March 1, 2025 • 45 mins
Today Adidas and Puma are two of the industry's most well-known tennis shoe makers, and people around the world prize the footwear for its unique design and reliable craftsmanship. Yet there's a strange, bitter origin story behind these giants of the sneaker world. Join the guys as they delve into a tale of petty recrimination, family feuds and the unending contempt that, ultimately, created the Adidas and Puma we know today. Join Ben and Noel as they explore some peak Ridiculous History in this weekend's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians. We are coming to you semi live
along the road in a very exciting place.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Live Ish, coming to you Live Ish from Doha Guitar
at Web Summit Quitar. We've had a wonderful experience in
a part of the world that I believe neither of
us had visited prior to this.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Everyone's been very kind.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We've been part of some presentations here with some incredible
iHeart folks, kind of helping creators in this part of
the world learn about this wonderful thing we call podcasting.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, and we are joined in the studio today with
none other than our super guest producer, the man who's
making all of this possible podcast Wise, Matt the Madman Stillo,
Matt double Bird. Still up, Yeah, Matt. Do you have
any siblings that you know?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Of what fraternal or.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Not quite as cool? But still do you guys get along? Yeah?
Are you into shoes? Like, do you wear shoes?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
All?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Right?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Do you ever dress an identical tracksuits? Okay, that would
be that's a little too close. Only the identicals do
that kind of thing, right, okay, right, and only for
you know, film appearance. Now, it's a bizarre though I
got to say, every set of identical twists I've ever known,
they dressed the same. I feel something that they just
(01:22):
have done since childhood. I feel like it's not on
purpose for a lot of them, parallel thinking and they
have the vibes. Dang, I also like a blue sweater.
We're asking this.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm so glad this because our classic episode today while
we're on the road is indeed a tale of two
brothers and a tale of shoes, and a tale of
two cities, and a tale of two cities divided by ideology,
branding and a river. And I know I sort of
decision tried you into that question, do you guys wear shoes?
(01:56):
So most of the time was his response. If you
had to choose one, Noel, would you choose Puma or Adidas?
Funny you should ask that ben.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Adidas is a lot more less Sorry, I'm being such
a small geman boy when I pronounced that one A
lot more common.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
In the States.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You see it Adida stores a lot more frequently. But
recently I went to an outlet mall situation in one
of the bit more far away suburbs of Atlanta, and
they have a Puma store, and I purchased an entire
Puma track suit and several pairs of Puma shoes, but
I wear it with my Adidas beanie. So it's sort
(02:33):
of a little controversial if you want to get into
today's topic.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right yeah, yeah, like walking around comp to wearing blue
and red indeed, right, not fly, I mean it'll work
for me because I'm colored black.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, but you were getting some side eyes. Let's let's
look at it in a positive light and say, you're
building bridges, right indeed, and these bridges need to be
built because, as we'll learn in today's classic episode, Adidas
Adidas and there's a reason we're pronouncing it that way
sometimes and Puma are two of the world's most well
known sneaker brands today. Sport garb, active wear. Yes, yes, yeah,
(03:13):
you're fast walkies, that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But also you know, they really both, honestly, probably Adidas
a little more, have developed a pretty significant place in
pop culture.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Like it's not just sportsmen that like.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
To wear these, you know, hip hop enthusiasts, be boys, skaters.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Or fans of the band Porno the k all day
they dream about. Yes, and it may surprise some of
us to learn that there is a strange and bigger
origin story behind these two titans of the sneaker world.
We're gonna delve into a tale of family fuse, strange, contempt,
(03:51):
and brothers Divide it.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
The story of the Dossler Brothers Adidas get It, Let's
roll it.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(04:29):
Friends and neighbors, Thanks for tuning in. We have two
developments that we'd like to tell you about that occurred
outside of the studio only, one of which is tangentially
related to today's episode. First is that it is my
trustee co host Noel Brown's birthday today.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I'm sorry I was runing in place birthday resolution with
my new Adidas track.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Shoes, right yeah, oh so, happy birthday, Noel. I'm Ben.
Let's hello to our super producer, Casey Pegram. And the
second development, which is I guess at best tangentially related
to today's episode, is that, for the first time in years,
I bought a pair of tennis shoes.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
You sure did, and Ben, thank you for the birthday wishes.
I was. The endorphins were flowing through me so much
I didn't even respond politely, and I do apologize. Let's
talk about your shoes. Yours are tigers though, right.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right, right, Lions and tigers and Bears, Pumas and Adididas. Yes, yes,
that is the tangential relationship today. So one of the
most well known popular tennis shoe brands is Nike today, right,
very true, very very true, just do it. But other
brands are still in the international sphere and very very
(05:47):
well known, like Adidas and Pumas.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's right, And I don't know, we can just spoil
this part of the story in advance. Nike kind of
blew up as a result of Adidas and Puma's kind
of being distracted with sort of the topic of today's
episode and not really paying attention to this impending shoe
mcgeddon that Nike brought on.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, because well, like, have you ever owned
a pair of Adidas or a Puma shoe?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I have an Adidas hoodie that I'm quite fond of,
and I think I've owned a Puma a pair of
Puma shoe. Don't think I've ever owned any Adidas shoes,
but fan of the hoodies.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I think I've only owned a track suit from Adidas
it was a different life. I could never I could
not pay sure it was it was for a show.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was unrelated, okay, for a show, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
But I haven't owned the shoes either, which is, you know,
not super unusual for us, because neither of us are
especially sneaker heads, as they're called. But but they are
very very popular shoes and they have a very strange
story behind them. I guess to start off today, we
should go ahead and just be upfront about the pronunciation
(06:59):
of the name of this town.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Should we have a pronunciation off and then we can
check four voh and see who was closest.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So you're using four voh, right, that's right? That's right.
Is that your go to pronunciation guide of choice?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
It is because it's crowdsourced and it's usually from natives,
so I find it to be pretty reliable. And if
they're if the word isn't there, then I just you know,
roll the dice. But this one, in fact, was there.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So let's how about we spell it first so everyone
knows where we're coming from. It's h E r z
O G E N A U r A c H.
So uh, let's see would that be? Here's g HER's
o ganda. Why do you give you a shut?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well man, I may have told you that in a
past life, I was once a young German boy.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
That's true. I would defer to your pronunciation.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So I'm gonna give it a go with the help
of four voh and then I'll check check myself.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Hatzolganala, Hatzolganaha, got close close. I think I over pronounced
the gen the again, so they're more like hats olganah.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, gn kind of like just.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So you know, this is let's call it, what do
we say, ben hartze Hertzel. That's what the locals call it.
It's going to be easier, so Hertso it has a
storied sneaker past.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, yes, our story begins with the Dostler brothers, Rudolph
and Adolph. But Rudy and ADDI to their friends right
and to us and to us for the purposes of this.
So Audi is the younger brother. He's a cobbler, he's
an inventor, he's a bit of an entrepreneur. His favorite
(08:38):
thing in the world is to sit at his work
bench and tinker. And he starts making shoes.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
So I thought I thought a shoemaker was a cobbler.
It was a Tinker's a tinker as a thing too.
There's tinker Taylor Soldier Spine in that movie What's a Tinker?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So you could tinker with things, but the old profession
is someone who travels from place to place mending things
like pots and pants.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Right, So he is a tinker and a cobbler. I
would say he's a tinkerer. Yeah, so he's a tinkering
cobbler and he's cobbling at his tinker bench and what
does he make? Ben There's a little bit of more
of a story here too. This was after World War One.
Things were pretty dire in Germany Bavaria, where hertzel Is located,
(09:26):
and the brother's mother had had a laundry business that
was no longer operational.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And so that's where Audy set up his shop. He
was eighteen years old when he returned from World War
One in nineteen eighteen, and Harze is in northern Bavaria.
Oddly enough to shoemaking was the biggest industry in the
area at the time, so it was a natural fit
for him to go into this empty laundry shed and
(09:57):
begin making shoes.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Right there's a great, great article that we're gonna pull
some good stuff from from Vice Sports by Brian Blickenstaff
that sort of mentions the idea that even in those
kind of salad days post World War One, when folks
were returning back home and things were kind of a
little bit getting by by hook er by crook, you
(10:19):
might not have to buy the nicest clothes, but you
had to have functional.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Shoes, right, You gotta have shoes. And there's an excellent
article depicting his experience making his first pair of shoes
over on Today I found out folks. You may notice
we're avoiding giving you the headlines of these articles right now.
That's because we don't want to spoil things straight from
the gate. So he makes his first shoes for just
(10:45):
for his friends. But these shoes that he creates are
made out of leather scraps salvaged from helmets and wartime
uniforms another gear. Yeah, he's're like mad Max shoes. Yeah,
that's a good description. And out people really liked Audi's shoes.
