“The numbers speak for themselves,” Gulden said in a statement on the company website. “We are currently not performing the way we should.”
Adidas would put its full focus on consumers along with its athletes,retail partners and employees,Gulden said. The goal is to create “brand heat”,improve products,better serve distributors and become “a great and fun place to work”,he said.
“We need to put the pieces back together again,” he said in the statement. “I am convinced that over time we will make Adidas shine again. But we need some time.”
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Gulden started at Adidas in January after nearly a decade running cross-town rival Puma,where he led a turnaround that he also began by resetting profit and sales growth expectations. His main focus at Adidas will be reinvigorating the brand’s lacklustre pipeline of sneakers and apparel and winning back customers in the US,Europe and China. He will also have to figure out if Adidas can sell or repurpose Yeezy designs to customers without the brand name.
Sales will sink at a high-single-digit rate in 2023,the German company forecast late Thursday. That compares with the roughly 4 per cent growth that analysts were estimating.