Group Strategy

Minimize article

The adidas Group strives to be the global leader in the sporting goods industry with brands built upon a passion for sports and a sporting lifestyle.
Inspired by our heritage, we know that a profound understanding of the consumer and customer is essential to achieving this goal. To anticipate and respond to their needs, we continuously strive to create a culture of innovation, challenging ourselves to break with convention and embrace change. By harnessing this culture, we push the boundaries of products, services and processes to strengthen our competitiveness and maximise the Groups operational and financial performance. This, in turn, will drive long-term value creation for our shareholders. To achieve this goal, we have made strategic choices and will prioritise our investments under our six key strategic pillars.
minimize paragraph

Creating long-term shareholder value Creating long-term value for our shareholders through significant operating cash flow generation drives our overall decision-making process. Therefore, we are focused on rigorously managing those factors under our control, making strategic choices that will drive sustainable revenue and earnings growth, and ultimately operating cash flow. Across our operations, we pursue the avenues for growth which we expect to be most value-enhancing, with particular emphasis on improving Group profitability. In addition, rigorously managing working capital and optimising our capital structure remain key priorities for us. Furthermore, we are committed to increasing returns to shareholders with above-industry-average share price performance and dividends.
minimize paragraph

Diverse brand portfolio Consumers want choice. Whether it is the athlete looking for the best possible equipment, or the casual consumer searching for the next fashion trend, we are inspired to develop and create experiences that engage consumers in long-lasting relationships with our brands. To maximise our consumer reach, we have embraced a multi-brand strategy. This approach allows us to tackle opportunities from several perspectives, as both a mass and a niche player, providing distinct and relevant products to a wide spectrum of consumers. In this way, each brand is able to keep a unique identity and focus on its core competencies, while simultaneously providing our Group with a broad product offering, increasing our leverage in the marketplace.
minimize paragraph

Investments focused on highest-potential markets and channels As a Group, we target leading market positions in all markets where we compete. However, we have prioritised our investments based on those markets which offer the best medium- to longterm growth and profitability opportunities. In this respect, we place a considerable emphasis on expanding our activities in the emerging markets, particularly China and Russia, as well as building our market share in underpenetrated markets for the Group such as the United States. No matter in which market we operate, we recognise that consumer buying behaviour and the retail landscape are unique. Therefore, to fully exploit market opportunities, we tailor our distribution strategy to present our brands to the consumer in the most impactful way. This is achieved by following a distinctive but coordinated channel approach. To this end, we strive to

provide our customers with superior service to secure prime shelf space for our brands, while continuing our commitment to building a strategic competency in own retail and e-commerce.
minimize paragraph

Creating a flexible supply chain Speed and agility are key to outpacing the competition. We are committed to meeting the full range of customer and consumer needs by ensuring constant product availability in the correct size and colour, providing game-changing technical innovations and also the latest high-end fashion products to the highest quality standards. A key strategic priority is to enable faster product creation and production by continuously improving our infrastructure, processes and systems. By sharing information from point of sale to source and vice versa, we strive to connect and more closely integrate the various elements of our supply chain, to enable quick reaction to changing consumer trends. To this end, we focus on building maximum flexibility. While leveraging the efficiency of common infrastructure and processes, the Group strives to provide tailored solutions for all our business models, be it the wholesale or retail channels, or the performance-oriented or style-oriented businesses.
minimize paragraph

Leading through innovation Every adidas Group employee is responsible for driving innovation. Therefore, we foster a culture of challenging convention and embracing change, and require all areas of the Group to generate at least one new innovation or meaningful improvement per year. In particular, we believe that technological evolution and cutting-edge design in our products are essential to achieving sustainable leadership in our industry. Beyond this, enhancing services for our customers, and implementing more efficient and effective internal processes are other areas where our organisation strives to innovate.
minimize paragraph

Develop a team grounded in our heritage Our culture is continuously shaped by influences from the past and the present as well as our future aspirations. We perpetuate our founders commitment to the athlete/consumer, pride in what we do, quality and love of sport. We win as a team through open communication, collaboration and our shared values found in sport. Therefore, we foster a corporate culture of performance, passion, integrity and diversity by creating a work environment that stimulates innovation, team spirit and achievement based on strong leadership and employee engagement.
minimize paragraph

Becoming a sustainable company Like any global business, the adidas Group must manage wide-ranging commercial and competitive pressure to deliver increased financial returns and growth. At the same time, we are accountable for our employees and have a high degree of responsibility towards the workers in our suppliers factories and also for the environment. We are committed to striking the balance between shareholder interests and the needs and concerns of employees and workers, and the environment, or, in short, to becoming a sustainable company. We report publicly on the steps we take to have a more positive impact on society and the planet on our website at: www.adidasgroup.com/sustainability.
minimize paragraph

Route 2015 strategic business plan In November 2010, the Group unveiled its 2015 strategic business plan named Route 2015, which defines strategies and objectives for the period up to 2015. This plan is the most comprehensive the adidas Group has ever developed, incorporating all brands, sales channels and Group functions globally. The key aspirations and targets of this plan are set out in the section Subsequent Events and Outlook, and also in various other sections of this Annual Report. Subsequently, at the beginning of 2011, we launched Driving Route 2015, to act as a key enabler to reach our Route 2015 aspirations. It addresses solutions for optimising our organisational setup as, over the years, it has become too complex and inconsistent. The objectives of Driving Route 2015 are very clear: speed, consistency and consumer focus. - Speed by implementing a leaner organisation that allows faster decision-making. - Consistency by establishing a more aligned and efficient organisation across functions and geographies. - Consumer focus by reducing internal complexity, enabling us to put more of our energy into what really matters the consumer. We have already taken key decisions in the first phase of Driving Route 2015, setting up clear roles and responsibilities for our brands, markets, channels and Group functions.