His reputation spread far beyond herzel, and pretty soon he
(11:08):
had one of the best problems you can have when
you start your own business. He had more work than
he could handle.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, I think it took him about three years to
get to that point. And that's when he enlisted the
help of his brother, Rudy, who was a little bit
more of a business minded kind of guy, a bit
of a brash kind of salesman type dude. And he
really needed that because Addi was sort of the brains
behind the product, and Rudy came in and became the
(11:34):
power behind the throne, the kind of guy that pushed
the product out into the marketplace a bit.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, nineteen twenty three, Rudy joins, and we must emphasize
just how different these two guys are. Addi sounds to
me like an introvert and Rudy definitely seems like the extrovert.
And this worked in the beginning. This was a fantastic partnership.
(11:59):
I mean, they had already grown up together, so they
knew what to expect, and they worked pretty well in
the early days. And in nineteen twenty four, things were
going well enough that they said, you know what, let's
make it official, bro, let's start a company.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah. They're called the Dossler Bros. Or Gbruder Dossler.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
The Dossler Brothers shoe company and they continue growing, so
I believe it's in nineteen twenty six they say, Okay,
this laundry shed operation isn't cutting it. We need an
actual factory's right. Oh, we shall also mentioned before we
get too far into the story. After World War One,
Rudy had decided he wanted to become a policeman and
(12:41):
he actually he trained.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
For it like a Gestapo type policeman.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Interesting that you would mention that part that is going
to come into play later, because yes, this is Germany
in the mid nineteen twenties at this time.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Ah, yes, ah, yes, So where where should we go next?
We're still in Harzo, right we are. We're gonna We're
gonna mainly stay there.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah. Yeah, toward the end we might expand a little,
but yes, this is a Harzo story through it through.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Do you want to talk a little bit about what
these shoes look like and how they differ from modern shoes? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think we really should. There is a really cool
blog post on a site called design Boom called history
of Adida's Audi Dossler's first Track and Field Shoes, and
it goes through a chronology of these designs between the
twenties and the thirties. The very first shoe, called the
Model Weitzer from nineteen twenty eight was a sprint shoe
(13:38):
and it was actually worn at the Olympic Games in
Amsterdam of that year. And it looks almost like a rudimentary,
kind of very stark ballet shoe mixed with like a
bowling shoe. But it's very very steeply angled from the
heel to like where the ball of the foot might be,
and then it flattens out and then has these cleats,
(14:00):
these six six stikes pronounced almost like crocodile teeth looking cleats.
And this was kind of a revolutionary design because according
to this blog, it was the first shoe to use
a screw system in athletics, which were six handmade spikes
that were cut pressed through these holes that were punched
(14:22):
in the outsole of the shoe and then were screwed
in using a steel disc that attaches from the outsole
the outside of the shoe. And there were some positives
here and that it gave runners traction that they had
lacked in the past, but it also they were a
little bit heavy because there were a lot of weighty metal.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Parts, right, and they were not manufacturing the actual spikes themselves.
They did have help from a blacksmith operation, but the
rest of it, sourcing the material and assembling it, that's
all Dostler, And it's true. This stuff is revolutionary p
people are loving it. We do need to mention that
(15:03):
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party come to power in
what around thirty three, nineteen thirty three, and when this happens,
both of the Dossler brothers do join the Nazi Party.
That's true.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
They have been described, to their credit, I guess, as
not being the most adamant Nazis. I guess they were
sort of low key Nazis.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah they were not. I guess they were fair weather Nazis.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
It seemed like they were just doing it because they
were fitting in maybe, yeah, which is a huge problem.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
It's a huge problem with the whole Nazi plague in general.
It's like I was just following orders. I was just
trying to fit in. That's not a discussion for today's episode.
But all the while, they they're blending into the background
while making these shoes, and it kind of comes to
a head when one of their designs worn by a
(16:01):
very famous African American sprinter by the name of James
Cleveland Owens aka Jesse Owens, who wore these shoes and
a very specific sporting event that we have talked about
in episodes past.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yes, we were referring to the nineteen thirty six Summer Olympics,
which were held in Berlin. If you've checked out our
earlier episode, then you noticed that Jesse Owens is a
returning guest to our show. Jesse Owens was a track
and field star, and given that the Dossler brothers were
(16:37):
already benefiting from the Nazi Party's use of sports as
a propaganda tool, they saw the Summer Olympics as an
opportunity to go into the international sphere and get recognition
outside of Herzel and outside of Germany. So they pushed
and pushed to get Dossler shoes on Jesse Owens. All
(17:00):
they really seemed to care about in the Olympics, in fact,
was getting Jesse Owens to wear these shoes. He did
wear Dostler shoes and he won four gold medals, which, again,
if you look at the way these shoes are constructed,
is crazy because you're not supposed to use your heel.
You're just supposed to like dig in and run on
your toes and the plan worked. Owens four medals gave
(17:24):
the company huge amounts of international attention, and athletes from
all across Europe started making their way to this village Harzol,
which is pretty tiny, whenever they passed through Germany, saying
I gotta get a pair of one of those Dossler
Brothers shoes.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, and from that original design we talked about from
nineteen twenty eight, this one was much improved because it
actually left out the metal plate and it had very
small eyelets where the and thin laces, which helped to
reduce the weight of the shoe, which was really important
for you know, sprinting. Absolutely in fact, instead of they
(18:01):
had to get really creative with materials because instead of
using that metal plate, they used something called vegetable tanned
bottom leather or vash leather, and that significantly reduced the weight.
So really forward thinking design work going into these shoes
that continued to carry on specifically with Audi. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I look again, as we're gonna see, neither of these
guys are perfect, but all these innovations in the world
of footwear are Audi's I want to highlight that because
I feel like that's very important that Audi was the
brains of the operation. Well, at this point, their success
is bringing them to a more money, more problems sort
(18:42):
of situation. Their relationship is becoming strained, and as the
company is succeeding, Germany is inching closer to war and
the brothers are experiencing a failure in their relationship. One
that a huge, huge animosity that extends to their wives,
(19:02):
their children, their parents, their other siblings because they did
have other siblings.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, and weirdly, both families lived together in the same villa,
which seemed less than ideal considering that every source we've
looked into has their wives just fighting like cats and
dogs between each other.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
They were not peacemakers, not at all.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And I'm sure that tension carried over into the brother's relationship.
When you're trying to defend your wife in some sort
of spat and take take their side, it probably soured
relations between the brothers.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
And let's not forget moms in the picture too. Yeah. Right,
So in nineteen forty, Oddie gets the call. He is
asked to serve in the German military, and he does
for about three months. But somehow he is able to
get an exemption. And you'll hear different history and speculate
(19:57):
that this could have been due to Rudy's to maybe
back in Herzel. He was pulling some strings to get
his brother out to go back to the shoe business.
And we'll probably never know for sure whether he was
able to get that exemption due to Rudy, but we
do know that whatever happened, it did not alleviate the
(20:19):
tension between the families. As the war kicked in to
full swing, the tensions between the families got worse and
worse until they hit a tipping point.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, this is one of the most divisive bits of
the story. There are various accounts of this, but it
is something that comes up repeatedly, and so supposedly, in
nineteen forty three, when there was an Allied air raid
on Hertze, the brothers and their families found themselves sharing
(20:50):
a bomb shelter, and supposedly Adolph made a comment that
Rudy was never able to shake because he interpreted as
being a direct insult to his family. So, as the
story goes, Adolph and hearing the sound of the approaching
(21:10):
RAF forces Royal Air Force British planes said something to
the effect of there come those pig dogs again, or
here come those bastards or the dirty bastards Basterds are
back again, exactly to which Rudy heard that as an insult,
lobbed at he and his family as they got into
(21:33):
the shelter.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And this was either a misunderstanding or a grudge that
both brothers would carry throughout their lives and refuse to reconcile.
Later that year, this is nineteen forty three, Rudy himself
gets called up for military service, and at this point
he suspects that Audie had schemed to get him sent
(21:56):
to the front to edge him out of the business,
and he serves from nineteen forty three to nineteen forty five.
In nineteen forty five, Rudy deserts his post in Poland.
He flees just ahead of the oncoming Russian army and
he goes back to Harrisol. He hurriedly gets a friend
(22:18):
of his who is a doctor to declare him unfit
for military service due to a frozen foot. But then
the story frozen foot, Yeah, frozen foot, is that like
a twisted ankle kind of it's you know, what he
was in a hurry?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Is that like bone spurs?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, it's just something to make you unable to walk,
I see. And so this doesn't pass muster with the Gestapo.
