Reebok and Adidas Case Study

This report discusses the case study of Reebok and Adidas, their emergence, life cycle, analysis, key issues, and recommendations. The report highlights the downfall of Reebok due to lack of customization, decrease in interest in aerobics, and misleading marketing policies. The report recommends the brand to focus on quality, expand their business, and update their technologies.

Running Head: REEBOK AND ADIDAS CASE STUDY
Reebok and Adidas Case Study
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Relevant details of the case..........................................................................................................3
Emergence of the athletic shoe brands....................................................................................3
Life Cycle of Reebok...............................................................................................................4
Analysis of the case.....................................................................................................................6
Key issues....................................................................................................................................8
Recommendations........................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
Reference.......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The industry related t the production of the athletic shoes initiated in the year 1895. The
establishment of the brand Reebok was seen in the year 1958. Reebok started manufacturing
running shoes with spikes invoiced in the sole of the shoes. Being the initiator of the spiked
shoes the brand gained popularity and the rate of global acceptance of the brand was very high.
With the high acceptance rate of the products that were being manufactured by Reebok, the
global scenario of the brand in the perspective of sales and brand popularity was at its peak. With
the introduction of Nike in the field of athletic shoe manufacturer the sales and the popularity of
Reebok was facing a downfall in the global market. This report will discuss about the objective
and importance of the case study. This report will also discuss about the details of the case study
that are relevant in nature. This report will further provide the analysis of the case study. This
report will also discuss about the theoretical implications of the marketing strategies of the
project that is being initiated. This project will also discuss about the key issues of the brand
Reebok that has been the main reason for the downfall of the brand. This report will also provide
recommendations to the brand to sustain the market. Despite of the downfall that it has been
facing in the market.
Discussion
Relevant details of the case
Emergence of the athletic shoe brands
Te emergence of the athletic shoe manufacturing brands started in the year of 1980s. The
four brands with high aspiration entered the market for achieving the silverware by

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manufacturing the sports shoes. The legacy of manufacturing athletic shoes started in the year
1895, when Joseph William Foster decided to manufacture athletic shoes and invoiced spikes
into the shoes in order to help the runners to gain grip during running. The spikes were totally
hand-made. In the year 1958 the two grandsons of Joseph William Foster established the brand
Reebok. After the emergence of Reebok, during 1995, when Reebok was going through the
downfall, Nike started emerging as the leading athletic shoe brand manufacturer. Adidas saw
themselves emerging in the year 1954, after the Second World War. They gained popularity as
they supplied cleats to the German International team during the world cup victory.
Life Cycle of Reebok
Despite of the fact that the life cycle of Reebok initiated at 1958, Paul Fireman initiated
the modern version of Reebok in the year 1979, when he first came across the shoes in an
international trade show. After being introduced to the shoes, he started negotiating for taking the
right to sell the brand in the North America. In the year 1979, Paul Fireman established the
company with the name of Reebok in the Northern America. In the year 1982, Reebok started
manufacturing aerobic shoes that helped women who practiced aerobic. With the drastic growth
rate in the acceptance of the brand in the year 1995, Reebok made a sale of $3 billion since the
last decade. In the early years of 1990, the trend of aerobics was decreasing in a rapid rate, which
causes a decline in sales for Reebok as it was mainly focused on the sales of the aerobic shoes
that were targeted for the female clients of the brands. Reebok wanted to expand its business in
other sector of sports but Nike was already predominant in the field where Reebok was trying to
set up their business. In the year 1995, Nike surpassed the sales of Reebok by $1.33 billion. The
main hindrance that stood in front of Reebok the lack of are the lack of relation between the Foot
Locker and their brand. This communication gap was made full use by the Nike athletic shoes

