Business | No Yeezy answers

Can Adidas ever catch up with Nike?

The German firm’s new boss has his work cut out

FILE - Boxes containing Yeezy shoes made by Adidas are seen at Laced Up, a sneaker resale store, in Paramus, N.J., Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022. Adidas’ breakup with rapper Kanye West and the inability to sell his popular Yeezy line of shoes helped batter the company’s earnings at the end of last year. The German shoe and sportswear maker said Wednesday, March 8, 2023, that higher supply costs and slumping revenue in China also helped lead to a net loss of 513 million euros or $540 million in the fourth quarter. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) — Image: AP

Mar 23rd 2023|BERLIN

A few years ago it appeared as though Adidas might challenge Nike for the title of the world’s biggest maker of sportswear. The American giant was well ahead, to be sure. But its three-striped German rival had pep in its step. Under Kasper Rorsted, who took over as chief executive in October 2016, Adidas’s revenues shot up—by a cumulative 30% or so in the first three years of his stewardship. A lucrative deal from 2013 to make and sell trainers designed by Kanye West, an American rapper, was paying off handsomely; by 2021 Mr West’s Yeezy line contributed 12% of Adidas’s overall shoe sales. In August that year the company’s market capitalisation reached €67bn ($79bn), more than twice what it had been five years earlier.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “No Yeezy answers”