: far as this blog goes. But yeah, so it took
28:51
Speaker 1: like into the sixties for for them to really start
28:53
Speaker 1: getting that iconic look that we know today from Adidas. Yeah,
28:56
Speaker 1: and so we do have this story behind that iconic
29:00
Speaker 1: three stripe arrangement on Adidas. So they had those strips
29:05
Speaker 1: before and earlier versions of the shoe, but they weren't
29:08
Speaker 1: really noticeable. They were the same color, like he said before,
29:11
Speaker 1: the gold, before the blue and the white. So Audie
29:15
Speaker 1: decided that the strips should be painted some other color
29:19
Speaker 1: to make them look like stripes, and that this would
29:21
Speaker 1: be the Adidas trademark. And so he made sample shoes,
29:25
Speaker 1: some with two, some with three, some with four or
29:27
Speaker 1: even as many as six stripes apiece, And then he
29:30
Speaker 1: asked his wife and his sister in law to pick
29:32
Speaker 1: which ones they liked best. They ended up saying that
29:36
Speaker 1: four stripes is too many, it felt too busy, and
29:39
Speaker 1: so on their advice, he went with the three stripe
29:42
Speaker 1: design over at Puma. By the way, just to be fair,
29:45
Speaker 1: Rudy had a couple of different depictions. He thought of
29:49
Speaker 1: maybe having a Puma jumping through capital d but eventually
29:53
Speaker 1: he just settled on the company's signature horizontal stripe, which
29:58
Speaker 1: they call a form stripe. Man, and you have just
30:01
Speaker 1: really expanded my sneaker head Oh no, oh, no, actual
30:06
Speaker 1: sneaker heads who are listening to this. YEA. Hopefully you
30:10
Speaker 1: find this of interest. Hopefully, but really, if you are
30:13
Speaker 1: a sneaker head, I cannot I know I'm harping on it,
30:15
Speaker 1: but I cannot recommend highly enough this Design Boom blog
30:18
Speaker 1: because each shoe has very specific information about like some
30:23
Speaker 1: of the design features, and there are some very specific
30:26
Speaker 1: kind of jargon e terms that I was unaware of
30:28
Speaker 1: that folks that are into that world might be a
30:30
Speaker 1: little more hip too, so I recommend checking that out.
30:37
Speaker 1: We should also mention I think we talked about this
30:39
Speaker 1: a little bit off air. The entire time this story
30:43
Speaker 1: is taking place, like since forty eight, they are suing
30:47
Speaker 1: the pants off each other, right or trying to. I
30:49
Speaker 1: mean pretty much just a NonStop torrent of lawsuits UM.
30:54
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you were able to find
30:55
Speaker 1: anything specific Ben or any specific UM documentation, but I
31:00
Speaker 1: would conjecture I would hazard to guess that a lot
31:04
Speaker 1: of it was around Rudy possibly nicking some of these
31:08
Speaker 1: designs from his clearly more sneaker headed brother, ADDI, Oh yeah, absolutely.
31:15
Speaker 1: And as this stuff is happening, Adidas and Puma are
31:20
Speaker 1: both growing as companies. The town is getting further and
31:24
Speaker 1: further and further divided. It becomes known as did you
31:28
Speaker 1: see this nickname? No? Oh? Yeah, the bent Next, Yes,
31:32
Speaker 1: the town of bent Next. Because, according to the story,
31:36
Speaker 1: if you were walking around town and you saw some
31:38
Speaker 1: when you didn't know, you would look at their shoes
31:41
Speaker 1: before you decided whether to talk to them. If you
31:44
Speaker 1: were a Puma person and they wore pumas, you're in Yeah.
