Here's how adidas is one step ahead than Nike and Under Armour

In sports brands’ world, competition is always at the highest level, as we’re talking about companies that produce massive incomes and involves hundred of million of people with their products. In this moment, though, at least according to what Mark King, the Three Stripes’s North American head, told to Business Insider, adidas is one step ahead of its competitors Nike and Under Armour.

“It’s that mixture, that coming together of performance and style that gives us an advantage over pretty much everybody we compete against”. Those are King’s words, marginal to a series of official announcements made by adidas that settled a 35% growth in North America, other than a double-digits sales growth in Originals, Training and Running lines. These positive data would be, according to King, to be attributed to what he calls “Athleisure transformation”, that means the tendency of wearing clothing designed for workouts and other athletic activities in other settings, like work or social encounters. “We are definitely going to benefit from that because we make not only performance products, but we make these style products that are right in the sweet spot of this transformation”.

From this point of view, Nike and Under Armour still seem a little beyond, with the company from Maryland that is still trying to reach the two competitors’ status. adidas, on the other side, wants to “stay very connected to the consumer” - still King’s words - and “responding with speed to bring products to the marketplace that are really relevant in the moment”. So, at the moment adidas seems really one step ahead regarding the fashion-minded consumers’ attentions and desires, and if this trend will keep growing it’s probably that this growth will do the same.