World cup feud runneth over

BAVARIA - What, exactly, are you looking for?" asks the nervy, middle-aged woman at Herzogenaurach's tourist information office. She is nervy, probably because she knows that most who come to this northern Bavarian town are looking for a fight. But not any old fight.

There is only one feud in Herzogenaurach worthy of mention: that between adidas and Puma. Founded by two of the town's warring brothers, the international sport shoe giants have been based here since the 1940s. Their age-old rivalry is legendary.

With less than two months to go until the German-hosted World Cup, the battle has come home to roost. To clad the winning World Cup team is the ultimate prize for any sports manufacturer. Companies spend billions each year sponsoring the top stars and the best teams to raise their brand's awareness that little bit higher than their competitor.

This time, adidas is kitting out six teams. Puma, long regarded as something of the underdog in the fraternal war, is claiming that it has won, since it has 12 teams on side. Some believe whichever firm wins the sponsorship battle on home turf will be crowned the outright winner in Herzogenaurach's decade-long sports' shoe war. Others say, whatever happens, it will just make the one-upmanship worse.

"Some of the stories you hear are just mind-blowing," says Filip Trulsson, international marketing manager of teamsport at Puma. The Swedish-born 33-year-old has a Scandinavian sanguinity about him and a distance to the locals which has probably prevented him from going mad during the eight years he has worked in this conservative countryside town.

"Puma people not marrying adidas people, adidas and Puma gangs in the schools, pubs loyal to one firm refusing to serve workers from the other ... it's all gone on here," he says, shaking his head. "But there are a lot more international people here nowadays. I think the locals take it all far more seriously than the foreigners do."

Herzogenaurach has been dubbed "the town of bent necks": no local would start a conversation with another without first looking down to check which firm's shoes they were wearing. Trulsson continues to list the frictions he has heard of: about how the town managed to spawn two local rival football teams with pitches not more than 100m from each other (RSV is sponsored by adidas, FC Herzogenaurach by Puma), and the baker who is apparently so traumatised by the familial in-fighting that he refuses to talk about it.

Then Trulsson remembers something else. "Wait until you see the graves," he says. "Man, those brothers must have really hated each other."

On the edge of town, in Herzogenaurach's small cemetery, the graves of Adolf and Rudolf Dassler could not be further apart from one another. Even in death, it seems, they couldn't bear the sight of each other.

Born into a family of cobblers, Adolf and Rudof Dassler, however, had not always been at odds. In the 1920s, Adi and Rudi, as they were more commonly known, worked happily side by side at the Gebruder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). Adolf developed some nail studs; business boomed under the Nazis and by the 1936 Olympics Jesse Owens was running in Dassler spikes. But by the fall of the Third Reich everything had gone wrong.

"We will probably never know the real reason why Adi and Rudi fell out," sighs Ernst Dittrich, the head of Herzogenaurach's town archive. "It was like a marriage that goes terribly, terribly sour."

The more elderly residents in this 13th-century town still gossip that the brothers split because Adi had slept with Rudi's wife, that the two wives hated each other, that Rudi fathered Adi's son and that Rudi - the more unsuccessful entrepreneur of the pair - had his hands in the company petty cash box.

But the more likely snapping-point comes from a mindless comment made one night in 1943 as the two brothers and their wives slept in the family air raid shelter. "There come those pig-dogs again!" raved Adi as his brother clambered down the steps. From that moment, no one could convince Rudi that Adi had been talking about the RAF bombers, not him.

Rudi's bitterness increased as he was shipped off to an American prisoner of war camp and Adi carried on running the family business without him. In 1948 Rudi stormed off to set up his own factory on the other side of the river, taking loyal staff with him.

There were varying successes on both sides as Herzogenaurach's two shoemakers grew. Although Puma still claims it invented the removable football boot stud, adidas founder Adi Dassler is credited with winning the 1954 World Cup for Germany by providing the team with them. But Rudi scored points against his brother when Pele won the 1962 World Cup for Brazil in Puma shoes.

The pair threw ludicrous amounts of money at absurd court battles. In 1958, Puma founder Rudi Dassler took out an injunction to prevent Adi marketing adidas stock as "the best sports shoes in the world". The court ruled in Rudi's favour but gave Adi a week to remove all advertising. In the seven days he had left, Adi convinced an adidas-loyal fishmonger to paste the slogan on his fish van and park it outside Rudi's office window.

The tit-for-tat ethic leaked over generations. In the early 1980s, a young Boris Becker knocked on the door of adidas with a Romanian manager hoping for a sponsorship deal. When adidas boss, Horst Dassler, refused, his manager, Ion Tiriac, drove straight over the river to Puma and demanded a meeting. "Go on," he taunted Rudi's son, Armin Dassler, then Puma CEO. "Take on Boris. That'll really make your cousin mad." It was all Armin needed to hear - he signed up the then unknown Becker.

These days the locals play down the tribalism. "Work is work and your personal life is your personal life," grumbles one middle-aged local in the Cafe Rommelt, refusing to be drawn on whether the famous adidas and Puma gangs still exist. He doesn't need to say anything. The group hunched over their beers are all wearing adidas; workers at both firms enjoy large discounts on the newest gear and most of Herzogenaurach's 25,000 burghers amble among the ancient wood-beamed houses and cobbled streets in tracksuits.

Secrets are no longer swapped at the bus stop by the unfaithful, but designers who move between Puma and adidas have to take extended leave before starting their new jobs to prevent them taking corporate secrets with them.

At managerial levels, the atmosphere has also relaxed.

"One of Rudi Dassler's grandsons now works as a legal consultant for adidas," says Trulsson. "Something like that, even a few years back, would have unimaginable."

He thinks of a parallel example to make it clear just how bad it would be. "It would have been like ... like, one of George Bush's grandsons working for Saddam Hussein."

"I think it's really a misconception that we're in constant competition [with adidas]," maintains Joachim Zeitz, the tall, tanned CEO of Puma, and the man credited with bringing the firm back from the brink in the mid 1990s.

His words don't quite cut it, seeing as the 43-year-old is saying this in Berlin where he is opening a new Puma concept store just around the corner from an adidas flagship store and launching Puma's biggest marketing campaign ahead of the World Cup.

Puma has scored points against adidas in the year German football has come home. The three stripes might be providing the World Cup balls and is an official partner of the Federation of International Football Associations, but Puma's shares have rocketed; sales are expected to top €2.3 billion ( $4.47 billion) this year because of an increase in the purchase of soccer goods. Puma is the smaller company with only around 4000 employees worldwide compared to adidas' 17,000, and its sales fall far short of adidas'.

Yet on paper, these days, Puma's profit margins are better. Investors at adidas have raised concerns about the company's future after it acquired Reebok.

Back in Herzogenaurach, the locals know how to exploit the bitch-fight of the brands. "Some painters who were commissioned to paint the outside of the Puma building rolled up to put up the scaffolding all wearing adidas shoes," recalls Ernst Dittrich. "Within minutes the boss gave them the latest Puma trainers to put on instead. The next month they turned up at adidas wearing Puma."

It's clear the town is addicted to the rivalry and Puma says it has no plans to leave town. And adidas? "We did consider moving to Munich in the mid 1990s," says adidas executive Jan Runau, "but in the end the historical roots were too strong for us to leave."

It's a pity, says Ernst Dittrich, the town archivist, that Herzogenaurach will likely never get a much wished for joint shoe museum. "I doubt the two companies would ever be able to agree on a common history."

- INDEPENDENT