Puma’s Past and Present – celebritiestalks
1948 – After parting ways with his brother and former business partner, Rudolf Dassler established “Puma Schuhfabrik Rudolf Dassler” along with 14 employees.
1952 – Puma launches the Super Atom, the world’s first boot with screw-in studs, which marked the beginning of its soccer heritage.
1954 – Heinz Fütterer breaks the 100-meter world record in Yokohama, Japan, while wearing Puma running shoes.
1958 – Puma patented its second brand logo, the FormStrip, which was originally created to stabilize the foot inside the shoe.
1968 – Puma introduces the Puma King soccer boot in honor of Portuguese striker sensation and Ballon d’Or winner, Eusébio.
1968 – Puma introduces the “No. 1 Logo” featuring a puma cat leaping across the upper right corner of the brand name.
1968 – The brand enters the sports textile market with the creation of the T7 training suit.
1970 – Pelé is crowned “Player of the Tournament” while wearing Puma King boots at World Cup.
1973 – The Puma Clyde sneaker launches after New York Knicks’ point guard Walt “Clyde” Frazier asks for a custom-made pair of basketball shoes. Frazier becomes Puma’s first professional basketball signature athlete.
1977 – Guillermo Vilas wins the French Open, the U.S. Open and the Australian Open, establishing Puma’s place in the world of tennis. Vilas along with Martina Navrátilová and Boris Becker help Puma grow its tennis business.
1985 – Puma develops a new cushioning system: the Running System, now known as RS. This cushioning is used in the RS-Computer shoe, dubbed the first computer shoe worldwide.
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1986 – The company goes public on the Munich and Frankfurt stock exchanges and becomes known as Puma AG.
1991 – Puma introduces the DISC System, a laceless sports shoe that uses a system of internal wires to tighten the upper.
1993 – Jochen Zeitz becomes the youngest chairman in German history to head a public company when he is named Puma CEO at 30.
1998 – Puma teams up with German design star Jil Sander on a Fashion sneaker that combined the brand’s King and Easy Rider models, opening up the sport lifestyle segment.
2001 – The Puma SpeedCat takes hold, dominating the world of motorsports, specifically Formula One.
2007 – Kering acquires a majority stake in Puma for 5.3 billion euros (about $7 billion) as part of a move into the athletics and lifestyle arena.
2009 – Puma athlete Usain “Lightning” Bolt breaks his own 100-meter world record with a time of 9.58 seconds at the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin.
2010 – Puma grows in its golf category with the acquisition of Cobra Golf.
2012 – Puma acquires its Dutch licensee Dobotex, which had been designing, developing, producing and distributing Puma socks, fanwear, swimwear and bodywear since 1997.
2015 – Puma taps Rihanna as its women’s creative director and ambassador and launches the collaborative Puma Creeper sneaker.
2018 – Kering distributes 70 percent out of the 86 percent of shares it owns to existing investors. Kering retains some 16 percent of shares left outstanding.
2018 – The company adds the basketball category to its portfolio again after almost 20 years. Jay-Z was tapped as creative director for the category.
2019 – Activists led a boycott on Puma for its sponsorship of the Israel Football Association, which includes six soccer teams based in Israel’s West Bank settlements.
2020 – The Puma Storm Adrenaline sneaker became a trending topic on social media for its design resembling Adolf Hitler’s signature mustache and parted hair.
2020 – Kering sells a 5.9 percent stake in Puma for about 656 million euros, or $772 million. The sale reduces Kering’s stake in the company to 9.8 percent from a previous 15.7 percent.
2021 – Kering sells an additional 8.9 million shares in Puma, a stake representing 5.9 percent. With this sale, Kering now owns 4 percent of Puma.
2022 – Puma wins the Sustainability Leadership Award at FNAAs for progress toward its “Forever Better” strategy.
2023 – Rihanna and her Fenty line reveal they’re returning to Puma with a launch slated for fall.
Puma’s Past and Present – celebritiestalks