Brand & Strategy Update
With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis in Ukraine, the first half of 2022 presented PUMA with several challenges that required us to remain flexible and find pragmatic solutions to continue to implement our strategy while taking care of the PUMA Family.
The wellbeing of our employees, athletes and partners in Ukraine was our immediate priority from the start of the crisis. We immediately secured safe accommodation in the west of Ukraine and set up additional housing options for our Ukrainian colleagues and their family members in Germany and Poland. We made sure that our colleagues who had to leave their home country received work permits and jobs in their new residences.
The crisis showed how we came together as a PUMA Family. We were inspired by our PUMAs who waited at the borders to welcome other PUMA employees and ambassadors who had fled Ukraine, as well as by our colleagues who drove to Ukraine to bring necessities such as food and clothes to their colleagues who had stayed in the country.
At our headquarters in Herzogenaurach, we gathered product donations for aid organizations in Ukraine, to get help to those who needed it most. Several pallets of products also departed to Ukraine from our distribution center in Geiselwind.
For our efforts to provide an attractive workplace, PUMA was named a Top Employer 2022 in several regions of the world, including Europe and Asia/Pacific.
While the COVID-19 pandemic eased in Europe and the Americas in the first half of the year and we saw no further widespread store closures there, the situation in parts of Asia, especially in China, was still challenging for our store network and our supply chain. Our sourcing teams did an exceptional job to make sure that supply chain disruptions were kept to a minimum.
In 2022, we continued to implement our eight strategic priorities: brand heat, product ranges that are right for our consumers, a comprehensive offer for women, improving the quality of our distribution, increasing the speed and efficiency of our organizational infrastructure, leveraging our re-entry into basketball to improve our position in North America and to focus on local relevance and sustainability.
The performances of our track and field athletes at the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, and the World Athletic Championships in Eugene, Oregon, USA, underscored our credibility as a sports brand and created brand heat. PUMA enjoyed great visibility by equipping several federations and world-class athletes, in line with the company’s philosophy to provide the fastest athletes with the fastest products.
Among the highlights: In Belgrade, Ukrainian PUMA athlete Yaroslava Mahuchikh won gold in the high jump and created a very special moment at the event, as she won despite the crisis in her home country and the difficult three-day journey she had to make to get from Ukraine to Serbia.
In Eugene, Jamaican sprinter Shericka Jackson ran the second-fastest 200m time in history and in triple jump, Portuguese athlete Pedro Pichardo also won the gold with the performance of the year. Swedish pole vaulter Armand “Mondo” Duplantis added another centimeter to his world record performance and won the gold medal with a leap of 6.21 meters.
Our PUMA family continued to grow in the first half. In track and field, we signed a multi-year contract with the Brazilian Confederation of Athletics (CBAt).
But those were not the only performances that boosted our brand heat: in Football, our PUMA teams AC Milan and Manchester City both won the title and Olympique de Marseille and Borussia Dortmund came in second in their respective leagues. PSV Eindhoven won the Dutch Cup.
At the end of the season, we secured a long-term extension to our partnership with AC Milan and became the official naming partner of the club’s training center for future talents, which will be called the “PUMA House of Football.”
We also expanded our reach in Football, as we became the official match ball provider of the Italian football league Serie A, starting from the 2022/23 season.
In North America, PUMA basketball athlete Marcus Smart was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year, while PUMA ambassador and ice hockey player Leon Draisaitl set an NHL record for most assists in a single playoff series. In Golf, Cobra PUMA Golf athlete Ewen Ferguson secured his first victory on the DP WORLD TOUR by winning the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters.
In Motorsport, we welcomed the British Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 driver George Russell and the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN, including Finnish veteran Valtteri Bottas and Chinese rookie Zhou Guanyu.
As we continued to outfit the most successful teams in Formula 1, Scuderia Ferrari, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes, we also benefited from the increasing popularity of the sport, especially in the United States, where the inaugural Miami Grand Prix was completely sold out in record time.
Through our new partnership with the five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, PUMA connected the world of chess with the world of sport to create engaging content and activations for chess fans around the world.
