Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Everything is interconnected. The moment you take philosophy, psychology, religion and business and look at the underlying commonalities, that's when you start looking at business in a different way.
I picked up the phone and called Herbert Hainer, the CEO of Adidas, and said, 'Well, it's Peace Day coming up. I think it's about time after 60 years to end this feud. How about doing something together?'
Look at timber prices in the late '90s, at around $50. If you count the true damage of cutting down forests, the resultant flooding, insurance claims, and so on, then the timber price should have been $100.
I believe in 'business has a force for good.' You know, business has an impact on society. Of course, it creates jobs. It creates prosperity, but on the other hand, we also leave a negative footprint behind.
Puma was all about function and not at all about design. The founder of the company always believed functionality and performance were the only ingredients that could make Puma successful and design never mattered.
Obviously, South Africa is our most important market, but we are also gradually increasing our presence throughout East and West as well as North Africa. It is a continent with a lot of potential which we plan to tap into.
I was actually accepted into medical school in Italy. But then I wanted to come back and learn medicine in Germany. And while waiting, I decided to join a business school. I figured it would be useful for doctors to know some business as well!
The company was ready to close its doors; there was real financial distress. But on the other side, there was high brand awareness, but that was negative because Puma was perceived as low-priced. It had lost its cachet. It was a well-known brand without a presence.
I never felt that although we were based in Germany, Puma was and should be considered as a German brand. So we restructured it in a way that positioned us as a global brand, with English being the corporate language, rather than us looking at it from a German perspective.
When I started at Puma, you had a restaurant that was a Puma restaurant, an Adidas restaurant, a bakery. The town was literally divided. If you were working for the wrong company, you wouldn't be served any food; you couldn't buy anything. So it was kind of an odd experience.
We decided that sports, lifestyle and fashion were three elements that could be mixed together to a very unique formula. That's what we did: make Puma a very sports-fashion brand when, at the times, everybody talked about sports and sports performance and functionality. We said, 'Well, it's about more.'
I call upon governments to start supporting companies to use more sustainable materials in their products instead of continuing with antiquated incentives, such as import duties on synthetic materials that are in principle much higher compared with those placed on leather goods regardless of the environmental footprint.
The old way of doing 'good business' was based on the principle, 'the ends justifies the means.' In the future, good business will invoke 'the means justifying the ends.' The E P&L can already serve as an important tool to help this shift in commerce from generating profits with collateral damages to profits with collateral benefits.