Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and I'm here today to talk about
Speaker 1: how family feuds can change the world. For example, if
Speaker 1: only two brothers named Addie and Ruddy Dossler had learned
Speaker 1: to get along, Germany's Gruder Dossler might have bested Nike
Speaker 1: as the world's top sports footwear company today. Instead, the
Speaker 1: brother's bitter feuding resulted in the Gruder Dossler brand that's
Speaker 1: German for Dossler brothers being split in half and reborn
Speaker 1: as Adidas and Puma, which today are the world's second
Speaker 1: and third top sports shoe businesses. Aidolph or Audi Dossler
Speaker 1: began making shoes in his mother's laundry room shortly after
Speaker 1: returning home to the Bavarian village of head Skoonocha following
Speaker 1: World War One. His business did well, and his older
Speaker 1: brother Rudolf or Ruddy Dossler joined him a few years
Speaker 1: later to help shy. Audi was the creative force and
Speaker 1: brains behind the business, while extroverted Rudy was the salesman.
Speaker 1: The brothers Dossler soon gained to claim for rolling out
Speaker 1: the first track spikes, but the company really took off
Speaker 1: after the brothers persuaded American Olympic athlete Jesse Owens to
Speaker 1: wear their shoes in the nineteen thirty six Berlin Olympics.
Speaker 1: He did, and he won four gold medals while doing so.
Speaker 1: Yet it wasn't quite the triumph it should have been
Speaker 1: for the brothers, as things were beginning to sour between
Speaker 1: the two. The bad blood had started a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three, when ADDIE's sixteen year old wife
Speaker 1: tried to interfere in the business. Rudy was not pleased.
Speaker 1: It didn't help that Addis and Rudy's families lived together
Speaker 1: in the same town home, and their wives didn't really
Speaker 1: get along. But the breaking point came during a World
Speaker 1: War two air raid. Rudy and his family were tucked
Speaker 1: into a bomb shelter, and as Addie and his family entered,
Speaker 1: Addie said, the dirty bastards are back again. He was
Speaker 1: purportedly commenting on the Royal Air Force planes roaring overhead,
Speaker 1: but Rudy was positive Addie was referring to his family
Speaker 1: from their Things quickly unraveled when Rudy was called up
Speaker 1: to serve in the Nazi military and nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: he was sure that Addi had arranged it to have
Speaker 1: him sent away from the factory. Anxious to get back,
Speaker 1: Rudy deserted his post in later, when arrested for desertion,
Speaker 1: he again blamed Addi, who it appears did snitch on him.
Speaker 1: After a few more scuffles, the two split up the
Speaker 1: company in ninety eight, moving assets and employees into one
Speaker 1: of two competing operations located on opposite sides of the
Speaker 1: Ala River that flowed through the town. Audi renamed his
Speaker 1: business Adidas, combining his first and last names. Rudy did
Speaker 1: the same, dubbing his Ruta, though he later changed it
Speaker 1: to Puma. Soon most of the town citizens were employed
Speaker 1: by either Adidas or Puma, and these siblings intense rivalry
Speaker 1: spread throughout the town. If you worked for one company,
Speaker 1: you did not socialize with employees of the other. Marrying
Speaker 1: across enemy lines was strictly for Boden. You only shopped
Speaker 1: in the stores on the same side as the river
Speaker 1: as the factory in which you were employed. Over time,
Speaker 1: Adida's far surpassed Puma in sales, thanks to ADDIE's creativity
Speaker 1: and technical acumen, though Puma also did quite well, But
Speaker 1: while the two were hard at work competing against one another,
Speaker 1: they paid no attention to another shoe company, Nike, that
Speaker 1: was quietly gaining market share. Today, Nike is king of
Speaker 1: the sports shoe business with seventeen sales of twenty one
Speaker 1: billion dollars compared to Adidas's ten billion dollars and Puma's
Speaker 1: two billion. The brothers did speak to one another a
Speaker 1: few times later in life, but they never reconciled. Both
Speaker 1: died in the nineteen seventies and were buried at opposite
Speaker 1: ends of the local cemetery. Their feud finally ended in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, when employees of both companies played together
Speaker 1: in a friendly soccer match. Nonetheless, the Dossler brothers epic
Speaker 1: fight was named by Time magazine as one of history's
Speaker 1: top ten family feuds, alongside such notables as Cain and
Speaker 1: Abel and the hat Fields and McCoy's. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Melanie Redzeki McManus and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic, check out our sibling podcast,
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History. They have a whole episode on it called
Speaker 1: Adidas Versus Puma, a tale of two brothers and of course,
Speaker 1: for lots of other contentious topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. H