For more than 75 years, adidas has lived by the philosophy, only the best for the athlete. Marc Makowski, senior vice president, creative direction & innovation of adidas, says this is the driving force behind the brand’s push for innovation in women’s sports.
“We want to work in the footsteps of our founder with the notion of only the best for the athlete as our mandate. The critical piece from a female perspective is how we can be her best partner,” says Makowski.
“It all starts with understanding what her needs are,” Makowski continues. “Given the size of our brand and the relationships we have with partners in different sports, we’ve got incredible access to bring more women into that conversation.”
The brand works with partner athletes to do performance assessments and granularly explore each individual athlete’ physiology, biomechanics and specific sport to understand her needs. Earlier this year, adidas hosted its first Women’s Summit in Portland, Oregon, gathering a diverse network of partners from universities, governing bodies, and elite sport. Collaborators included the University of Calgary, UEFA, and key figures like Katrine Okholm Kryger, alongside athletes such as Becky Sauerbrunn and Jordyn Poulter.
Through collaborations with teams like Arsenal Women and Olympique Lyonnais, adidas designers, engineers and performance experts spend time on the ground with athletes during training. These interactions inform every stage of product creation – from testing prototypes to refining fit and function. Recent products that have stemmed from this approach include the Spark Fusion football boot and the RS15 Avaglide rugby boot, both designed with female athletes at the center of development.
“The opportunity to have those players included at every step of the journey lets us create completely different products,” says Makowski. “It’s all about understanding her needs and looking at the actual sport and what happens on a pitch, on a court, or on a track to determine what is unique and different about her in a specific game. We make sure that all that specificness is integrated into the actual innovation process.”
Brand Innovators caught up with Makowski from the adidas headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany to discuss how the company is innovating to support women in sports. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Marc Makowski, senior vice president, creative direction & innovation of adidas
What is driving your push into elevating women’s sports?
As an industry, we are all a bit guilty of overlooking female athletes and thinking of them as an afterthought, given the importance of men’s sport in general over decades. 2025 was a bit of a catalyst for looking at women’s sports –the Women’s Champions League Final in Lisbon, the Women’s Euro in Switzerland and on the football side the season opener in the Bundesliga from the Bayern Munich women’s team being played in the Allianz Arena in front of 55,000 people. We see just an unprecedented rise of women’s sport in general.
This is coming at the very right time where we see the big opportunity of being very closely connected and very authentic in how we care for a female athlete. How do we then translate that into a very authentic storytelling with those athletes and giving them the right platform similar to what we do from a male perspective but then also have them as credible voices for the work that we do together to create a product that is authentic to her as an athlete.
Can you describe how you apply athlete assessments into your product innovation?
We break down this idea of “only the best for the athlete” in basically three areas. One is radical focus on performance. The second one is being athlete-centered. The third piece is a quest to consider the moment that we collect the evidence. We start with the ambition and what the athlete wants to achieve. Then we look at the performance assessment to determine the levers that we will have at our disposal to help her accomplish that.
For example, running when we are looking at the movements of someone like Peres, we use that to inform the next generation of a running shoe related. We look at how we can customize the individual elements that we have within that product towards a female athlete.
Based on the relationship with those athletes, we make sure that we have got a continuation in the process. The early part is identifying the ambition and where an athlete is, but then being with them and being very open to listen to their feedback, having them test the prototype is one of the most critical elements. What is the athlete’s perception? What is an athlete feeling when they go through testing of our product? How we combine that with everything we measure is a critical element.
Rugby player Stacey Waaka holds the adidas Rugby RS15 Avaglide
Can you tell me about the storytelling approach you have working with these athletes?
We have launched some of the key women’s-related products around those major moments that we have seen in sports this year. Being in those moments with the right product and having the athletes who have been part of the process endorsing it is a critical part of storytelling in general. On the innovation side, we look at that as a critical part of our way of working. It’s not about the endorsement of a product through marketing. We actually look for a true relationship and integration of an athlete across the entire process.
For example, when Peres breaks the woman’s record from a marathon perspective that’s a great achievement. For us, it is less about her endorsement in that shoe. The endorsement is only the consequence of her integration into the entire process of developing that product. That’s one critical piece. The other piece is to use that as an opportunity to be very sharp and targeted in how we land those marketing messages or be simple and somewhat bold in the messaging that this is done with her and for her.
When we are looking at how marketing is done, we prioritize the voices of those who have been part of the actual process. For the Spark Fusion, making sure that we bring people like Trinity Rodman, Linda Caicedo and Jule Brand in from a marketing perspective that we don’t have to be convinced to say something because they have been part of that actual process. We bring those people in and have the ability for them to speak authentically. We have only just started really with innovating for her. This is where the beautiful opportunity is lying in front of us.