They arrest Rudy Dostler for desertion and he blames that
on Audi too. But here's the thing. We don't know
whether Adolph Dostler got his brother purposely sent into military service,
(22:56):
but we do have pretty compelling circumstance reports that both
Audie and his wife snitched on him.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, I see referenced in several places, one of which
is in a Fortune magazine article called the Hatred and
Bitterness behind two of the world's most popular brands by
Omar Oktar to an American investigative report that was found
and that's in Fortune, right, Yes, that's in Fortune.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And so he's arrested first for desserting his posts by
the Gestapo, and then when he's released by the Gestapo,
he's arrested by the Allies on suspicion of working for
the Gestapo. And that American investigative report that you mentioned,
Noel does give truth to his claims. And while he
(23:45):
was languishing wasting away in a pow camp. Adolph Osler
is very hard at work. He is rebuilding the business
and he is making a killing selling shoes, selling quote
unquote Jesse shoes to American soldiers who all know about
the legendary Summer Olympics and all want to have the shoes.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And it feels to me this is a speculating But
tell me if you think this is true, man, that
this is a really early example of this kind of
endorsement culture in sporting goods and wear and any kind
of apparel.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I really do feel like this is kind of the
model setter for that whole thing, and this is something
that the company would continue to lean heavily into and
it would become another sore spot between the brothers as
time went on.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Absolutely, we should also point out I couldn't find anything
about Jesse Owens getting any percentage of sales, So I
think that was a I think that was a rough
spot for him because he could have made millions.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Well, it was a different time, right, I mean it
was like a cutting edge stuff. They were almost like, yeah,
just give me the shoes so I can perform better
because other companies weren't making anything that was quite up
to this level of innovation, right, right, So these.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Guys at first their personalities complementing one another. Then their
relationships became strained. Now they hate each other, They loathe
and a bore one another, and they can barely stand
each other's presence, which is weird because they still both
live in the same, very very small town. And we
see this hate in the historical record. So Rudy has
(25:24):
not taking this on the chin or turning the other cheek.
He retaliates against his brother in nineteen forty six when
Adolph Dossler is hauled before the deed Nazification Committee and
he could be classified as something called a bellestetter or
a profiteer, which means if he is proven to have
(25:47):
made a lot of profit or having broken financial laws
during wartime, he could have lost control of the entire
company of Dossler Brothers. And that meant, at least in
Rudy's mind, that he could be appointed to run the company.
He could maybe even cut out his brother entirely, which
is brutal when you consider Rudy didn't make the shoes.
(26:09):
This is this is very strange. So he tried to
paint Adolph Ostler in a terrible light trying to get
control of the company, but they still lived under the
same roof.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, so he was sort of like pointing the finger
right right it himself. And ultimately the Allies determined that
neither of the Dossler brothers were problematic enough Nazis to
really mess with. They had bigger and Nazi fish to fry.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah. Yeah, And the American occupation forces actually seized their villa.
So all these two families that hate each other are
living in makeshift accommodations in the shoe factor, so this
is funny.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
In nineteen forty eight, they officially split the company up
and moved to opposite sides of the river that bisects
this tiny little hamlet in Bavaria.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
The river Aurok. Yeah, and Audi names his company Adidas
Adi Das right, yeah, which is a portman toeau. Oh,
we were on dangerous ground there of his first and
last names. And Rudy tries to do something similar and
(27:24):
at first he calls his company Ruda.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Now to me, this is a big signpost of how
uncreative and kind of like ripoffye Rudy kind of was
that he immediately had to be like, oh, you're gonna
make a portmanteau for your company name. Well, I'm gonna
do the same thing, you know. And because Adidas is
clever and that's a good idea, and that sounds good.
It sounds good. But you know, he did see the
(27:49):
lights and whether he was counseled by some smart young
buck in marketing, he changed the name to the now
much more ubiquitous Puma, which couldn't imagine it Ruda. That
sounds that's hard, that's not even fun to say.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It sounds like years ago. I did an episode for
Car Stuff on Cars behind the Iron Curtain. Remember that
I was the producer of that show, the producer. That's true. Yeah, wow,
we go way back. But the thing is, Ruda sounds
like a kind of iron curtain car.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
It also sounds like the prefix for like rudimentary. It
makes me think like they're kind of like crappy shoes.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, it just sounds very plain, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Puma. On the other hand, I picture a powerful, you know,
prowling beast with speed and precision and agility, something that
leaps and pounces.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right. So, yes, correct decision on Rudy's part to shed
that name Ruda and go for something a little bit better.
And here's something interesting. We mentioned earlier that Harzo is
in an area of Germany it was known for shoemaking. Historically,
it was one of the primary industries of the area.
(29:00):
It's no surprise that shoe factories would take off here.
But eventually most of the town, if not all of
the town, ends up working for one of these two factories.
These guys still hate each other, by the way, oh,
with a venomous passion, and that passion extends this to me,
this was one of the weirdest parts. It extends to
(29:22):
the employees.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Oh man, No, it was. They created this whole hat
field in McCoy's kind of atmosphere in this little town
that was literally divided by that river we talked about.
I mean, there were restaurants, bars, grocery stores specifically designed
to just be for employees of one company or the other.
(29:44):
They were, I mean, I can't imagine it would have
been codified in any kind of real way, But there
was this unspoken idea that they never the twain shall meet,
there shall be no coupling between Poma and Adida's employees.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Including yeah, romantic pursuits.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, I think that's that's yeah, exactly right, and certainly
marriage would have been hashtag for boat built in.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, there's there's an interesting split in terms of the
internal workforce as well. So when the Dossler brothers split
the company up, the employees essentially had to choose. They
could go to Adidas or they could go to Puma.
Most of the technical people, like the actual cobblers, stayed
(30:29):
with Adidas. Most of the sales force and the admin
folks went with Puma, and it showed pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
And man, making it even deeper bitterer family affair. Even
the mom had to pick sides.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, yeah, but who did she choose?
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Think she went with the elder?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Which is still crazy because Adis was the idea man.
He was the Willy Wonka of this whole operation. He
started it in her abandoned lawn. How could she forsake
her her young son like that, her bright young boy.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, I think clearly we have chosen our horse in
this race. We don't want to be too biased, but
we do want to be transparent about that. Rudy seems
like the worst. I'm on tie Maudie all the way.
What about you?
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Casey, I got a side with run DMC and corn
I'm going Adidas. It has been adjudicated Casey on the
case I love that segment.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Have you seen that shirt design that's floating around on
the face group? Yeah, and no spoilers, guys, but it's
happening and I think it's gonna have some French on it.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Check it out. Go to Ridiculous Historians our community page,
where you can see some A plus memes as well.
So let's let's pause for a second before before we
get into even more opprobrium. There is an interesting story
about how they make how they decide the iconic shoes right,
because clearly the Adidas or the Pumas you buy today
(32:01):
do not look like the shoes that Jesse Owens wore.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Oh no, well, like I said, I mean you see
on this amazing design blog, Design Boom, just the evolution
of these shoes. And even as far as it goes no,
it's cool. You actually when you still when it becomes Adidas.
Because this site is particularly devoted to ADDIE's designs, so
they've obviously chosen sides as well. You start to see
(32:25):
more of a fashion trend kind of coming into play.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
The spikes are less pronounced.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Spikes are less pronounced, or color, there's more color they
have that like even in like sixty four, you have
the designs that use that kind of more Swede blue
swede look, and then they've got the little kind of
stripes along the side, much more traditional. Then you start
seeing those like iconic like gold colored ones. It's called
(32:50):
the Azteca Gold model. And that's as far as this
blog goes. But yeah, so it took like into the
sixties for them to really start getting that iconic look
that we know today from it.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Get And so we do have this story behind that
iconic three stripe arrangement on Adidas. So they had those
strips before in earlier versions of the shoe, but they
weren't really noticeable. They were the same color, like he says,
before the gold, before the blue and the white. So
Addi decided that the strips should be painted some other
(33:23):
color to make them look like stripes, and that this
would be the Adidas trademark. And so he made sample shoes,
some with two, some with three, some of four or
even as many as six stripes apiece. And then he
asked his wife and his sister in law to pick
which ones they liked best. They ended up saying that
four stripes is too many, it felt too busy, and
(33:43):
so on their advice, he went with the three stripe
design over at Puma. By the way, just to be fair,
Rudy had a couple of different depictions. He thought of
maybe having a Puma jumping through capital D, but eventually
he just settled on the company's signature horizontal stripe, which
they call a form stripe.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Man, man, you have just really expanded my sneaker head Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
No, oh, no, actual sneakerheads are listening to this. Yeah,
hopefully you find this of interest.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Hopefully, but really, if you are a sneakerhead, I know
I'm harping on it, but I cannot recommend highly enough
this Design Boom blog because each shoe has very specific
information about like some of the design features, and there
are some very specific kind of jargon y terms that
I was unaware of that folks that are into that
world might be a little more hip too, so I
recommend checking that out.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
We should also mention I think we talked about this
a little bit off air. The entire time this story
is taking place, like since forty eight they are suing
the pants off each other, right or trying to.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I mean pretty much just a non stop torrent of lawsuits.
