2014 was a BIG year for Adidas as the brand firmly got its groove back in many ways: The Stan Smith was re-released in dominating fashion, Kanye jumped from the Swoosh to the Three Stripes, Pharrell painted inside the lines, Raf and Rick made more sneakers and Yohji continued to show out with Y-3. But who cares about making a single, year-long dent? Adidas needs to continue the upward trend to make sure that we're still paying attention tomorrow, which is exactly why Fortune sat down with new president of Adidas North America, Mark King, to see how the company can keep up the momentum, especially in the United States. The brand's struggles here, likely due to our obsession with Nike and their own often Euro-centric designs, are well-known, so Adidas is spending the immediate future focusing on flipping the script.
King says Adidas will now shift a lot of its attention to beating out Nike and Under Armour in designing cool looking gear for American sports like football and baseball. Adidas knows that if the gear isn't cool, it isn't going to sell to the kids. I mean, okay, duh, we could have told them that years ago. By targeting running (with the latest and greatest Boost running shoe being announced yesterday), baseball and Originals, which encompasses the "style" side of the business, specifically, Adidas is putting in work.
While, athletes may actually give a fuck about the brand amping up its sports gear for performance results, from our point of view, the Originals approach is working absolute wonders. Everyone got wild hyped for the Tubulars, the Stan Smiths are going to stick around for a while and now just about everyone is rushing to buy a pair of Superstars. While the writer here, John Kell, is convinced that no one is wearing Three Stripes because they're not "on trend," us fashion bros think that couldn't be further from the truth. Kell has obviously never read Four Pins or seen a street style picture from the past year. Our message to Adidas? Keep it up, fam.
