Biography | Herbert Hainer — The Sales Desk That Brought Him to Adidas in 1987

People treat Hainer as a man who was always waiting in Herzogenaurach to inherit three stripes.

He arrived as a mid-career sales hire.

In 1987, after eight years at Procter and Gamble in Germany, he joined Adidas Germany as sales director for hardware: bags, rackets, and balls.

Accenture's 2016 board announcement and the English and German Wikipedia career tables all give the same first title and the same year.

Who's Who adds the next steps inside the German sales force: field sales from 1989, national sales director from 1991, managing director for sales from 1993.

The campus the visitor sees now is not the 1987 office. World of Sports on Adi-Dassler-Strasse 1 is the later headquarters campus of adidas AG, still the registered address.

The pin is the public company ground, not a private house in town.

Manager Magazin later wrote that he almost declined the offer after seeing how chaotic the place felt compared with P&G. He took the job anyway.

That decision is the turning point. The later CEO years are an extension of a sales career that started in this town, not a sudden leap from a butcher's village to a Dax chair.

By 1997 he was on the executive board. By 1999 or 2000 he was deputy chairman of adidas-Salomon. The 2001 appointment only makes sense if you stand at this address first.

Photo: Felix Reimann, GNU Free Documentation License / CC, via Wikimedia Commons, Adidas factory outlet in Herzogenaurach, 14 January 2006