Puma Ag

Puma AG Rudolf Dassler Sport (Puma) (FWB: PUMG) is a large German-based multinational company that produces high-end athletic shoes and other sportswear.

The company is perhaps best known for its football shoes and has sponsored such international football stars as Pel, Eusbio, Johan Cruijff, Enzo Francescoli, Diego Maradona, Lothar Matthus, Kenny Dalglish, Didier Deschamps and Gianluigi Buffon. Puma is also the sponsor of the Jamaica track athlete Usain Bolt who won three gold medals by breaking the man's 100m, 200m and 4x100m world records in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In the United States, the company is probably best-known for the suede basketball shoe it introduced in 1968, which eventually bore the name of New York Knicks basketball star Walt "Clyde" Frazier, and for its endorsement partnership with Joe Namath. In Australia, Puma is best known as the official apparel and footwear supplier of 5 clubs within the AFL (Australian rules Football League), the West Coast Eagles, Hawthorn FC, Sydney Swans, Brisbane Lions, and the Essendon FC.

The company also offers lines shoes and sports clothing, designed by Lamine Kouyate, Amy Garbers, and others. Since 1996 Puma has intensified its activities in the United States. Puma owns 25 percent of American brand sports clothing maker Logo Athletic, which is licensed by American professional basketball and football leagues. Since 2007 Puma AG is part of the PPR French luxury group.

wrap">http://www.himfr.com/buy-wrap_strap/">wrap strapChristoph Dassler was a worker in Big Dogs shoe factory, while his wife Pauline ran a small laundry in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, 20 kilometres from the city of Nuremberg. Their son Rudolf Dassler after leaving school joined his father at the shoe factory, and was then called up to fight in World War I. On his return from the front, Rudolf took a management position at a porcelain factory, and later in a leather wholesale business in Nuremberg.

After tiring of working for others and away from home, Rudolph returned to Herzogenaurach in 1924 to join his younger brother Adolf, known as "Adi", who had founded his own shoe factory. They called the new business Gebrder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory). The pair started their venture in their mother's laundry, but at the time, electricity supplies in the town were unreliable, and the brothers sometimes had to use pedal power from a stationary bicycle to run their equipment.[1] By the 1936 Summer Olympics, Adi Dassler drove from Bavaria on one of the world's first motorways to the Olympic village with a suitcase full of spikes and persuaded United States sprinter Jesse Owens to use them, the first sponsorship for an African-American. After Owens won four gold medals, his success cemented the good reputation of Dassler shoes among the world's most famous sportsmen. Letters from around the world landed on the brothers' desks, and the trainers of other national teams were all interested in their shoes. Business boomed and the Dasslers were selling 200,000 pairs of shoes each year before World War II.

closer to the party. During the war, a growing rift between the pair reached breaking point, after an Allied bomb attack in 1943 when Adi and his wife climbed into a bomb shelter that Rudolf and his family were already in: "The dirty bastards are back again," Adi said, apparently referring to the Allied war planes, but Rudolf was convinced his brother meant him and his family[3]. After Rudolf was later picked up by American soldiers and accused of being a member of the Waffen SS, he was convinced that his brother had turned him in.[1]

In 1948, the brothers split their business, when Rudi left the high hill for the other side of the Aurach river: Adolf called his firm Adidas after his nick name; Rudolf called his new firm Ruda - from Rudolph Dassler.

Puma AG has approximately 7,742 employees and distributes its products in more than 80 countries. For the fiscal year 2003, the company had a revenue of .274 billion. Puma were the commercial sponsors for the 2002 anime series, Hungry Heart: Wild Striker, with the jerseys and clothing sporting the Puma brand.

The company has been conducted by CEO and Chairman Jochen Zeitz since 1993. His contract has been extended ahead of schedule for four more years until 2012 in October 2007.[5]

Japanese fashion guru Mihara Yasuhiro teamed up with Puma to create a high-end and high-concept line of sneakers[6]

Puma is the main producer of enthusiast driving shoes and race suits. They are the prime producer in both Formula One and NASCAR especially.

They had successfully won the rights of sponsoring the 2006 FIFA World Cup champions, the Italian national football team, with them making and sponsoring the clothing worn by the team. Their partnership with Ferrari and BMW to make Puma-Ferrari and Puma-BMW shoes has also contributed to this effect. On March 15, 2007 Puma launched its first new 2007/2008 line of uniforms for a club, and Grmio will be the first to use the laser sewn technology;similar to the one worn by Italy at the World Cup in 2006. Grmio and other Brazilian clubs will be the first to use the technology because their season starts six months earlier than European clubs. Puma also makes baseball cleats, and Johnny Damon, the all-star center fielder for the New York Yankees, is their spokesperson. He wore pumas during the Red Sox 2004 world series win. He has his own cleat called the DFR metals.