And I don't know if you were able to find
anything specific Ben or any specific documentation, but I would
conjecture I would hazard to guess that a lot of
it was around Rudy possibly nicking some of these designs
from his clearly more sneaker headed brother.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
ADDI, Oh, yeah, absolutely. And as this stuff is happening,
Adidas and Puma are both growing as companies. The town
is getting further and further and further divided. It becomes
known as did you see this nickname now? Oh? Yeah,
the bent Next, Yes, the town of bent Next. Because,
(35:39):
according to the story, if you were walking around town
and you saw someone you didn't know, you would look
at their shoes before you decided whether to talk to them.
If you were a Puma person and they wore pumas,
you're in.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, that is just crazy how it's such a specific industry,
It's such a small town to be divided so and
have such a very interesting way of identifying and easy, right,
you could just look at the other person's shoes and say,
I know what team you're on, buddy.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Here's how deep it went. This is something I found.
I only found this in one place, so I hope
it's true, but I couldn't confirm it yet. Apparently each
side had their own tombstone carvers.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, that will come into play a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I did find an article on a blog called Duet's
Blog that deals with the intersection of creativity and the law,
and it talks about how a lot of the lawsuits
between Puma and Adidas were in fact quibbling over that
three stripe design that you mentioned earlier and went into
(36:41):
Apparently Puma, in a burst of creativity, made it a
four stripe design to just, you know, one stripe better
in the mind of in the mind of Rudi. Not
to mention the fact that we talked about earlier, how
there was this focus on getting these athletes to endorse
these products, right, and that continued and became a game
(37:04):
of one upsmanship between Audi and Rudy as their respective
companies kind of started to gain steam on their own.
And this continued on throughout the years. When Audi actually
turned down the idea of sponsoring this young, up and
coming tennis player by the name of Boris Becker if
you've heard of him. He was a big deal in
(37:25):
the in the eighties, in the nineties. And so just
just to as a you know, act of pure one upsmanship,
Rudy signed him. Not because he thought he was awesome
or he saw any promise in him. He just wanted
to piss off his brother. And this is from a
fantastic article in the Telegraph called Adidas and Puma Bury
(37:46):
the hatchet after sixty years of brothers feud? What bury
the hatchet? Ben? What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It means that the brothers died, That's what it means.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
That is what that means. And remember that tombstone carver
you were talking about, Well, those respective tombstone carvers carved
those respective tombstones on polar opposite sides of the town. Yes,
that's correct.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Rudy Dossler, the elder of the Dostler brothers, died on
October twenty seventh, nineteen seventy four, of lung cancer. He
was seventy six. The priest called his little brother Adolf
to his side, and they did not squash the beef.
As far as we know. Adolph himself expired four years later.
(38:27):
He was seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Ben, I want to correct myself here. I think I
said earlier that there were separate cemeteries on opposite side
of the town. That seems to be not quite right.
They just made sure that in the town cemetery they
were as far away from one another.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
As possible, symbolically as to the telegraph rights, symbolically representing
their unending hatred. So they did it on purpose. Can
you imagine that deathbed conversation? Man?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, and I cannot. No, I cannot and I cannot imagine.
I mean, the circumstances were pretty insane. You're talking about
a lot of money, a lot of intellectual property, a
weird power dynamic, weird familial relations, not to mention being
in the heart of one of the most brutal conflicts
in the history of the world, if not the most
(39:15):
rutal conflict in the history of the world. So you know,
lots lots of factors at play here. But I did
read in that Vice article that the brothers purportedly never
spoke to each other again. But then they're hints that
maybe they did here and there from time to time
throughout their lives. But it certainly never smooth things over.
(39:35):
But there's a really good quote from a book called
Sneaker Wars, The Enemy Brothers who founded Adidas and Pumas
and the family feud that forever changed the Business of Sports,
by Barbara Smitt, and it is a quote from Rudolph
Dossler much later in his life, and he says this,
the relation to my brother was ideal from nineteen twenty
(39:56):
four till nineteen thirty three. Then his young wife tried
to interfere in business matters, although she, with her sixteen years,
had no experience at all, and the warfare began.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
So it was probably a situation where he said I
hate your wife. Yeah, like a Yoko Beatles kind of situation. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Maybe maybe that's the needle in the conflict haystack. Here.
We do know that the feud carried on to later generations,
and the brothers had notoriously bad relationships with their children
as well. I was reading a pretty interesting article in
The Guardian that talked about this Adidas versus Puma, the
(40:38):
bitter rivalry that runs and runs, and in this they
explore the problems that the brothers had almost universally relating
to family members. So Audie always fought with his son
and heir, a guy named Horst Dossler, and eventually banished
him to France.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Spanished him.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Wow. Yeah. He banished him to work on a shoe
factory that was failing losing a ton of money. He
turned it into a moneymaker. Then he built a thing
called Adidas France that rivaled the rest of Adidas, but
it wasn't good enough for his dad. And Rudy over
at Puma had a son named Armand Dossler. It was
(41:20):
his oldest son in heir. He routinely made fun of
him in front of other company executives, and he was
going crazy because he saw his cousin Horst succeeding at Adidas.
So Armand finally exiled himself to Salzburg to run a
Puma factory there. And then he started selling shoes on
the US market, which his father had forbidden him to do.
(41:45):
And when Rudy died in nineteen seventy four, his oldest
son was startled to learn he had been written out
of the will. That's cold grief, man.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, Well, after all this bad blood and bitter familial feul,
surely there's a silver lining here somewhere, right, then.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Is somewhere in the end zone of this story. Yeah,
on the on the pitch, Yeah, maybe lay it on me. Bro.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Well, the two companies do still exist in that same
tiny town of twenty five thousand Herzo. I'm not gonna
even try to pronounce it again because I don't have
it in front of me. But in two thousand and nine,
the companies kind of put their differences aside, and then
this really brutal history of one upsminceship aside and stepped
(42:30):
out to play a friendly soccer game whereas the Europeans
call it a football, and it was to support the
Peace One Day organization, which chose September twenty first of
two thousand and nine as the first, I believe, of
an annual day of non violence. So but then this
article in the Telegraph ends with the very knowing little
(42:54):
Kicker line quote. But despite the friendly handshakes, those who
know the townspeople say it will take more than one
game of soccer to bury the hatchet.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
And in business terms, Adidas, if you just look at
the numbers, is by far the larger company. I think
in two thousand and nine they had thirty nine thousand
employees compared to Puma's nine thousand, but Puma says they're
not hurting. They have a great reputation for getting the
endorsements of world famous athletes like Usain Bolt was one
(43:25):
of the one of the more recent ones.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
And that's a legacy that's just carried over from the
old Dossler Brothers days. So very very forward thinking. And
I did read somewhere that while Adidas maybe wasn't the
first custom sneaker company, they were the first to like
mass produce and sell them to the public. Because you
make a custom sneaker designed for an athlete, there was
a time where it was literally a custom product designed
(43:49):
for an individual. Now these custom products, people want them
on their feet, even though they are not Hussein Bolt,
even though they are not Michael Jordan, you know, yes,
and feel a little bit closer to their heroes.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, like Rebock pumps. You know, remember those La lights?
Oh yeah, easies. It's an interesting pattern and it makes
me think that we found a crazy piece of history
that a lot of people don't know. If you are
listening to this, gosh, I hope someone out here is
If you're listening to this and you're wearing Adidas and Pumas,
(44:25):
Adidas or Pumas. I don't know how you'd wear I
guess one on one foot, one on the other. That
would look ridiculous. That's very forward fashion, I think. But
if you're wearing those, be aware that you are treading
on strange history with each step. You take a waxing
poetic here just because it's such an interesting story.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, and the image of treading when we're talking about shoes,
that works quite nicely.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yes, yeah, oh, thanks man, And we hope that you
enjoyed this episode as much as we enjoyed making it
NOL again. You know, I don't want to blow up
your spot, but happy birthday man.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Hey, thanks pal. We'll have a drink after work maybe.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah. Yeah, let's see. Let's look into that. Casey, he
are you down? Let's do it all right? Well, Casey
is spoken, And of course we want to thank you
Casey for helping us out as always, thanks for saving
the show. We want to thank our research associate Ease
Jeff Cope.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Also want to thank Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
And yeah, we want to thank you for joining us
for another episode of Ridiculous History. Stay tuned for our
next episode where we blow up the moon try to.
