![]() In the first football match after World War II in 1948, several members of the West Germany national football team wore Puma boots, including the scorer of West Germany's first post-war goal, Herbert Burdenski. The town of Herzogenaurach was divided on the issue, leading to the nickname "the town of bent necks"-people looked down to see which shoes strangers wore. Puma and Adidas entered a fierce and bitter rivalry after the split. A few months later, Rudolf's company changed its name to Puma Schuhfabrik Rudolf Dassler. ![]() ![]() Rudolf created a new firm that he called "Ruda", from "Ru" in Rudolf and "Da" in Dassler. Adolf started his own company using a name he formed using his nickname-Adi-and the first three letters of his last name-Das-to establish Adidas. ![]() Rudolf moved to the other side of the Aurach River to start his own company. Split and creation of Puma Īfter increasingly different views of how to run the business, the brothers split the business in 1948. When Rudolf was later picked up by American soldiers and accused of being a member of the Waffen SS, he was convinced that his brother had turned him in. "Here are the bloody bastards again," Adi remarked, apparently referring to the Allied war planes, but Rudolf, due to his apparent insecurity, was convinced his brother meant him and his family. Adi and his wife climbed into a bomb shelter that Rudolf and his family were already in. A growing rift between the brothers reached a breaking point during a 1943 Allied bomb attack. īoth brothers joined the Nazi Party, but Rudolf was slightly closer to the party they produced boots for the Wehrmacht. Business boomed the Dasslers were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes annually before World War II. The brothers drove from Bavaria to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin with a suitcase full of spikes and persuaded United States sprinter Jesse Owens to use them, the first sponsorship for an African American. In 1927, they moved into a separate building. At the time, electricity supplies in the town were unreliable, and the brothers sometimes had to use pedal power from a stationary bicycle to run their equipment. The pair started their venture in their mother's laundry. They named the new business "Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik" ( Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory) which was the only business at the time that manufactured sports shoes. In 1924, Rudolf and his younger brother, Adolf, nicknamed "Adi", founded a shoe factory. When he returned from fighting in World War I, Rudolf was trained as a salesman at a porcelain factory, and later in a leather trading business in Nuremberg. After leaving school, their son, Rudolf Dassler, joined his father at the shoe factory.
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