31:47
Speaker 1: That is just crazy how it's such a specific industry
31:51
Speaker 1: and such a small town to be divided so and
31:54
Speaker 1: have such a very interesting way of identifying and easy, right,
31:58
Speaker 1: you could just look at the other person's US and say,
32:00
Speaker 1: I know what team you're on, buddy. Here's how deep
32:03
Speaker 1: it went. This is something I found. I only found
32:06
Speaker 1: this in one place, so I hope it's true, but
32:09
Speaker 1: I couldn't confirm me yet. Apparently each side had their
32:12
Speaker 1: own tombstone carvers. Ye, that will come into play a
32:15
Speaker 1: little bit later. I did find an article on a
32:19
Speaker 1: blog called Duets blog that deals with the intersection of
32:23
Speaker 1: creativity and the law, and it talks about how a
32:26
Speaker 1: lot of the lawsuits between Puma and Adidas were in fact,
32:30
Speaker 1: uh quibbling over that three stripe design that you mentioned
32:35
Speaker 1: earlier and went into um Apparently Puma, in a burst
32:39
Speaker 1: of creativity made it a four stripe design um to
32:43
Speaker 1: just you know, one one stripe better in the mind
32:46
Speaker 1: of in the mind of Rudy. Not to mention the
32:49
Speaker 1: fact that we talked about earlier, how there was this
32:53
Speaker 1: um focus on getting these athletes to endorse these products, right,
32:57
Speaker 1: and that continued and became a game of one upsmanship
33:01
Speaker 1: between Addie and Rudy as their respective companies kind of
33:05
Speaker 1: started to gain steam on their own. And this continued
33:08
Speaker 1: on throughout the years. When Addie actually turned down the
33:13
Speaker 1: idea of sponsoring this young up and coming tennis player
33:17
Speaker 1: by the name of Boris Becker. If you've heard of him,
33:19
Speaker 1: he was a big deal in the in the eighties
33:21
Speaker 1: and in the nineties. UM. And so just just as
33:25
Speaker 1: a you know, act of pure one upsmanship, Rudy signed him,
33:29
Speaker 1: not because he thought he was awesome or he saw
33:33
Speaker 1: any promise in him. He just wanted to piss off
33:35
Speaker 1: his brother. Um. And this is from a fantastic article
33:38
Speaker 1: in the Telegraph called Addas and Puma. Bury the hatchet
33:42
Speaker 1: after sixty years of brothers feud? What Bury the hatchet? Ben?
33:45
Speaker 1: What does that mean? It means that the brothers died.
33:50
Speaker 1: And remember that that tombstone carver you were talking about, Well,
33:53
Speaker 1: those respective tombstone carvers carved those respective tombstones on polar
33:58
Speaker 1: opposite sides of the town. Yes, that's correct. Rudy Dossler,
34:02
Speaker 1: the elder of the Dossiler brothers, died on October nineteen
34:06
Speaker 1: seventy four of lung cancer. He was seventy six. Uh.
34:10
Speaker 1: The priest called his little brother Adolf to his side,
34:15
Speaker 1: and they did not squash the beef. As far as
34:19
Speaker 1: we know. Adolf himself expired four years later, he was
34:24
Speaker 1: seventy eight. Ben, I want to correct myself here. I
34:27
Speaker 1: think I said earlier that there were separate cemeteries and
34:29
Speaker 1: opposite side of the town. That seems to be not
34:31
Speaker 1: quite right. They just made sure that in the town
34:33
Speaker 1: cemetery they were as far away from one another as possible,
34:36
Speaker 1: symbolically as to the telegraph rights, symbolically representing their unending hatred,
34:43
Speaker 1: so they did it on purpose. Can you imagine that
34:46
Speaker 1: deathbed conversation? Man? Yeah, and I cannot know. I cannot
34:50
Speaker 1: and I cannot imagine. I mean, the circumstances were pretty insane.
34:54
Speaker 1: You're talking about a lot of money, a lot of
34:57
Speaker 1: intellectual property. Um, a weird power dynamic, weird familial relations,
35:03
Speaker 1: not to mention being in the heart of one of
35:06
Speaker 1: the most brutal conflicts in the history of the world,
35:09
Speaker 1: if not the most brutal conflict in history of the world.
