Adidas 1996 Annual Report Download - page 15

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15
The success of Feet You Wear with the
Equipment Integral tennis shoe was quickly
followed by more products in other athletic
categories. The Equipment Top Ten 2000
brings the Feet You Wear concept to
basketball and boosts eighteen-year-old Los
Angeles Lakers’ phenomenon Kobe Bryant.
The Equipment 40 is the Feet You Wear
entry in training and the Equipment X.T.R.
extends the Feet You Wear benefits to
adventure. Feet You Wear will become part
of the adidas running shoe line in 1997.
How will adidas get final users of the product
as excited as those who created it? We start
from the premise that the product is exciting
in its own right. And, via an ambitious inter-
national advertising campaign, strong mar-
keting initiatives and heavy in-store promo-
tional activities, we are making sure people
know why the product is really worth getting
excited about. We have seen already how
the campaign is getting athletes to experi-
ence Feet You Wear and we know that the
intrinsic qualities of the shoe will convince
them to wear them when in competition.
Feet You Wear is the quintessence of sports
footwear, a unique blend of the best technol-
ogy and natural sports performance. And
Feet you Wear has a mission: to take sports
and athletes where no one has been before.
The challenge is one that Adi Dassler would
have embraced, one that will move adidas a
big step closer towards its mission.
Feet You Wear is a no-frill, pure-performance
shoe, which, we know from our testing, both
in the lab and on the field, makes a differ-
ence to the athlete. The difference is not only
in fit and comfort but in actual athletic per-
formance and safety. In fact, Feet You Wear
is demonstrating once again the wisdom in
adidas’ design philosophy that form should
follow function.
Overall, Feet You Wear enhances athletic
performance on two complementary levels:
on the ground and in the mind. With a real
feeling of ‘fresher legs’, a basketball player
will score more baskets, a runner will go
farther, a tennis player will move faster to the
ball. And, with a true sensation of stability
and proximity to the surface, any athlete will
feel more confident and perform better.
What’s more, because the Feet You Wear
design supports the natural contours of the
foot, instead of trying to supplement its func-
tion, it should reduce ankle, knee and hip
problems as well as reducing injuries created
by imperfect foot support during lateral
athletic movement.
Tennis players were the first to take advan-
tage of Feet You Wear, with the launch of the
Equipment Integral tennis shoe in March
1996 at the adidas sponsored Newsweek
Tennis Championship. Steffi Graf, one of the
world’s most consistent champions, who
doesn’t change her tennis equipment with-
out a good reason, wore the Equipment
Integral in winning the Lipton Championship
and the US Open later in the year.