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production house. Previously, when Nike was not completely established and was just emerging
as a brand in the field of manufacturing athletic shoes, Reebok got the chance to start the
business with the Foot Locker but due to the lack of time to produce custom footwear for the
Foot lockers the business never progressed to a fruitful end. Nike in other hand had agreed to
meet the requirements of the Foot Lockers and manufactured custom athletic shoes for the Foot
Lockers. Considering the weak market bases Eli Lily, the trainer in the Reebok thought that there
must have been some software issues that has led to the lack of sales of the brand. Reebok along
with Lee and Wrangler processed the advancement of the SAP version. This advancement took
longer time than the expected deadline of the project. In the mid 2003, Reebok gained their sales
and made a great business. The reason of this increase in their sales was the conflict between
Nike and the Foot lockers. In 2005, Adidas took the initiative to buy Reebok. Adidas was
fighting to sustain the competition in Europe as Nike proved to be the killer of the entire
competition. To face the fierce competition provided by Nike Adidas decided to buy Reebok
and use Reebok in the department of training and fitness. After failing to sign Jordan as the
basketball ambassador and again losing the chance of signing the wonder kid of basket ball
Lebron James, Adidas decided to invest in signing multiple stars as their rookie in the field f
basketball (Mantovani and Galvão, 2017). Adidas soon realized that launching the predator
soccer shoes in Europe will help them conquer the market as emotion re related to the predator
shoes were used by the likes of David Bekham and many other soccer stars. Gradually Adidas
started outshining Nike in the mid range sport shoes. Despite the fact that Adidas combined with
Reebok was giving a tough competition to Nike but Nike was still crowned as the brand that is
labeled to be selling the highest number of pairs of athletic shoes. In the mid 2000s, Reebok was
one of the reasons that brought Adidas the success. Out of the net turnover of $12 billion in

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Europe, Reebok had its share prominent with $1.9 billion. Reebok restocking the old stock of
athletic shoes that were in trend that got the brand promoted to the highly ranked tier standing
second just behind the likes of the Skechers (Tae-Gyu, K.I.M. and Wi-Young, 2015). The CEO
of Adidas was much pleased with the growth of the brand under their legacy. This growth in the
brand of Reebok forced Nike to collaborate with the brand named Converse and invest a lot of
revenue to buy the brand in order to compete with Adidas in the field of training and fitness
field. In the year 2009, Reebok manufactured toning shoes that claimed that wearing them itself
is enough to get rid of specific muscular problems and no other mean of treatment will be
required. This model of the shoe was targeted mainly for the women. But the science and
technology used in the making of the shoes was not well matched with the claims that were made
by the brand. Reebok had to settle a lawsuit and pay $25 million to the U.S Federal trade
Commission in order to repay the unsatisfied clients. Despite these acts Reebok has still been
doing well in the market of athletic shoes and is collaborated with the SAP ERP to sustain the
competition with Nike.
Analysis of the case
This case study initially deals with the emergence of the athletic shoe brand Reebok. The
brand seems to emerge in a very fast rate, as they were the initial manufacturers of athletic shoes
with spikes invoiced in the shoes that will help the athletes to gain a proper grip during running
in the track (Romeo, 2016). The business of Reebok was flourishing in a very fast rate as it
started manufacturing products that were aimed at a particular scope of the athletics field as well
as the products for the general athletic fields. With the increase in popularity of the field of
athletics that the brand was gaining, according to the report the brand was not willing to make
further modifications in the making of their products. This stable and never changing technology

