Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Adidas CEO - Kasper Rorsted - Adidas sells hundreds of millions of products every year — but scale alone doesn’t guarantee success.
In this interview, CEO Kasper Rørsted explains how Adidas balances growth, profitability, competition, and innovation while navigating global markets like China and facing rivals such as Nike.
Leaders with Lacqua - Kasper Rorsted
Stars: Kasper Rorsted, Francine Lacqua
Genres: Documentary | News
Adidas is the largest sportswear company in Europe and second in the world. That means it sold more than 400 million pairs of shoes last year over 450 million pieces of apparel and 110 million pieces of sports equipment like basketballs. The brand is known around the world for sponsoring world class athletes and sports teams including Manchester United and more recently partnerships with Kanye West and Beyonce. Today our leaders would like what we need Kasper said. The chief executive of Added DAX. CAC. Thank you so much for joining us on leaders with like what. What exactly is added us. Is it a fashion company or is it a sportswear company. Now we're by far sports company. We started out with the intent of building the best shoe for the athlete back in 1924. So our roots are on sport and two thirds of our businesses sports related. But at the same time there's so much appetite for the fashions things that you do and I guess athleisure has really picked up in the last five years. I think there's a couple of trends. One is when you do sport you want to be good looking. The second part is that we believe that the suit and the brown shoe was going to die over time. And that's why moving into Alisha was sporting like clothes is going to be a trend that's going to continue to win. You can edit us ever catch up with Nike. I don't think that's a question. I think the question is how big is your market. And we've grown in the last four years with almost 7 billion. So huge expansion of our size and we'll continue to expand. So I think we'll be wrong to reduce the global sports budgets to competitors. So you don't wake up in the morning saying I want to beat my main competitor. No I wake up every morning and say I want to grow market share. But if you had to choose between profitability and expansion or footprint what would it be. But I don't think that that is the question . That is the question we are very often asked. Of course also internally. But just growing for the sake of joining has no value. And in just expanding margin on declining market share is of no value. So we have to do both. And look upon the last four years we have always said growing our business by 40 percent and we have expanded our operating margin by 40 and 50 basis points. So we've been able to do both. And when you look at your competitors how much you worry about homegrown competitors in certain markets for example China or India . When we look upon our competitive set we very much look upon the local competitors. We look upon what's happening in China what's happening Japan what's happened to us what's happened in Canada for women's what's happening in Switzerland for running . So we break the market down both geographically and vertically to really make sure that we understand what kind of innovation is taking place in these two different markets. And are we up to date with the products we have. Or is there a country that makes you worried the most because there is a national champion emerging something that's much more locally produced and made for locals. I think the country right now that represents the largest opportunity globally is by far China because it's a market where us and our largest competitor are by far the largest. But you are seeing very strong competitors coming up at the same time. It also gives us opportunities to expand. But China is by far the most interesting market right now. So what do people want to buy in China. No they want to buy you know cool sportswear. They can wear you know in the gym. But also just Alisha the Chinese consumer is still very much in the early stages of engaging in the sport. As a company we engage with the Chinese government along with the German Football Federation to educate more than 20000 football coaches to ensure that we've got sport into the curriculum of the Chinese school. So it's still more at least driven in China but it will be one more push an over time athleisure like what I know is you know some of the products that you've launched to have done extremely well with Chinese millennials.
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COPYRIGHT: All of the films published by us are legally licensed. We have acquired the rights (at least for specific territories) from the rightholders by contract. If you have questions please send an email to: info[at]moconomy.tv, Moconomy GmbH, www.moconomy.tv.
Adidas CEO - Kasper Rorsted - Adidas sells hundreds of millions of products every year — but scale alone doesn’t guarantee success.
In this interview, CEO Kasper Rørsted explains how Adidas balances growth, profitability, competition, and innovation while navigating global markets like China and facing rivals such as Nike.
Leaders with Lacqua - Kasper Rorsted
Stars: Kasper Rorsted, Francine Lacqua
Genres: Documentary | News
Adidas is the largest sportswear company in Europe and second in the world. That means it sold more than 400 million pairs of shoes last year over 450 million pieces of apparel and 110 million pieces of sports equipment like basketballs. The brand is known around the world for sponsoring world class athletes and sports teams including Manchester United and more recently partnerships with Kanye West and Beyonce. Today our leaders would like what we need Kasper said. The chief executive of Added DAX. CAC. Thank you so much for joining us on leaders with like what. What exactly is added us. Is it a fashion company or is it a sportswear company. Now we're by far sports company. We started out with the intent of building the best shoe for the athlete back in 1924. So our roots are on sport and two thirds of our businesses sports related. But at the same time there's so much appetite for the fashions things that you do and I guess athleisure has really picked up in the last five years. I think there's a couple of trends. One is when you do sport you want to be good looking. The second part is that we believe that the suit and the brown shoe was going to die over time. And that's why moving into Alisha was sporting like clothes is going to be a trend that's going to continue to win. You can edit us ever catch up with Nike. I don't think that's a question. I think the question is how big is your market. And we've grown in the last four years with almost 7 billion. So huge expansion of our size and we'll continue to expand. So I think we'll be wrong to reduce the global sports budgets to competitors. So you don't wake up in the morning saying I want to beat my main competitor. No I wake up every morning and say I want to grow market share. But if you had to choose between profitability and expansion or footprint what would it be. But I don't think that that is the question . That is the question we are very often asked. Of course also internally. But just growing for the sake of joining has no value. And in just expanding margin on declining market share is of no value. So we have to do both. And look upon the last four years we have always said growing our business by 40 percent and we have expanded our operating margin by 40 and 50 basis points. So we've been able to do both. And when you look at your competitors how much you worry about homegrown competitors in certain markets for example China or India . When we look upon our competitive set we very much look upon the local competitors. We look upon what's happening in China what's happening Japan what's happened to us what's happened in Canada for women's what's happening in Switzerland for running . So we break the market down both geographically and vertically to really make sure that we understand what kind of innovation is taking place in these two different markets. And are we up to date with the products we have. Or is there a country that makes you worried the most because there is a national champion emerging something that's much more locally produced and made for locals. I think the country right now that represents the largest opportunity globally is by far China because it's a market where us and our largest competitor are by far the largest. But you are seeing very strong competitors coming up at the same time. It also gives us opportunities to expand. But China is by far the most interesting market right now. So what do people want to buy in China. No they want to buy you know cool sportswear. They can wear you know in the gym. But also just Alisha the Chinese consumer is still very much in the early stages of engaging in the sport. As a company we engage with the Chinese government along with the German Football Federation to educate more than 20000 football coaches to ensure that we've got sport into the curriculum of the Chinese school. So it's still more at least driven in China but it will be one more push an over time athleisure like what I know is you know some of the products that you've launched to have done extremely well with Chinese millennials.
SUPPORT US!
✘ Membership - bit.ly/3q5XPBh
MORE DOCS!
► Gold: bit.ly/2IRZ0OA
► World Economy: bit.ly/36QlhEM
► All Playlists: bit.ly/3lOiCll
#finance #documentaries #economy
COPYRIGHT: All of the films published by us are legally licensed. We have acquired the rights (at least for specific territories) from the rightholders by contract. If you have questions please send an email to: info[at]moconomy.tv, Moconomy GmbH, www.moconomy.tv.
