At the group’s global headquarters, just outside Nuremberg in southern Germany, senior executives had gathered at a small exhibition hall. Despite the icy weather, they were glowing. Adidas’s deal to acquire Reebok, its American rival, had been approved by the European competition watchdog and by Reebok shareholders. Now the executives were preparing to reveal their second big piece of news of the week.
To the strains of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the German sports giant unveiled the latest development in the football boot, the F50 Tunit — the world’s first customisable football boot, it claims.
Adidas has kicked off what is sure to be a fiercely contested battle in the run-up to this summer’s World Cup as all the sports companies fight to make sure that their brand is the one that football fans aspire to.
Günter Weigl, global director of football for Adidas, said the World Cup was a “huge opportunity”. The City agrees. “The football World Cup is the most important sports event for companies such as Adidas, Nike and Puma,” said Andreas Inderst, an analyst at ABN Amro.
Adidas is the global market leader in football products, with an estimated 35% share of the market, just ahead of Nike with 33%. Its ambition is to have extended that lead by the end of the World Cup.
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The group hopes that its latest boot, four years in the making, will prove as groundbreaking as its flagship shoe, the Predator, launched before the 1994 World Cup in America.
But while the Predator, with its rubber fins and other bells and whistles was a genuine step forward in what a boot could do, the Tunit seems to be as much about fashion as performance, a charge strongly resisted by Weigl.
The point about the Tunit, which is aimed at 17 to 25-year-olds, is that customers buy three separate components that are combined to build the boot — an upper casing, an inner sole or “chassis” and a set of studs. The pieces come in a variety of colours and are built for different playing surfaces.
The aim is to appeal to youths who already enjoy being able to customise their mobile phones and iPods. As for professional players who might endorse it, the ideal would be a player such as Liverpool’s Djibril Cisse, who seems to change his hairstyle with every match.
The company is sensitive to the fashion charge. Weigl said: “It’s not a fashion product. It’s 100% a top performance product.” He insisted the boot had been tested by 500 players of varying standards.
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But the range of styles and colours reveals Adidas’s true intentions. The Tunit also has a high-fashion price tag. The starter kit costs €180 (£123), while a deluxe kit, with eight different components able to create 18 variations, costs €350, which will stretch the pockets of many of the teenagers it is aimed at. And for those who want to extend the customisation possibilities, spare uppers cost €85 a pop.
But Adidas executives believe they are on the right track. Klaus Rolshoven, a member of the company’s innovation team, said: “Young consumers buy iPods (at similar prices).”
The big question is to what extent the Tunit will be able to replicate the success of the Predator. Since its inception, the latter, helped in no small part by the endorsement of stars such as David Beckham, has sold by the bucketload. The last model, the Predator Pulse, has sold 2m pairs since its launch two years ago, and the group has similar expectations for the latest version, the Predator Absolute, launched before Christmas.
Weigl said he did not expect the Tunit to match that but he hoped to sell a “high five-digit number”.
The mood in Nuremberg is certainly one of confidence, bolstered by the news that the takeover of Reebok has been given the green light. Both firms are on track with the integration plan, having set up 10 committees of six to eight people, drawn from both Reebok and Adidas, to decide what the enlarged entity will look like and how it will function.
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A spokesman described the two as “a perfect fit”, with Reebok strong in traditional American sports such as baseball, basketball and gridiron and Adidas ahead in football.
With Nike, the world’s largest sporting-goods firm in a bit of bother after parting company with its chief executive, Adidas is relishing the chance to narrow the gap on its great rival, especially as it is one of the main sponsors of the World Cup in a year when the tournament is being held in the company’s native Germany.
Adidas executives expect a heated contest in the coming months as the build-up to the event intensifies. As well as the Tunit and Predator Absolute, the group has launched the official match ball. It hopes to sell 10m of them, having sold 6m during the last World Cup. The company has a number of other products to be announced in the next few months.
Weigl is sure that Nike will launch its own version of the customisable football boot. “We will see other companies copy the concept, sooner rather than later,” he said. To date, no news has emerged of such a plan by Nike. Industry gossip suggests the American group is working on updated versions of its existing range.
Either way, there is plenty to play for. The football does not kick off until June, but the off-the-pitch scrapping is well under way already.