Il project had already failed in Bangladesh, but in India there are all the ingredients for this Adidas initiative to be successful. It's about the project “$1 shoe”, or less than one euro (0,74 at current exchange rates), launched by the CEO of the Bavarian sportswear group Herbert Hainer in an interview with Die Welt.
And 'the “Third World formula”, already tested successfully two years ago in Africa, on the occasion of the World Cup. "Because all children have the right to a pair of shoes", was already the slogan, certainly the result of an ethical turning point, but also of a precise marketing strategy. To launch products (at the time it was the Adidas sneakers) on markets where they could never have landed at normal prices. But it is also the crisis that imposes this type of approach: business models change, luxury sets, social networks come forward.
Now Adidas is betting everything on India, another emerging country where the middle class is booming, with an expected growth rate of around 9% in 2011 which is attractive to many global companies. “We are launching a second project in India. There, unlike Bangladesh, mass production is possible“, explains Hainer. “The shoe will be sold in villages via a network. We want the project to finance itself,” he added, without specifying when and in which regions the launch will take place.
In 2010, the Adidas group, which boasts growth against the tide of the global economy, had announced the launch of a one-dollar shoe in Bangladesh. "Unfortunately the project didn't go as we hoped," said the Adidas CEO. “We sold 5.000 pairs in a test sale but only had losses. The shoe costs us three dollars to produce,” he explained. “In addition, we had to pay $3,5 for each pair of shoes in import duties. The government has put more obstacles on us than we hoped,” she concluded.
Read also The World
