Why Puma ?

Why did we decide to choose the famous brand Puma for our assignement in Strategic Management ? 

It’s simple: Puma is a famous and dynamic brand, which has a great history. This brand has to deal with strong competition, that is why we found that interesting to study this firm, as it has great challenges to face.

A little bit of history first…

Puma is a German multinational company, which formed in 1924. The 63-year-old sportswear company owns around 9310 employees (2010) and has an annual revenue of €2.706 billion (2010). Such a sportswear empire was started by two brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler. They original were workers of a shoe company, but after the World War I, they found their own shoe factory called “Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik” (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). It was a small factory and the electricity supplies were unreliable, the scale of the company was very small. The 1936 Summer Olympics Game became the turning point for the company.

Adolf successfully persuaded the United States sprinter Jesse Owens to use the spikes made by them. Owens won four gold medals, and the business started to boom. However, the relationship between the two brothers deteriorated until the two agreed to split in 1948, forming two separate entities, Adidas and Puma. more info here