CEO Gives Cellphone Number to 60,000 People

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 15, 7:29AM EST · Published Jan 13, 7:14AM EST

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CEO Gives Cellphone Number to 60,000 People — © Pere_Rubi / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Many people are on their cell phones all day long. If they are not talking, they are texting. Some have contact lists that are in the numbers. Probably no one is on more people’s contact lists than Bjørn Gulden, head of Adidas. He wants a connection with his 60,000 employees to up their games as he tries to turn around the athletic apparel firm. So, he gave them his cell phone number.

In March last year, Adidas had its first financial loss in three decades. It combated this with layoffs. The company’s net loss in the quarter was $763 million. About half a billion of this was due to a debacle with Kanye West’s Yeezy brand. Sales of the brand had reached almost $1 billion when West made antisemitic remarks and criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. This undermined not just the Yeezy brand but also the global image of Adidas. (These 29 iconic brands completely collapsed and we forgot.)

According to The Wall Street Journal, Gulden received as many as 200 calls weekly. Most were to suggest how he might improve the company’s fortunes, asking him to speed up a turnaround. Gulden had been running rival Puma when he took the Adidas job.

Gulden explained his decision: “Our industry isn’t that complicated. There was a culture of finding reasons not to do things.” The industry is, however, remarkably crowded.

Among the companies Adidas is up against is global giant Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE | NKE Price Prediction). It dominates much of the industry with a $160 billion market cap. It has a celebrity brand in the Michael Jordan line of shoes, which might be the most successful sports endorsement in history. Jordan may smoke cigars and gamble, but neither has hurt his image. Jordan retired in 1993. Another successful endorsement of Nike’s apparel was with Tiger Woods, who recently split with Nike after 27 years. Nike stuck with him through his marital scandal, and its relationship with him continued to pay off. The Tiger Wood’s endorsement was once worth $40 million.

Gulden could look to Nike for an example. And continue to take calls from those 60,000 people.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.