We'll see you then, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(45:40):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians. We are coming to you semi live
along the road in a very exciting place.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Live Ish, coming to you Live Ish from Doha Guitar
at Web Summit Quitar. We've had a wonderful experience in
a part of the world that I believe neither of
us had visited prior to this.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Everyone's been very kind.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We've been part of some presentations here with some incredible
iHeart folks, kind of helping creators in this part of
the world learn about this wonderful thing we call podcasting.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, and we are joined in the studio today with
none other than our super guest producer, the man who's
making all of this possible podcast Wise, Matt the Madman Stillo,
Matt double Bird. Still up, Yeah, Matt. Do you have
any siblings that you know?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Of what fraternal or.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Not quite as cool? But still do you guys get along? Yeah?
Are you into shoes? Like, do you wear shoes?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
All?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Right?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Do you ever dress an identical tracksuits? Okay, that would
be that's a little too close. Only the identicals do
that kind of thing, right, okay, right, and only for
you know, film appearance. Now, it's a bizarre though I
got to say, every set of identical twists I've ever known,
they dressed the same. I feel something that they just
(01:22):
have done since childhood. I feel like it's not on
purpose for a lot of them, parallel thinking and they
have the vibes. Dang, I also like a blue sweater.
We're asking this.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I'm so glad this because our classic episode today while
we're on the road is indeed a tale of two
brothers and a tale of shoes, and a tale of
two cities, and a tale of two cities divided by ideology,
branding and a river. And I know I sort of
decision tried you into that question, do you guys wear shoes?
(01:56):
So most of the time was his response. If you
had to choose one, Noel, would you choose Puma or Adidas?
Funny you should ask that ben.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Adidas is a lot more less Sorry, I'm being such
a small geman boy when I pronounced that one A
lot more common.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
In the States.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You see it Adida stores a lot more frequently. But
recently I went to an outlet mall situation in one
of the bit more far away suburbs of Atlanta, and
they have a Puma store, and I purchased an entire
Puma track suit and several pairs of Puma shoes, but
I wear it with my Adidas beanie. So it's sort
(02:33):
of a little controversial if you want to get into
today's topic.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right yeah, yeah, like walking around comp to wearing blue
and red indeed, right, not fly, I mean it'll work
for me because I'm colored black.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's true, that's true.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, but you were getting some side eyes. Let's let's
look at it in a positive light and say, you're
building bridges, right indeed, and these bridges need to be
built because, as we'll learn in today's classic episode, Adidas
Adidas and there's a reason we're pronouncing it that way
sometimes and Puma are two of the world's most well
known sneaker brands today. Sport garb, active wear. Yes, yes, yeah,
(03:13):
you're fast walkies, that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
But also you know, they really both, honestly, probably Adidas
a little more, have developed a pretty significant place in
pop culture.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Like it's not just sportsmen that like.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
To wear these, you know, hip hop enthusiasts, be boys, skaters.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Or fans of the band Porno the k all day
they dream about. Yes, and it may surprise some of
us to learn that there is a strange and bigger
origin story behind these two titans of the sneaker world.
We're gonna delve into a tale of family fuse, strange, contempt,
(03:51):
and brothers Divide it.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
The story of the Dossler Brothers Adidas get It, Let's
roll it.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(04:29):
Friends and neighbors, Thanks for tuning in. We have two
developments that we'd like to tell you about that occurred
outside of the studio only, one of which is tangentially
related to today's episode. First is that it is my
trustee co host Noel Brown's birthday today.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I'm sorry I was runing in place birthday resolution with
my new Adidas track.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Shoes, right yeah, oh so, happy birthday, Noel. I'm Ben.
Let's hello to our super producer, Casey Pegram. And the
second development, which is I guess at best tangentially related
to today's episode, is that, for the first time in years,
I bought a pair of tennis shoes.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
You sure did, and Ben, thank you for the birthday wishes.
I was. The endorphins were flowing through me so much
I didn't even respond politely, and I do apologize. Let's
talk about your shoes. Yours are tigers though, right.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right, right, Lions and tigers and Bears, Pumas and Adididas. Yes, yes,
that is the tangential relationship today. So one of the
most well known popular tennis shoe brands is Nike today, right,
very true, very very true, just do it. But other
brands are still in the international sphere and very very
(05:47):
well known, like Adidas and Pumas.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's right, And I don't know, we can just spoil
this part of the story in advance. Nike kind of
blew up as a result of Adidas and Puma's kind
of being distracted with sort of the topic of today's
episode and not really paying attention to this impending shoe
mcgeddon that Nike brought on.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, because well, like, have you ever owned
a pair of Adidas or a Puma shoe?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
I have an Adidas hoodie that I'm quite fond of,
and I think I've owned a Puma a pair of
Puma shoe. Don't think I've ever owned any Adidas shoes,
but fan of the hoodies.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I think I've only owned a track suit from Adidas
it was a different life. I could never I could
not pay sure it was it was for a show.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was unrelated, okay, for a show, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
But I haven't owned the shoes either, which is, you know,
not super unusual for us, because neither of us are
especially sneaker heads, as they're called. But but they are
very very popular shoes and they have a very strange
story behind them. I guess to start off today, we
should go ahead and just be upfront about the pronunciation
(06:59):
of the name of this town.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Should we have a pronunciation off and then we can
check four voh and see who was closest.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
So you're using four voh, right, that's right? That's right.
Is that your go to pronunciation guide of choice?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
It is because it's crowdsourced and it's usually from natives,
so I find it to be pretty reliable. And if
they're if the word isn't there, then I just you know,
roll the dice. But this one, in fact, was there.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So let's how about we spell it first so everyone
knows where we're coming from. It's h E r z
O G E N A U r A c H.
So uh, let's see would that be? Here's g HER's
o ganda. Why do you give you a shut?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well man, I may have told you that in a
past life, I was once a young German boy.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
That's true. I would defer to your pronunciation.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So I'm gonna give it a go with the help
of four voh and then I'll check check myself.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Hatzolganala, Hatzolganaha, got close close. I think I over pronounced
the gen the again, so they're more like hats olganah.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, gn kind of like just.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So you know, this is let's call it, what do
we say, ben hartze Hertzel. That's what the locals call it.
It's going to be easier, so Hertso it has a
storied sneaker past.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, yes, our story begins with the Dostler brothers, Rudolph
and Adolph. But Rudy and ADDI to their friends right
and to us and to us for the purposes of this.
So Audi is the younger brother. He's a cobbler, he's
an inventor, he's a bit of an entrepreneur. His favorite
(08:38):
thing in the world is to sit at his work
bench and tinker. And he starts making shoes.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
So I thought I thought a shoemaker was a cobbler.
It was a Tinker's a tinker as a thing too.
There's tinker Taylor Soldier Spine in that movie What's a Tinker?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So you could tinker with things, but the old profession
is someone who travels from place to place mending things
like pots and pants.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Right, So he is a tinker and a cobbler. I
would say he's a tinkerer. Yeah, so he's a tinkering
cobbler and he's cobbling at his tinker bench and what
does he make? Ben There's a little bit of more
of a story here too. This was after World War One.
Things were pretty dire in Germany Bavaria, where hertzel Is located,
(09:26):
and the brother's mother had had a laundry business that
was no longer operational.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And so that's where Audy set up his shop. He
was eighteen years old when he returned from World War
One in nineteen eighteen, and Harze is in northern Bavaria.
Oddly enough to shoemaking was the biggest industry in the
area at the time, so it was a natural fit
for him to go into this empty laundry shed and
(09:57):
begin making shoes.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Right there's a great, great article that we're gonna pull
some good stuff from from Vice Sports by Brian Blickenstaff
that sort of mentions the idea that even in those
kind of salad days post World War One, when folks
were returning back home and things were kind of a
little bit getting by by hook er by crook, you
(10:19):
might not have to buy the nicest clothes, but you
had to have functional.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Shoes, right, You gotta have shoes. And there's an excellent
article depicting his experience making his first pair of shoes
over on Today I found out folks. You may notice
we're avoiding giving you the headlines of these articles right now.
That's because we don't want to spoil things straight from
the gate. So he makes his first shoes for just
(10:45):
for his friends. But these shoes that he creates are
made out of leather scraps salvaged from helmets and wartime
uniforms another gear. Yeah, he's're like mad Max shoes. Yeah,
that's a good description. And out people really liked Audi's shoes.
