Thursday, August 04, 2005

Adeebok

Well, assuming you've followed the news today, you'll most likely have seen that adidas acquired Reebok for a heck of a lot of billion dollars. And assuming you had as much foreknowledge of the deal as I did, you probably had the same reaction. Mainly, what the F—??? It's crazy—like Ford buying GM, or the NBA buying the NFL.

I get it, I guess. By joining forces, they have a better shot of unseating Nike, what with adidas's dominance in Europe and Reebok's, um, hip-hop connections over here (which they've gotten by spending large amounts of money on what Nike's long gotten for free, but I digress). I expect it to work out much like Nike and Converse, with both brands maintaining separate identities, and it basically not mattering on a day-to-day basis. At least for now—because I can't imagine adidas spending that kind of loot just to let Reebok do what they've been doing. Consolidation will have to happen at some point—and whether that means Yao and AI switch to three stripes, I don't know.

That is, at least until Nike buys the whole mess tomorrow.

1 comment:

André said...

Well, until and1 and maybe k1x grow up... they'll be like the microsoft of the sport shoe industry.

Sorta.