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6
Robert Louis-Dreyfus
This is the last annual report that I will be writing to you as CEO
of adidas-Salomon, and I am very pleased and proud to be
handing over a company which is in great shape. Over the last
eight years, we have seen massive changes and enormous
achievements in our firm. Now is the time to put all of these
things into perspective.
Let me take you back to the early 1990s. The first priority of the
new Management team was to avoid impending bankruptcy.
Once this had been done successfully, we focused on improv-
ing margins, optimizing product flows, shifting sourcing and
giving the Company a completely new marketing orientation.
We were in the fortunate position to have the task of reviving
one of the greatest brand names in the world. As I said on my
first day in charge, I was absolutely convinced that we could do
this. Even so, the rapidity of our recovery surprised even me.
The changes we made bore fruit very quickly. This allowed us
to go public at the end of 1995. The initial launch price was
c35 and, as I write this, adidas-Salomon shares are trading at
above c75, representing a growth of more than 110%.
The two years following our public launch saw us grow
extremely quickly. In the process, we became the clear number
two in the global sporting goods market.
In 1997, we acquired the Salomon group and added four great
brands – Salomon, TaylorMade, Mavic and Bonfire – to our
renamed company, adidas-Salomon. This expansion marked a
new era in our business and made us the only sports company
in the world to be leaders in footwear, apparel and hardware.
No other company in our industry can match that.
Now that the Salomon group has been successfully integrated
into adidas,
we are beginning to see the real benefits of the
acquisition. The continuously improving results of all the new
brands plus our projections for annual double-digit growth for
Salomon and TaylorMade going forward are the best evidence
of that. I am firmly convinced that the more time passes, the
better the fit between adidas and these brands will prove to be.
Here are a few more figures to underline our increasingly strong
position as the world’s leading portfolio of sports brands, in
terms of growth and financial results.
Since our initial public offering in 1995, we have more than
tripled our net sales, more than doubled our pre-tax profit, as
well as more than doubled our market capitalization. Currently,
we employ over 13,000 people and are present in almost every
country in the world.
Our real goal has always been to achieve global leadership in
sporting goods. We have already achieved this position in a
number of markets, for example in France and Germany.
We have also reached our goal in several sports categories.
For example, we are, indisputably, the world’s number one in
Letter from Chief Executive Officer