His reputation spread far beyond herzel, and pretty soon he
(11:08):
had one of the best problems you can have when
you start your own business. He had more work than
he could handle.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, I think it took him about three years to
get to that point. And that's when he enlisted the
help of his brother, Rudy, who was a little bit
more of a business minded kind of guy, a bit
of a brash kind of salesman type dude. And he
really needed that because Addi was sort of the brains
behind the product, and Rudy came in and became the
(11:34):
power behind the throne, the kind of guy that pushed
the product out into the marketplace a bit.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, nineteen twenty three, Rudy joins, and we must emphasize
just how different these two guys are. Addi sounds to
me like an introvert and Rudy definitely seems like the extrovert.
And this worked in the beginning. This was a fantastic partnership.
(11:59):
I mean, they had already grown up together, so they
knew what to expect, and they worked pretty well in
the early days. And in nineteen twenty four, things were
going well enough that they said, you know what, let's
make it official, bro, let's start a company.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah. They're called the Dossler Bros. Or Gbruder Dossler.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
The Dossler Brothers shoe company and they continue growing, so
I believe it's in nineteen twenty six they say, Okay,
this laundry shed operation isn't cutting it. We need an
actual factory's right. Oh, we shall also mentioned before we
get too far into the story. After World War One,
Rudy had decided he wanted to become a policeman and
(12:41):
he actually he trained.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
For it like a Gestapo type policeman.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Interesting that you would mention that part that is going
to come into play later, because yes, this is Germany
in the mid nineteen twenties at this time.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Ah, yes, ah, yes, So where where should we go next?
We're still in Harzo, right we are. We're gonna We're
gonna mainly stay there.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah. Yeah, toward the end we might expand a little,
but yes, this is a Harzo story through it through.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Do you want to talk a little bit about what
these shoes look like and how they differ from modern shoes? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I think we really should. There is a really cool
blog post on a site called design Boom called history
of Adida's Audi Dossler's first Track and Field Shoes, and
it goes through a chronology of these designs between the
twenties and the thirties. The very first shoe, called the
Model Weitzer from nineteen twenty eight was a sprint shoe
(13:38):
and it was actually worn at the Olympic Games in
Amsterdam of that year. And it looks almost like a rudimentary,
kind of very stark ballet shoe mixed with like a
bowling shoe. But it's very very steeply angled from the
heel to like where the ball of the foot might be,
and then it flattens out and then has these cleats,
(14:00):
these six six stikes pronounced almost like crocodile teeth looking cleats.
And this was kind of a revolutionary design because according
to this blog, it was the first shoe to use
a screw system in athletics, which were six handmade spikes
that were cut pressed through these holes that were punched
(14:22):
in the outsole of the shoe and then were screwed
in using a steel disc that attaches from the outsole
the outside of the shoe. And there were some positives
here and that it gave runners traction that they had
lacked in the past, but it also they were a
little bit heavy because there were a lot of weighty metal.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Parts, right, and they were not manufacturing the actual spikes themselves.
They did have help from a blacksmith operation, but the
rest of it, sourcing the material and assembling it, that's
all Dostler, And it's true. This stuff is revolutionary p
people are loving it. We do need to mention that
(15:03):
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party come to power in
what around thirty three, nineteen thirty three, and when this happens,
both of the Dossler brothers do join the Nazi Party.
That's true.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
They have been described, to their credit, I guess, as
not being the most adamant Nazis. I guess they were
sort of low key Nazis.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah they were not. I guess they were fair weather Nazis.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
It seemed like they were just doing it because they
were fitting in maybe, yeah, which is a huge problem.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
It's a huge problem with the whole Nazi plague in general.
It's like I was just following orders. I was just
trying to fit in. That's not a discussion for today's episode.
But all the while, they they're blending into the background
while making these shoes, and it kind of comes to
a head when one of their designs worn by a
(16:01):
very famous African American sprinter by the name of James
Cleveland Owens aka Jesse Owens, who wore these shoes and
a very specific sporting event that we have talked about
in episodes past.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yes, we were referring to the nineteen thirty six Summer Olympics,
which were held in Berlin. If you've checked out our
earlier episode, then you noticed that Jesse Owens is a
returning guest to our show. Jesse Owens was a track
and field star, and given that the Dossler brothers were
(16:37):
already benefiting from the Nazi Party's use of sports as
a propaganda tool, they saw the Summer Olympics as an
opportunity to go into the international sphere and get recognition
outside of Herzel and outside of Germany. So they pushed
and pushed to get Dossler shoes on Jesse Owens. All
(17:00):
they really seemed to care about in the Olympics, in fact,
was getting Jesse Owens to wear these shoes. He did
wear Dostler shoes and he won four gold medals, which, again,
if you look at the way these shoes are constructed,
is crazy because you're not supposed to use your heel.
You're just supposed to like dig in and run on
your toes and the plan worked. Owens four medals gave
(17:24):
the company huge amounts of international attention, and athletes from
all across Europe started making their way to this village Harzol,
which is pretty tiny, whenever they passed through Germany, saying
I gotta get a pair of one of those Dossler
Brothers shoes.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, and from that original design we talked about from
nineteen twenty eight, this one was much improved because it
actually left out the metal plate and it had very
small eyelets where the and thin laces, which helped to
reduce the weight of the shoe, which was really important
for you know, sprinting. Absolutely in fact, instead of they
(18:01):
had to get really creative with materials because instead of
using that metal plate, they used something called vegetable tanned
bottom leather or vash leather, and that significantly reduced the weight.
So really forward thinking design work going into these shoes
that continued to carry on specifically with Audi. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
I look again, as we're gonna see, neither of these
guys are perfect, but all these innovations in the world
of footwear are Audi's I want to highlight that because
I feel like that's very important that Audi was the
brains of the operation. Well, at this point, their success
is bringing them to a more money, more problems sort
(18:42):
of situation. Their relationship is becoming strained, and as the
company is succeeding, Germany is inching closer to war and
the brothers are experiencing a failure in their relationship. One
that a huge, huge animosity that extends to their wives,
(19:02):
their children, their parents, their other siblings because they did
have other siblings.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, and weirdly, both families lived together in the same villa,
which seemed less than ideal considering that every source we've
looked into has their wives just fighting like cats and
dogs between each other.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
They were not peacemakers, not at all.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And I'm sure that tension carried over into the brother's relationship.
When you're trying to defend your wife in some sort
of spat and take take their side, it probably soured
relations between the brothers.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
And let's not forget moms in the picture too. Yeah. Right,
So in nineteen forty, Oddie gets the call. He is
asked to serve in the German military, and he does
for about three months. But somehow he is able to
get an exemption. And you'll hear different history and speculate
(19:57):
that this could have been due to Rudy's to maybe
back in Herzel. He was pulling some strings to get
his brother out to go back to the shoe business.
And we'll probably never know for sure whether he was
able to get that exemption due to Rudy, but we
do know that whatever happened, it did not alleviate the
(20:19):
tension between the families. As the war kicked in to
full swing, the tensions between the families got worse and
worse until they hit a tipping point.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, this is one of the most divisive bits of
the story. There are various accounts of this, but it
is something that comes up repeatedly, and so supposedly, in
nineteen forty three, when there was an Allied air raid
on Hertze, the brothers and their families found themselves sharing
(20:50):
a bomb shelter, and supposedly Adolph made a comment that
Rudy was never able to shake because he interpreted as
being a direct insult to his family. So, as the
story goes, Adolph and hearing the sound of the approaching
(21:10):
RAF forces Royal Air Force British planes said something to
the effect of there come those pig dogs again, or
here come those bastards or the dirty bastards Basterds are
back again, exactly to which Rudy heard that as an insult,
lobbed at he and his family as they got into
(21:33):
the shelter.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And this was either a misunderstanding or a grudge that
both brothers would carry throughout their lives and refuse to reconcile.
Later that year, this is nineteen forty three, Rudy himself
gets called up for military service, and at this point
he suspects that Audie had schemed to get him sent
(21:56):
to the front to edge him out of the business,
and he serves from nineteen forty three to nineteen forty five.
In nineteen forty five, Rudy deserts his post in Poland.
He flees just ahead of the oncoming Russian army and
he goes back to Harrisol. He hurriedly gets a friend
(22:18):
of his who is a doctor to declare him unfit
for military service due to a frozen foot. But then
the story frozen foot, Yeah, frozen foot, is that like
a twisted ankle kind of it's you know, what he
was in a hurry?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Is that like bone spurs?
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, it's just something to make you unable to walk,
I see. And so this doesn't pass muster with the Gestapo.
