Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vogelbaumb here with another episode from our archives. This one tells the strange true story of how a family feud in Germany led to the parallel creation of Adidas and Puma, which are now in competition is the second and third largest sneaker companies in the world. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and I'm here today to talk about how family feuds can change the world. For example, if only two.
Brothers named Oddi and Rudy Dossler had learned to get along, Germany's Gobruder Dossler might have bested Nike, is the world's top sports footwear company today. Instead, the brother's bitter feuding resulted in the Gobruder Dossler brand that's German for Dossler brothers being split in half and reborn as Adidas and Puma, which today are the world's second and third top sports
shoe businesses. Adolf or I Dossler began making shoes in his mother's laundry room shortly after returning home to the Bavarian village of Hetzkunocha following World War One. His business did well, and his older brother Rudolph or Rudy Dossler joined him a few years later to help shy. Oddi was the creative force and brains behind the business, while extroverted Rudy was the salesman. The brothers Dossler soon gained
acclaim for rolling out the first track spikes. The company really took off after the brothers persuaded American Olympic athlete Jesse Owens to wear their shoes in the nineteen thirty six Berlin Olympics. He did, and he won four gold medals while doing so. Yet it wasn't quite the triumph it should have been for the brothers, as things were
beginning to sour between the two. The bad blood had started a few years earlier in nineteen thirty three, when ADDIE's sixteen year old wife tried to interfere in the business. Rudy was not pleased. It didn't help that Oddi's and Rudy's families lived together in the same town home, and their wives didn't really get along. But the breaking point came during a World War II air raid. Ruddy and his family were tucked into a bomb shelter and as
Addi and his family entered. Oddi said, the dirty bastards are back again. He was purportedly commenting on the Royal Air Force planes roaring overhead, but Rudy was positive Oddi was referring to his family. From there, things quickly unraveled. When Rudy was called up to serve in the Nazi military in nineteen forty three, he was sure that Oddi had arranged it to have him sent away from the factory. Anxious to get back, Rudy deserted his post in nineteen
forty five. Later, when arrested for desertion, he again blamed Addi, who it appears did snitch on him. After a few more scuffles, the two split up the company in nineteen forty eight, moving assets and employees into one of two competing operations located on opposite sides of the Roof River that flowed through the town. Oddi renamed his business Adidas, combining his first and last names. Rudy did the same, dubbing his Ruda, though he later changed it to Puma.
Soon most of the town's citizens were employed by either Adidas or Puma, and these siblings intense rivalry spread throughout the town. If you worked for one company, you did not socialize with employees of the other. Marrying across enemy lines was strictly foreboden. You only shopped in the stores on the same side as the river as the factory in which you were employed. Over time, Adidas far surpassed Puma in sales thanks to Audi's creativity and technical acumen,
though Puma also did quite well. But while the two were hard at work competing against one another, they paid no attention to another shoe company, Nike, that was quietly gaining market share. Today, Nike is king of the sports shoe business with twenty seventeen sales of twenty one billion dollars compared to Adidas's ten billion dollars and Puma's two billion. The brothers did speak to one another a few times
later in life, but they never reconciled. Both died in the nineteen seventies and were buried at opposite ends of the local cemetery. Their feud finally ended in two thousand and nine when employees of both companies played together in a friendly soccer match. Nonetheless, the Dossler Brothers epic fight was named by Time. Mack scene is one of history's top ten family feuds, alongside such notables as Canaan Abele
and the Hatfields and McCoy's. Today's episode is based on the article the family Feud that spawned Adidas and Puma on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Melanie Redzeeky McManus. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the Airheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.