Adidas CEO Confirms Company Will Cut 500 ‘Obsolete’ Jobs in Effort to Reduce Operational ‘Complexity’

Stephen Garner
·2-min read

Just a little over a month after announcing potential job cuts, Adidas chief executive officer Bjørn Gulden confirmed on Wednesday that the sports company will eliminate 500 roles.

On the company’s fourth quarter earnings call with analysts, Gulden said that these roles are “obsolete” after undergoing a strategic review to simplify operations at Adidas’ Herzogenaurach, Germany headquarters. Adidas has around 62,000 employees around the globe, Gulden noted on Wednesday’s call.

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“We worked with different departments and different processes and identified work streams how can we reduce complexity and be more right in what we’re doing in a more simple way,” Gulden said. “And these work streams identified that most of the complexities are actually being created in [the] headquarters. And we did then define that we have up to 500 roles here in the headquarter that are obsolete.”

“[This is] not the fun thing to do, but necessary if we want to be competitive and be the best Adidas,” the CEO added.

This confirmation comes after an Adidas representative told FN in January that Adidas was looking into cutting jobs. The rep told FN that these cuts were are not part of a cost savings program but instead are aimed at “reducing complexity and ensure sustainable success in the future.”

The news comes the same day the German sportswear giant Adidas did much better than it had expected to in 2024, reporting growth of 12 percent, on a currency neutral basis, and 23.68 billion euros in sales. This went beyond the company’s own forecast of 10 percent growth.

The positive numbers for 2024 came on the back of a particularly successful fourth quarter, with revenues rising 19 percent to 5.97 billion euros.

“I am very pleased the way the fourth quarter and the full year developed for us at Adidas,” Gulden said. “Although we are not yet where we want to be long term, it was a very successful year that confirmed the strength of the Adidas brand, the potential of our company and what a fantastic job our teams are doing.”

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