We engaged with our consumers in the virtual world, by announcing our largest collaboration in the Web3 space to date with 10KTF, an NFT project where users can buy digital outfits. We also worked with Wonder Works Studio to create “PUMA and the Land of Games” on the online gaming platform Roblox and gave players the opportunity to dress their virtual characters in PUMA gear.
PUMA further strengthened its distribution by entering new markets with the PUMA.com online store in Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. To highlight the best of the PUMA brand and be close to our most loyal consumers, PUMA introduced a shopping app for smartphones on the Indian market, which allows consumers to virtually try on selected products before they buy, see what the products look like in sophisticated 3D animations and purchase PUMA products in an efficient and quick check out process. The app will be gradually rolled out to other markets.
As we have a vast archive at our disposal, our designers can take inspiration from more than 70 years of history to create fashion forward and relevant products for our customers. With the Slipstream, which was introduced by our Ambassadors Neymar Jr, Danna Paola and Romeo Beckham in June, PUMA brought back the classic design from the 1980s to make a clean and modern sneaker. A collection with Australian skate label Butter Goods also used archive-inspired styles and featured apparel with retro-inspired designs and prints.
Together with French fashion brand AMI, we designed an exclusive collection that combined tailoring and innovative sportswear design with minimalistic branding. We elevated our Motorsport offering with our partner Ferrari to create the premium ION F sneaker and we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Porsche 911 RS 2.7 car with a limited edition of our classic SUEDE, which was sold out in hours.
New additions to our women’s offering included the Kosmo Rider, an expansion of the Rider franchise in bold colors and a chunky shape, which was promoted by social-media star and music artist Dixie D’Amelio. PUMA also presented a range of leak-free period underwear and activewear with Australian apparel company Modibodi, which was created to help women stay comfortable and active during their period.
In basketball, we added new styles to LaMelo Ball’s signature collection MB.01, such as the MB.01 Galaxy and a special edition on the animated series “Rick and Morty”, which became one of our most sought-after sneakers of 2022. We also welcomed the No. 2 overall pick from the 2022 WNBA draft NaLyssa Smith to our roster of PUMA Hoops athletes.
As local relevance continues to be an important part of our strategy to reach audiences in different parts of the world, we signed pop stars Eleni Foureira from Greece and Teodora from Serbia as brand ambassadors.
We entered a new category with the launch of a PUMA padel collection, including rackets, footwear, apparel and accessories, and signed padel players Jerónimo ‘Momo’ González, Victoria Iglesias, Marco Cassetta, and Xènia Clascà. We also continued to increase the number of locally developed products for the different regions, especially in the Sportstyle category.
In the first half of 2022, we made progress with our Forever Better sustainability strategy, especially when it comes to circularity. Our RE:SUEDE project, which tests whether we can make a biodegradable version of our iconic SUEDE sneaker, entered an important phase, as we distributed 500 pairs to participants in Germany and brand ambassadors such as Cara Delevingne, Raphaël Varane and Kyle Kuzma. After wearing them for half a year, our testers will return the sneakers to PUMA so we can see whether the RE:SUEDEs can be biodegraded in a controlled industrial setting.
We also introduced the RE:JERSEY recycling project with our football teams Manchester City, AC Milan, Borussia Dortmund, Olympique de Marseille and Girona. In this project, we use existing football jerseys to produce new ones, in a chemical recycling process where we can even take old garments that feature logos, embroideries and club badges to create polyester yarn for new jerseys. Other more sustainable products included a vegan version of our classic KING football boot, the KING Platinum 21 Vegan.
In May, we announced that we had cut our own carbon emissions and those coming from our supply chain between 2017 and 2021, even though the business grew strongly in the same period. We are on track to reduce emissions by what scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Part of our strategy to reduce carbon emissions is to switch to electric vehicles. At our warehouse in Torrance, California, USA, for example, we started transferring goods from the port of Los Angeles with a fully electric truck.
For our sustainability efforts, we were ranked as the most sustainable brand in the industry according to publication Business of Fashion, which evaluated the 30 largest companies in the fashion business.
In terms of organization, the Supervisory Board of PUMA SE has elected Héloïse Temple-Boyer as Chair of the Supervisory Board at its meeting in April. Héloïse Temple-Boyer has been a member of the Board since 2019 and is a member of the Audit Committee.