They arrest Rudy Dostler for desertion and he blames that
on Audi too. But here's the thing. We don't know
whether Adolph Dostler got his brother purposely sent into military service,
(22:56):
but we do have pretty compelling circumstance reports that both
Audie and his wife snitched on him.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, I see referenced in several places, one of which
is in a Fortune magazine article called the Hatred and
Bitterness behind two of the world's most popular brands by
Omar Oktar to an American investigative report that was found
and that's in Fortune, right, Yes, that's in Fortune.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And so he's arrested first for desserting his posts by
the Gestapo, and then when he's released by the Gestapo,
he's arrested by the Allies on suspicion of working for
the Gestapo. And that American investigative report that you mentioned,
Noel does give truth to his claims. And while he
(23:45):
was languishing wasting away in a pow camp. Adolph Osler
is very hard at work. He is rebuilding the business
and he is making a killing selling shoes, selling quote
unquote Jesse shoes to American soldiers who all know about
the legendary Summer Olympics and all want to have the shoes.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
And it feels to me this is a speculating But
tell me if you think this is true, man, that
this is a really early example of this kind of
endorsement culture in sporting goods and wear and any kind
of apparel.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
I really do feel like this is kind of the
model setter for that whole thing, and this is something
that the company would continue to lean heavily into and
it would become another sore spot between the brothers as
time went on.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Absolutely, we should also point out I couldn't find anything
about Jesse Owens getting any percentage of sales, So I
think that was a I think that was a rough
spot for him because he could have made millions.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Well, it was a different time, right, I mean it
was like a cutting edge stuff. They were almost like, yeah,
just give me the shoes so I can perform better
because other companies weren't making anything that was quite up
to this level of innovation, right, right, So these.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Guys at first their personalities complementing one another. Then their
relationships became strained. Now they hate each other, They loathe
and a bore one another, and they can barely stand
each other's presence, which is weird because they still both
live in the same, very very small town. And we
see this hate in the historical record. So Rudy has
(25:24):
not taking this on the chin or turning the other cheek.
He retaliates against his brother in nineteen forty six when
Adolph Dossler is hauled before the deed Nazification Committee and
he could be classified as something called a bellestetter or
a profiteer, which means if he is proven to have
(25:47):
made a lot of profit or having broken financial laws
during wartime, he could have lost control of the entire
company of Dossler Brothers. And that meant, at least in
Rudy's mind, that he could be appointed to run the company.
He could maybe even cut out his brother entirely, which
is brutal when you consider Rudy didn't make the shoes.
(26:09):
This is this is very strange. So he tried to
paint Adolph Ostler in a terrible light trying to get
control of the company, but they still lived under the
same roof.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, so he was sort of like pointing the finger
right right it himself. And ultimately the Allies determined that
neither of the Dossler brothers were problematic enough Nazis to
really mess with. They had bigger and Nazi fish to fry.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah. Yeah, And the American occupation forces actually seized their villa.
So all these two families that hate each other are
living in makeshift accommodations in the shoe factor, so this
is funny.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
In nineteen forty eight, they officially split the company up
and moved to opposite sides of the river that bisects
this tiny little hamlet in Bavaria.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
The river Aurok. Yeah, and Audi names his company Adidas
Adi Das right, yeah, which is a portman toeau. Oh,
we were on dangerous ground there of his first and
last names. And Rudy tries to do something similar and
(27:24):
at first he calls his company Ruda.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Now to me, this is a big signpost of how
uncreative and kind of like ripoffye Rudy kind of was
that he immediately had to be like, oh, you're gonna
make a portmanteau for your company name. Well, I'm gonna
do the same thing, you know. And because Adidas is
clever and that's a good idea, and that sounds good.
It sounds good. But you know, he did see the
(27:49):
lights and whether he was counseled by some smart young
buck in marketing, he changed the name to the now
much more ubiquitous Puma, which couldn't imagine it Ruda. That
sounds that's hard, that's not even fun to say.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It sounds like years ago. I did an episode for
Car Stuff on Cars behind the Iron Curtain. Remember that
I was the producer of that show, the producer. That's true. Yeah, wow,
we go way back. But the thing is, Ruda sounds
like a kind of iron curtain car.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
It also sounds like the prefix for like rudimentary. It
makes me think like they're kind of like crappy shoes.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, it just sounds very plain, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Puma. On the other hand, I picture a powerful, you know,
prowling beast with speed and precision and agility, something that
leaps and pounces.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right. So, yes, correct decision on Rudy's part to shed
that name Ruda and go for something a little bit better.
And here's something interesting. We mentioned earlier that Harzo is
in an area of Germany it was known for shoemaking. Historically,
it was one of the primary industries of the area.
(29:00):
It's no surprise that shoe factories would take off here.
But eventually most of the town, if not all of
the town, ends up working for one of these two factories.
These guys still hate each other, by the way, oh,
with a venomous passion, and that passion extends this to me,
this was one of the weirdest parts. It extends to
(29:22):
the employees.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Oh man, No, it was. They created this whole hat
field in McCoy's kind of atmosphere in this little town
that was literally divided by that river we talked about.
I mean, there were restaurants, bars, grocery stores specifically designed
to just be for employees of one company or the other.
(29:44):
They were, I mean, I can't imagine it would have
been codified in any kind of real way, But there
was this unspoken idea that they never the twain shall meet,
there shall be no coupling between Poma and Adida's employees.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Including yeah, romantic pursuits.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, I think that's that's yeah, exactly right, and certainly
marriage would have been hashtag for boat built in.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
Yeah, there's there's an interesting split in terms of the
internal workforce as well. So when the Dossler brothers split
the company up, the employees essentially had to choose. They
could go to Adidas or they could go to Puma.
Most of the technical people, like the actual cobblers, stayed
(30:29):
with Adidas. Most of the sales force and the admin
folks went with Puma, and it showed pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
And man, making it even deeper bitterer family affair. Even
the mom had to pick sides.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, yeah, but who did she choose?
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Think she went with the elder?
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Which is still crazy because Adis was the idea man.
He was the Willy Wonka of this whole operation. He
started it in her abandoned lawn. How could she forsake
her her young son like that, her bright young boy.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, I think clearly we have chosen our horse in
this race. We don't want to be too biased, but
we do want to be transparent about that. Rudy seems
like the worst. I'm on tie Maudie all the way.
What about you?
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Casey, I got a side with run DMC and corn
I'm going Adidas. It has been adjudicated Casey on the
case I love that segment.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Have you seen that shirt design that's floating around on
the face group? Yeah, and no spoilers, guys, but it's
happening and I think it's gonna have some French on it.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Check it out. Go to Ridiculous Historians our community page,
where you can see some A plus memes as well.
So let's let's pause for a second before before we
get into even more opprobrium. There is an interesting story
about how they make how they decide the iconic shoes right,
because clearly the Adidas or the Pumas you buy today
(32:01):
do not look like the shoes that Jesse Owens wore.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Oh no, well, like I said, I mean you see
on this amazing design blog, Design Boom, just the evolution
of these shoes. And even as far as it goes no,
it's cool. You actually when you still when it becomes Adidas.
Because this site is particularly devoted to ADDIE's designs, so
they've obviously chosen sides as well. You start to see
(32:25):
more of a fashion trend kind of coming into play.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
The spikes are less pronounced.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Spikes are less pronounced, or color, there's more color they
have that like even in like sixty four, you have
the designs that use that kind of more Swede blue
swede look, and then they've got the little kind of
stripes along the side, much more traditional. Then you start
seeing those like iconic like gold colored ones. It's called
(32:50):
the Azteca Gold model. And that's as far as this
blog goes. But yeah, so it took like into the
sixties for them to really start getting that iconic look
that we know today from it.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Get And so we do have this story behind that
iconic three stripe arrangement on Adidas. So they had those
strips before in earlier versions of the shoe, but they
weren't really noticeable. They were the same color, like he says,
before the gold, before the blue and the white. So
Addi decided that the strips should be painted some other
(33:23):
color to make them look like stripes, and that this
would be the Adidas trademark. And so he made sample shoes,
some with two, some with three, some of four or
even as many as six stripes apiece. And then he
asked his wife and his sister in law to pick
which ones they liked best. They ended up saying that
four stripes is too many, it felt too busy, and
(33:43):
so on their advice, he went with the three stripe
design over at Puma. By the way, just to be fair,
Rudy had a couple of different depictions. He thought of
maybe having a Puma jumping through capital D, but eventually
he just settled on the company's signature horizontal stripe, which
they call a form stripe.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Man, man, you have just really expanded my sneaker head Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
No, oh, no, actual sneakerheads are listening to this. Yeah,
hopefully you find this of interest.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Hopefully, but really, if you are a sneakerhead, I know
I'm harping on it, but I cannot recommend highly enough
this Design Boom blog because each shoe has very specific
information about like some of the design features, and there
are some very specific kind of jargon y terms that
I was unaware of that folks that are into that
world might be a little more hip too, so I
recommend checking that out.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
We should also mention I think we talked about this
a little bit off air. The entire time this story
is taking place, like since forty eight they are suing
the pants off each other, right or trying to.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I mean pretty much just a non stop torrent of lawsuits.