35:12
Speaker 1: So you know, lots lots of factors at play here.
35:15
Speaker 1: But um, I did read in that Vice article that
35:19
Speaker 1: the brothers purportedly never spoke to each other again. But
35:23
Speaker 1: then there are in hints that maybe they did here
35:25
Speaker 1: and there from time to time throughout their lives. But
35:28
Speaker 1: it's certainly never smoothed things over. But there's a really
35:31
Speaker 1: good quote from a book called Sneaker Wars, The Enemy
35:35
Speaker 1: Brothers who founded Adidas and Pumas and the family Feud
35:38
Speaker 1: that Forever changed the Business of Sports, by Barbara smit
35:42
Speaker 1: And it is a quote from Rudolph Dossler Uh much
35:45
Speaker 1: later in his life. Um, and he says this the
35:48
Speaker 1: relation to my brother was ideal from nineteen four till
35:52
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three. Then his young wife tried to interfere
35:56
Speaker 1: in business matters, although she with her sixteen years had
36:00
Speaker 1: experience at all, and the warfare began. Wow. So it
36:05
Speaker 1: was probably a situation where he said I hate your wife,
36:08
Speaker 1: like a Yoko Beatles kind of situation. Maybe maybe that's
36:12
Speaker 1: the needle in the conflict taste that here. We do
36:17
Speaker 1: know that the feud carried on to later generations, and
36:21
Speaker 1: the brothers had notoriously bad relationships with their children as well.
36:27
Speaker 1: I was reading a pretty interesting article in The Guardian
36:30
Speaker 1: that talked about this uh Adidas versus Puma, the bitterer
36:35
Speaker 1: rivalry that runs and runs, and in this they explore
36:39
Speaker 1: the problems that the brothers had almost universally relating to
36:43
Speaker 1: family members. So Audi always fought with his son and heir,
36:49
Speaker 1: a guy named Horse Dostler, and eventually banished him to France.
36:54
Speaker 1: Banished him, Yeah, he banished him to work on a
36:58
Speaker 1: shoe factory that was failing losing a ton of money.
37:00
Speaker 1: He turned it into a money maker that he built
37:03
Speaker 1: a thing called Adidas France that rivaled the rest of
37:07
Speaker 1: Adidas but it wasn't good enough for his dad. And
37:10
Speaker 1: Rudy over at Puma had a son named Armand Dassler.
37:15
Speaker 1: It was his oldest son and heir. He routinely made
37:18
Speaker 1: fun of him in front of other company executives. Uh.
37:21
Speaker 1: And he was going crazy because he saw his cousin
37:24
Speaker 1: Horst succeeding at Adidas. So Armand finally exiled himself to
37:31
Speaker 1: Salzburg to run a Puma factory there. And then he
37:34
Speaker 1: started selling shoes on the US market, which his father
37:37
Speaker 1: had forbidden him to do. And when Rudy died in
37:43
Speaker 1: four his oldest son was startled to learn he had
37:46
Speaker 1: been written out of the will. That's cold many Well,
37:52
Speaker 1: after all this bad blood and bitter familial feuding, surely
37:56
Speaker 1: there's a silver lining here somewhere right then, it's somewhere
37:59
Speaker 1: in the end zone of this story, on the on
38:02
Speaker 1: the pitch. Yeah, maybe uh laid on me bro. Well,
38:05
Speaker 1: the two companies do still exist in that same tiny
38:08
Speaker 1: town of twenty um harz Oh. I'm not gonna even
38:12
Speaker 1: try to pronounce it again because I don't have it
38:13
Speaker 1: in front of me. Um. But in two thousand nine,
38:17
Speaker 1: the company's kind of put their differences aside, and then
38:20
Speaker 1: this this this really brutal history of one upsmanship aside
38:25
Speaker 1: and stepped out to play a friendly soccer game, whereas
38:30
Speaker 1: the Europeans call it a football uh. And it was
38:32
Speaker 1: to support the Piece One Day Organization UM, which chose
38:37
Speaker 1: September twenty one of two thousand nine as the first,
38:41
Speaker 1: I believe, of an annual day of non violence. So um.
