When Bjørn Gulden started at Adidas last year, after having run rival Puma for nearly a decade, revenue at the sneaker giant was sluggishly growing, profits were down, and the company was failing to hit all sorts of financial goals. Gulden likely figured he’d have to do a lot of chatting with employees to strategize on out how to turn things around, and he likely figured he’d need to do so quickly—so he gave out his phone number to all 60,000 of them.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Adidas workers proceeded to get in touch, to the tune of 200 times a week for a spell. “Some people think I’m crazy,” Gulden told the paper. But he was on an urgent mission “to wake up the people who didn’t understand we were losing.”
Unfortunately, the company is still losing. Its current forecast for 2023 is a €100 million ($106 million) loss, though that’s better than its previous estimate of €450 million.
Main topic of discussion
The Journal reported that Adidas workers had many things to text and talk about, but one central point of concern was the company’s response to the meltdown of its partnership with the rapper Ye. Some of those conversations could have started like:
“I know we still own the intellectual property, but whatever you do, please don’t bring back the Yeezy sneakers after all his weird anti-semitic, misogynist, and anti–Black Lives Matter comments.”
“OK, so $770 million is a lot to lose on unsold Yeezy inventory.”
“Wait, so we’re going to be selling the Yeezy sneakers again?”
“OK, we’re done selling Yeezy sneakers again because it didn’t make sense to be selling a famous anti-semite’s sneakers after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel?”
“Oh, we’re just pausing for now because we still have $320 million of unsold Yeezy inventory. Gotcha.”