Adidas North America President Rupert Campbell is leaving the three-stripe brand at the end of the month to pursue other opportunities. Executive board member Arthur Hoeld, who leads global sales, will oversee the region until Adidas finds a successor.
Campbell became president of Adidas North America in January 2022. He previously ran the Adidas business in Russia as managing director from 2018 to 2022 after re-joining the company from a three-year stint as CEO of Lucozade Powerleague in Scotland. The UK-born Campbell first joined Adidas in 2015 as a retail director in Europe and was the SVP of Adidas Group Europe until 2015.
Campbell succeeded Zion Armstrong as president of Adidas North America in 2022. Mark King, the former TaylorMade Adidas Golf CEO, held the position from 2014 to 2018, before leaving to become CEO of Taco Bell.
Campbell’s departure comes as Adidas has tried to re-energize the brand after the impacts of the Yeezy partnership fiasco that contributed to an 18 percent decline in sales for Adidas in the first half of 2023.
“We thank Rupert for his contributions to the success of Adidas over the last 11 years and wish him the very best for all his future endeavors,” the company stated.
The news was first reported by Women’s Wear Daily and based on an internal company memo.
Campbell is credited with enhancing Major League Soccer through Adidas’ league-wide sponsorship, the brand’s NIL program launch, and the Adidas Hip-Hop 50 celebration with Run-D.M.C. this summer.
Campbell’s time leading North America also overlapped with the brand’s highly-publicized split with Kanye West (Ye), after a series of antisemitic remarks. Adidas continues to recover from its decision to stop producing the Yeezy range.
Adidas sales in North America were down 16 percent in the second quarter and 18 percent in the first six months of 2023. Excluding the benefit of sales of remaining Yeezy inventory, sales in the quarter would have been down 20 percent.
On its second-quarter analyst call, Bjørn Gulden, who took over as Adidas’ CEO at the year’s start, said of the North America region, “There is still a lot of inventory in the market, not only ours but also ours. And the problem is, of course, some of that inventory is not great. That means that the sell-through is slow, and we have to work through that for a while and that because of that, also the discounts are high in general and also of our products.”
Gulden added, “The good thing is that the team in America has reacted and has had what we call a conservative selling strategy, not pushing in more merchandise, but trying to do it very dedicated. And, of course, we had some very, very good bestsellers; that is, we are now starting to scale up, which means that we hope we can turn it around to be something positive. And, of course, that will create more brand heat, and we can get into 2024 looking better.”
Photo courtesy of Lucozade Powerleague
