Adidas creative director: How to take over America, with the help of Kanye
Adidas is going through a renaissance.
The German manufacturer has seen sales increase, in part because the company's cool has returned. Collaborations with creators like Kanye West have placed the company into hipness levels it hasn't really seen since Run DMC dropped "My Adidas" back in 1986.
Fashion blog High Snobiety even declared Adidas the most relevant streetwear brand of 2015.
One man pulling the levers behind Adidas's re-found cool is Paul Gaudio, who was head of the company's Digital Sports division before becoming creative director in late 2014.
We asked him what to expect from Adidas for 2016.
Don't observe America, become a part of it.
Adidas execs have said that the company is weaker in the US than it is in Europe, so it needs to become a part of American culture instead of just observing it.
So Adidas moved its head of design from Germany to Portland, Oregon. Later this year it's slated to open up a "Design Center" in Brooklyn to get the brand closer to street culture cool.
"The people that actually shape the core impulses of the brand, many of them are sitting right here, in this market," Gaudio says. "It's living in the culture instead of visiting the culture."
Collaborate with people moving the culture.
Like other sportswear makers, Adidas has elite athletes as brand ambassadors, like NBA star James Harden and soccer phenom Lionel Messi. But it's also gone beyond sports — like the famous case of Kanye West.
Gaudio says that collaborating with people like West have brought the brand into places where it wouldn't have otherwise been. Like at the very center of New York Fashion Week.
The Yeezy Boost sneakers have made a huge splash — to the point that Kanye's highly sought after Boost 350 model passed $20,000 on eBay last summer.
"The footwear is so unique and so interesting, born of sneakers and sneaker culture and athletic footwear, but clearly something different than what was out on the market before," Gaudio says.
"I think it made a lot of people, inside and outside the company, uncomfortable when they first saw it," he says. "When it started to come to life, it certainly made me uncomfortable, but that's a good thing. We need to be uncomfortable, we need to challenge ourselves, and [Kanye] helps us do that."
Working with people like West means that Adidas is in the eyes of the communities that pay attention to sneakers, design, and fashion, he says.
Design products to be worn.
Gaudio says that the biggest change in Adidas over the past decade has been the company's approach to design.
It was more "traditional product design," he says. The company was focused on solving functional problems for athletes with technical features. Which meant that their gear was "more like a product," he says, "and less like something you wear — shoes and shirts."
Customers don't just want the latest technology, Adidas realized; they want something that's comfortable and familiar and stylish and wearable all at once.
The ultra popular Ultra Boost running shoe (beloved by running nerds and sneakerheads alike) is a prime example.
"I say this without hesitating, [it's] the best running shoe in the world," Gaudio says. "It’s also beautiful. It’s not overly technical. The innovations in it are extremely technical, but the experience is not."
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