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in the brand motive brought in stagnation in the market for the style of shoes that Reebok
manufactured. Due to lack of time, Reebok could not manufacture customized products for the
Foot Lockers. The gradual profit terms were decreasing in annual basis as the in between 1997 to
1999 the net sales dropped by $3.6 billion again in between 1999 to 2000, the sales decreased by
$2.9 billion. This decrease in the net sales of the brand Reebok resulted in growth of the brand
Nike as an elite athletic shoe brand. Nike took the advantage of collaborating with the Foot
lockers for the supply of their athletic shoes (Jain, 2017). This causes the flash marketing for the
Nike as they were collaborated with the Foot lockers in order to increase the sales growth. This
growth in the sales of the athletic shoe with the Feet Lockers took Nike to an elite level. This
phenomenon was the main reason behind the decline in the growth of Reebok (Fatma, 2018).
Another aspect that resulted in the down fall of Reebok is that the downfall in the interest of the
aerobics, as Reebok mainly focused on the field of aerobics under which they targeted the
women participants of the field (Kempf and Franklin, 2016). Due to the lessening of the interest
in the field of aerobics, the sales of athletic shoe decreases which in turn affected sales of the
brand annually (Erus, 2016). Adidas being another athletic shoe manufacturing brand that has
been emerging as one of the biggest brands after Nike in Europe. To get into the competition of
being the biggest manufacturer of athletic shoes, they decided to collaborate with Reebok and
spent a huge revenue to buy the brand (Lee and Kahle, 2016). After buying the brand for few
years Reebok was not yielding the expected outcome in number of sales, but during the conflict
of Nike with the Foot Lockers Reebok again gained the acceptance in the market by restocking
the old foot wears and was just ranked behind Skechers in terms of yearly turnover of the
training and fitness aspect of athletics. In 2010, a web served store was constructed where the
shoes of Reebok was sold as the official product where discount on very less amount was

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provided (Erhard, Werner and Michael, 2014). This increase in the emergence of the turn over by
Adidas that had already collaborated with Reebok forced Nike to collaborate with Converse and
spend a huge revenue. Despite all this competition, Nike remained the brand with the highest
turnover (Cho and Kim, 2016). The SAP version that was used initially by Reebok was also
upgraded to a much updated version of SAP which was possible with the help of LEE and
Wrangler as the modification was suggested by the Reebok, Lee and Wrangler (Duncan, 2016).
Key issues
The main issues in the management of Reebok that led to the downfall of the brand are
that the brand after getting a proper start to the marketing aspect of the brand due to the
innovative ideas that were incorporated in the products that were manufactured by the company
and did not intend to evolve their manufacturing infrastructure (Chatwin, 2017). The main
motive of the company was to manufacture the most in numbers and to reduce the cost of
production. This aspect of the increasing the production as well as lowering the production cost
leads to the factor of not being able to customize the shoes manufactured by them. This led to the
decline of the brand (Dolgin, 2017). Another reason of the company for not being able to
flourish is the reason that they did not pair up with the Foot Lockers despite the fact that the
Foot Lockers wanted to collaborate with the brand but due to lack of time for customizing shoes
for them the Foot lockers and Reebok did not went on to crack the deal (Burns, Carberry and
Schwartz, 2015). Nike was later seen to collaborate with Foot Lockers and reach the highest
standards of the business their field leaving behind Reebok as their competitor.

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Recommendations
The only recommendation that can be provided to the brand is that they must not provide
misleading marketing policies as they did for the toning shoes which will lead to the decrease in
good will of the brand and the brand loyalty decreases and this in turn positively affects the
growth of their competitors (Nigg et al. 2015) . The company must seek to improve their
technologies and the modification and customizations must be made in order to stay updated
with the regular trend. The company has already collaborated with Adidas hence must act with
the technology that the Adidas uses in order to gain the dominance in the global market and
reach the peak of the market. The software systems that the brand is using must be updated to its
highest order. This updated version will provide the increase in the efficiency of the marketing
strategy of the brand leading to the success in marketing of the products that will be launched by
Reebok. On following these recommendations the brand can regain its glory days.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that the emergence of Reebok was an obvious
choice as it was the first brand to launch athletic shoes with spikes in order to found better grip
on the track. Despite of getting a massive launch Reebok failed to maintain the dominance in the
field of athletic shoe brands as Nike took over Reebok as a brand due to the availability of
customized shoes. Reebok did not intend on growing as fast as it needed to and did not focus on
modifying the shoes as per the requirement of the clients. This factor of not being capable
enough to cope up with the pace created Nike the space to conquer the market. The downfall of
Reebok embarked the superiority of Nike, which later led to Reebok being sold to Adidas for te
betterment of the company.

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