Entrepreneurship is a risky but very exciting endeavor. The people we recognize as entrepreneurs are the people who had the courage to start something following their passion and they made the right moves at the right stages that led to a successful outcome of their startup.
Harvard business school professor, William Sahlman says, ‘when a company succeeds means it has found out how to create and capture customer value’.
Now with that we also have to acknowledge the fact that not all entrepreneurs succeed in their journey and those who did they always have a backstory of hard work and immense patience behind their success.
Just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, some of today’s biggest brands started with humble beginnings. One particular famous brand that embodies this would be ‘Adidas’.
Adidas was founded in Germany, Herzogenaurach in 1949. The founder, Adolf Dassler, was a boy with big aspirations when he dreamed of creating his shoe brand from a small town in Bavaria, Germany.
Interestingly enough this legendary company started its journey from the washroom of dassel’s house, where he started to make shoes. Adolf had a special interest in sports From a very young age.
And when he realized the scope of specialized footwear in the sports industry is big and profitable he made sure to use this opportunity to pursue his passion for shoe making and started a business.
But this journey wasn’t easy in the post war environment of Germany after WWI. In the stricken economic depression of the war, jobs were scarce so Adolf started with shoe repairing and quickly gained the appropriate time and resources to develop his first pairs of specialist sports shoes and start his business.
Adolf and his brother had their first success in the 1928 Olympics when world record runner Lina won the race wearing their spiked track shoes.
After that Jesse Owens wore the Dassler broth/er shoes and went on to win 4 gold medals. But this wasn’t for long the second We came with a lot of downs especially in the post war denazification process.
The stress of war created division in the Dassler brothers and the firm’s assets got divided and that was the start of a rival shoe company eventually called puma.
The creation of Adidas after the separation wasn’t smooth and Adolf had to get creative to survive this time, due to lack of leather he even made shoes using aircraft fuel tank liners, rubber rafts and canvas from tents.
The company got its breakthrough after the 1954 world cup where the west Germany team won the match of bern and the German coach praised adidas products. By 1960 Adidas employed more than 500 people and the company soon went global. His designs soon became the catalyst for a global sport shoe industry that is now worth tens of billions of dollars a year.
So what can we learn from this inspiring story of Adolf, he was a detriment and patient person whose dream came true because of his hard work.
Now let’s see 5 take away from this story for entrepreneurs of today.
- Not giving up when the situation gets hard, if we want results we need to endure the tough time.
- Special situations require creative solutions, not always you can find your business fitting in if you need to cater to the needs of the situation.
- You will have competitions in your way but that’s not a bad thing, if only you focus on quality service you’re unbeatable.
- Building relationships on trust along the way will help you in unexpected situations.
- Most importantly to have your idea, and no matter how impossible your dream seems, go for it and give it your best.
The story of Adolf is not just an ordinary success story. It is a story that inspires us. That shows us that if you want something badly enough you just need to work for it. You will hit bumps.
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Writer
Sadia haque
Intern , content writing department
YSSE