38:45
Speaker 1: But then this article in the Telegraph ends with the
38:48
Speaker 1: very knowing little Kicker line quote but despite the friendly handshakes,
38:53
Speaker 1: those who know the townspeople say it will take more
38:56
Speaker 1: than one game of soccer to bury the hatchet. And
39:00
Speaker 1: business terms, Adidas, if you just look at the numbers,
39:04
Speaker 1: is by far the larger company. I think in two
39:07
Speaker 1: thousand nine they had thirty nine thousand employees compared to
39:10
Speaker 1: Puma's nine thousand. But Puma says they're not hurting. They
39:14
Speaker 1: have a great reputation for getting the endorsements of world
39:18
Speaker 1: famous athletes like use same bolt was one of the
39:21
Speaker 1: one of the more recent ones. And that's a legacy
39:24
Speaker 1: that's just carried over from the old Dostler Brothers days.
39:27
Speaker 1: So very very forward thinking. And I did read somewhere
39:30
Speaker 1: the While Adidas maybe wasn't the first custom sneaker company,
39:34
Speaker 1: they were the first to like man mass produce and
39:37
Speaker 1: sell them to the public. Because you make a custom
39:40
Speaker 1: sneaker designed for an athlete, there was a time where
39:43
Speaker 1: it was literally a custom product designed for an individual.
39:46
Speaker 1: Now these custom products, people want them on their feet,
39:51
Speaker 1: even though they are not Hussain Bolt, even though they
39:53
Speaker 1: are not Michael Jordan's, you know, makes them feel a
39:56
Speaker 1: little bit closer to their heroes. Yeah, like Reebok pumps,
40:00
Speaker 1: you know, remember those lights? Oh yeah, easies. It's an
40:05
Speaker 1: interesting pattern, and it makes me think that we found
40:10
Speaker 1: a crazy piece of history that a lot of people
40:13
Speaker 1: don't know. If you are listening to this, gosh, I
40:15
Speaker 1: hope someone out here is. If you're listening to this
40:18
Speaker 1: and you're wearing Adidas and Pumas, Adidas or Pumas, I
40:22
Speaker 1: don't know how you'd wear. I guess one on one
40:24
Speaker 1: ft one on the other. That would look ridiculous. It's
40:27
Speaker 1: very forward fashion, I think. But if you're wearing those,
40:30
Speaker 1: be aware that you are treading on strange history with
40:34
Speaker 1: each step. You take a waxing poetic here, just because
40:37
Speaker 1: it's such an interesting story and the image of treading.
40:41
Speaker 1: We're talking about shoes that works quite nicely. Yeah yeah, oh,
40:44
Speaker 1: thanks man, and we hope that you enjoyed this episode
40:48
Speaker 1: as much as we enjoyed making it. No again, you know,
40:51
Speaker 1: I don't want to blow up your spot, but happy
40:54
Speaker 1: birthday man. We'll have a drink after work maybe. Yeah. Yeah,
40:57
Speaker 1: let's see. Let's look into that case here you down,
41:00
Speaker 1: let's do it all right? Well, Casey is spoken, and
41:03
Speaker 1: of course we want to thank you Casey for helping
41:06
Speaker 1: us out as always, thanks for saving the show. We
41:08
Speaker 1: want to thank our research associate Ease Jeff Cope. Also
41:11
Speaker 1: want to thank Alex Williams, who composed our theme and
41:15
Speaker 1: um yeah, we want to thank you for joining us
41:17
Speaker 1: for another episode of ridiculous history. Stay tuned for our
41:19
Speaker 1: next episode where we blow up the moon try to.
41:23
Speaker 1: We'll see it then, folks,