Adidas Wants to Copy the Stan Smith Success Story
- Launched in the ’70s, Stan Smiths lead a star-fueled comeback
- ‘Did they name the shoe after you, or you after the shoe?’
Adidas CEO Says ‘Not Happy Where We Are’ in the U.S.
Adidas AG aims to increase its sales by 40 million pairs of sneakers annually, to more than a half-billion by 2020, largely by appealing to fashion-conscious teens and urban hipsters. At the heart of that effort: a decades-old shoe named after a retired tennis player who lives in South Carolina and hasn’t won a major singles tournament since 1980.
The shoe is the Stan Smith, a white-leather number with pale green accents introduced in 1971, the year before Stan Smith (the player, now 70) earned his second and last Grand Slam singles title. Thanks to a well-orchestrated promotional blitz, this unlikely hero has made one of the greatest comebacks in marketing history, from a declining brand popular with suburban dads into a must-have for the fashion-savvy. As they rev up an effort to catch Nike Inc., Adidas executives are seeking to replicate parts of the campaign to stoke interest in other shoes. “We wanted to position it anew with fashion designers and trendsetters,” says Arthur Hoeld, who heads Adidas’s brand strategy and business development. “This is part of the concept -- to push boundaries, to experiment.”