How To Beat Nike Kobe 10 For Sale Nike

How To Beat Nike

Eric Liedtke, director of footwear marketing for Adidas, is a high-energy, high-intensity man. Veins pop from his neck. He often waves his arms around in the air for no clear reason. He curses a lot, and wears athletic shirts that wick the sweat from his skin. At a large whiteboard on the wall of his office, Liedtke messily sketches out his plan of attack.

''Did you want the Caddy that zigs?'' he asks, and answers: ''Neither did I. You can't be what you're not, and Cadillac is not a Japanese sports car.'' I nod slowly. ''By the same token, Adidas needs to understand exactly what people want from us.'' He picks up a shoe from a rack by his door and places it on his table. ''This is the Adidas Response. It's a $75 running shoe that Adidas does every year. We always do it. But should we? Do we know who wants it, or why they want it? Our designers used to make a $75 running shoe, or a $100 basketball shoe, without any clear picture of who would be wearing it.''

That's the longtime knock on Adidas: it makes good shoes but can't seem to hit the consumer taste bull's-eye. When Adidas recently started up its ClimaCool ventilation system, industry types were impressed by the technology. Yet sales were tame, apparently because the colors were off. ''Those were Euro colors,'' one Wall Street analyst says. ''You look like a fruitcake in that shoe.''

Critics often note that the firm's global headquarters remain in Germany, in a rural village, leaving it way out of touch with the trendy American market. To Liedtke, the head of Adidas operations in the United States, the brand's future will hinge on how well it understands its audience. ''So now,'' he says, scrawling out a rough matrix on his whiteboard, ''we've defined this set of consumer categories, which will give our designers some targets.'' He writes eight category names up on the board, the consumer types that Adidas hopes to win:

Gearhead -- the hard-core, nonteen runner who needs high-performance shoes.

Core Letterman -- the true-blue, white suburban high-school athlete. (Description from the internal Adidas guidelines: ''age 16-24''; ''I don't like people who think they're too cool Nike Kobe 9 Elite Officially Unveiled.'')

Contemporary Letterman -- the high-school athlete who, Liedtke says, ''still cares about the ladies and hooking up.''

Aficionado -- the kid, probably African-American, who likes brand-new, $100-plus basketball shoes.

Popgirl -- the teeny-bopper who scours the mall for Skechers.

Value Addict -- the shopper at Kohl's and Target, probably middle-aged and fairly well off.

A-Diva -- Liedtke calls this '''Sex and the City' goes to the gym.''

Fastidious Eclectus -- the ''SoHo architect,'' Liedtke says, who craves hip, distinctive sneakers. (Adidas guidelines: ''age 15-35''; ''I think weirdness and confidence are sexy.'')

''We sell well right now with Gearhead, Core Letterman and Popgirl,'' says Lietdtke, a guy who comes across as grown-up Core Letterman himself. Popgirl loves the shell-toe lowtops that Run-DMC once made famous; Gearhead and Core Letterman like Adidas's performance running shoes. ''We've also lately made a good run at Fastidious Eclectus,'' he says. This type likes reissued 70's Adi classics.

But the brand needs a boost in its other categories. ''We're known for a solid, quality product,'' Liedtke says, ''but it's almost too utilitarian to be sexy Nike KD 7 For Sale. In focus groups, we asked kids, 'If Adidas were at the party, where would it be?' Kids said Adidas would be hanging around the keg with its pals, talking about girls.'' He pauses and smiles. ''They said Nike would be with the girls.''

Named for its founder, Adi Dassler, Adidas (industry people say ''AH-di-DAHSS,'' or just ''AH-di'') has the most pedigreed past in all sneakerdom. Adi Dassler cobbled shoes for Jesse Owens in the '36 Olympics. For decades after, Adidas made the finest track shoes in the world. At the '72 Olympics in Munich, 1,100 of 1,500 athletes wore Adi shoes. But Munich was both a triumph and a last gasp. The first Nike shoes were sold that same year. Over the next two decades, much to the shock of the industry, this little Oregon company slowly and thoroughly ate Adi's lunch Nike Kobe 10 For Sale.

Adidas was a family company, privately held, and it took its eye off the ball just as Nike was changing the business. In the 80's, as Adidas deteriorated, it was bought and sold at bargain-basement prices. In 1990 it bottomed out with 3 percent of the American athletic-footwear market, lower than Keds, not much better than Avia.

Adi settled down in the mid- to late-'90s under new ownership, and it has clawed its way back to relevance. One of its first steps was hiring a Nike guy, a marketing genius named Rob Strasser, who was sometimes called ''the man who saved Nike'' because of his work on the Air concept. Strasser asked that Adi's American operations be moved to Oregon, near Nike's offices, but before he could do much else, he died of a heart attack.

Adidas, though, got its act together in Portland. The company's goal is to get ahead by understanding its customers better, banking on its suddenly popular vintage models and strategically setting prices just beneath its main competitor's top line. With all of this, Adidas has pulled into fourth place in American sales, a little behind New Balance and Reebok. Back in the distance, but gaining, is Puma. These challengers are opening up new fronts in the sneaker wars, and they have a common enemy, which Liedtke gestures toward as he stands at the wide picture window behind his desk. Liedtke looks out across the Willamette River, beyond the glass towers of downtown Portland. There, he says, just out of sight, is ''where the Berm begins,'' a grassy rise encircling the massive, opulent campus that is the world headquarters for the all-powerful but increasingly vulnerable Nike.