And I don't know if you were able to find
anything specific Ben or any specific documentation, but I would
conjecture I would hazard to guess that a lot of
it was around Rudy possibly nicking some of these designs
from his clearly more sneaker headed brother.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
ADDI, Oh, yeah, absolutely. And as this stuff is happening,
Adidas and Puma are both growing as companies. The town
is getting further and further and further divided. It becomes
known as did you see this nickname now? Oh? Yeah,
the bent Next, Yes, the town of bent Next. Because,
(35:39):
according to the story, if you were walking around town
and you saw someone you didn't know, you would look
at their shoes before you decided whether to talk to them.
If you were a Puma person and they wore pumas,
you're in.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, that is just crazy how it's such a specific industry,
It's such a small town to be divided so and
have such a very interesting way of identifying and easy, right,
you could just look at the other person's shoes and say,
I know what team you're on, buddy.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Here's how deep it went. This is something I found.
I only found this in one place, so I hope
it's true, but I couldn't confirm it yet. Apparently each
side had their own tombstone carvers.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, that will come into play a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
I did find an article on a blog called Duet's
Blog that deals with the intersection of creativity and the law,
and it talks about how a lot of the lawsuits
between Puma and Adidas were in fact quibbling over that
three stripe design that you mentioned earlier and went into
(36:41):
Apparently Puma, in a burst of creativity, made it a
four stripe design to just, you know, one stripe better
in the mind of in the mind of Rudi. Not
to mention the fact that we talked about earlier, how
there was this focus on getting these athletes to endorse
these products, right, and that continued and became a game
(37:04):
of one upsmanship between Audi and Rudy as their respective
companies kind of started to gain steam on their own.
And this continued on throughout the years. When Audi actually
turned down the idea of sponsoring this young, up and
coming tennis player by the name of Boris Becker if
you've heard of him. He was a big deal in
(37:25):
the in the eighties, in the nineties. And so just
just to as a you know, act of pure one upsmanship,
Rudy signed him. Not because he thought he was awesome
or he saw any promise in him. He just wanted
to piss off his brother. And this is from a
fantastic article in the Telegraph called Adidas and Puma Bury
(37:46):
the hatchet after sixty years of brothers feud? What bury
the hatchet? Ben? What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It means that the brothers died, That's what it means.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
That is what that means. And remember that tombstone carver
you were talking about, Well, those respective tombstone carvers carved
those respective tombstones on polar opposite sides of the town. Yes,
that's correct.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Rudy Dossler, the elder of the Dostler brothers, died on
October twenty seventh, nineteen seventy four, of lung cancer. He
was seventy six. The priest called his little brother Adolf
to his side, and they did not squash the beef.
As far as we know. Adolph himself expired four years later.
(38:27):
He was seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Ben, I want to correct myself here. I think I
said earlier that there were separate cemeteries on opposite side
of the town. That seems to be not quite right.
They just made sure that in the town cemetery they
were as far away from one another.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
As possible, symbolically as to the telegraph rights, symbolically representing
their unending hatred. So they did it on purpose. Can
you imagine that deathbed conversation? Man?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, and I cannot. No, I cannot and I cannot imagine.
I mean, the circumstances were pretty insane. You're talking about
a lot of money, a lot of intellectual property, a
weird power dynamic, weird familial relations, not to mention being
in the heart of one of the most brutal conflicts
in the history of the world, if not the most
(39:15):
rutal conflict in the history of the world. So you know,
lots lots of factors at play here. But I did
read in that Vice article that the brothers purportedly never
spoke to each other again. But then they're hints that
maybe they did here and there from time to time
throughout their lives. But it certainly never smooth things over.
(39:35):
But there's a really good quote from a book called
Sneaker Wars, The Enemy Brothers who founded Adidas and Pumas
and the family feud that forever changed the Business of Sports,
by Barbara Smitt, and it is a quote from Rudolph
Dossler much later in his life, and he says this,
the relation to my brother was ideal from nineteen twenty
(39:56):
four till nineteen thirty three. Then his young wife tried
to interfere in business matters, although she, with her sixteen years,
had no experience at all, and the warfare began.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
So it was probably a situation where he said I
hate your wife. Yeah, like a Yoko Beatles kind of situation. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Maybe maybe that's the needle in the conflict haystack. Here.
We do know that the feud carried on to later generations,
and the brothers had notoriously bad relationships with their children
as well. I was reading a pretty interesting article in
The Guardian that talked about this Adidas versus Puma, the
(40:38):
bitter rivalry that runs and runs, and in this they
explore the problems that the brothers had almost universally relating
to family members. So Audie always fought with his son
and heir, a guy named Horst Dossler, and eventually banished
him to France.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Spanished him.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Wow. Yeah. He banished him to work on a shoe
factory that was failing losing a ton of money. He
turned it into a moneymaker. Then he built a thing
called Adidas France that rivaled the rest of Adidas, but
it wasn't good enough for his dad. And Rudy over
at Puma had a son named Armand Dossler. It was
(41:20):
his oldest son in heir. He routinely made fun of
him in front of other company executives, and he was
going crazy because he saw his cousin Horst succeeding at Adidas.
So Armand finally exiled himself to Salzburg to run a
Puma factory there. And then he started selling shoes on
the US market, which his father had forbidden him to do.
(41:45):
And when Rudy died in nineteen seventy four, his oldest
son was startled to learn he had been written out
of the will. That's cold grief, man.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, Well, after all this bad blood and bitter familial feul,
surely there's a silver lining here somewhere, right, then.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Is somewhere in the end zone of this story. Yeah,
on the on the pitch, Yeah, maybe lay it on me. Bro.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Well, the two companies do still exist in that same
tiny town of twenty five thousand Herzo. I'm not gonna
even try to pronounce it again because I don't have
it in front of me. But in two thousand and nine,
the companies kind of put their differences aside, and then
this really brutal history of one upsminceship aside and stepped
(42:30):
out to play a friendly soccer game whereas the Europeans
call it a football, and it was to support the
Peace One Day organization, which chose September twenty first of
two thousand and nine as the first, I believe, of
an annual day of non violence. So but then this
article in the Telegraph ends with the very knowing little
(42:54):
Kicker line quote. But despite the friendly handshakes, those who
know the townspeople say it will take more than one
game of soccer to bury the hatchet.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
And in business terms, Adidas, if you just look at
the numbers, is by far the larger company. I think
in two thousand and nine they had thirty nine thousand
employees compared to Puma's nine thousand, but Puma says they're
not hurting. They have a great reputation for getting the
endorsements of world famous athletes like Usain Bolt was one
(43:25):
of the one of the more recent ones.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
And that's a legacy that's just carried over from the
old Dossler Brothers days. So very very forward thinking. And
I did read somewhere that while Adidas maybe wasn't the
first custom sneaker company, they were the first to like
mass produce and sell them to the public. Because you
make a custom sneaker designed for an athlete, there was
a time where it was literally a custom product designed
(43:49):
for an individual. Now these custom products, people want them
on their feet, even though they are not Hussein Bolt,
even though they are not Michael Jordan, you know, yes,
and feel a little bit closer to their heroes.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, like Rebock pumps. You know, remember those La lights?
Oh yeah, easies. It's an interesting pattern and it makes
me think that we found a crazy piece of history
that a lot of people don't know. If you are
listening to this, gosh, I hope someone out here is
If you're listening to this and you're wearing Adidas and Pumas,
(44:25):
Adidas or Pumas. I don't know how you'd wear I
guess one on one foot, one on the other. That
would look ridiculous. That's very forward fashion, I think. But
if you're wearing those, be aware that you are treading
on strange history with each step. You take a waxing
poetic here just because it's such an interesting story.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, and the image of treading when we're talking about shoes,
that works quite nicely.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yes, yeah, oh, thanks man, And we hope that you
enjoyed this episode as much as we enjoyed making it
NOL again. You know, I don't want to blow up
your spot, but happy birthday man.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Hey, thanks pal. We'll have a drink after work maybe.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah. Yeah, let's see. Let's look into that. Casey, he
are you down? Let's do it all right? Well, Casey
is spoken, And of course we want to thank you
Casey for helping us out as always, thanks for saving
the show. We want to thank our research associate Ease
Jeff Cope.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Also want to thank Alex Williams, who composed our theme.
And yeah, we want to thank you for joining us
for another episode of Ridiculous History. Stay tuned for our
next episode where we blow up the moon try to.
We'll see you then, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(45:40):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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