When employees leave for competitors, most companies treat it as betrayal. Exit interviews take place. Goodbyes are polite but final. The departing employee joins the competition, and the relationship ends.

Adidas is doing the opposite.

In China, the company is actively hiring back former employees who left to work at local brands such as Li-Ning, Anta and Peak. This is not a favour. It is strategy. These returning employees bring something Adidas urgently needed: a deep understanding of how local competitors win Chinese consumers.

The results support the approach. Adidas recorded revenue of €24.8 billion in 2025, an increase of 5 percent year on year. Operating profit more than doubled in the fourth quarter. For 2026, the company forecasts €2.3 billion in operating profit despite absorbing a €400 million impact from US tariffs.

Chief Executive Bjørn Gulden, whose contract was recently extended to 2030, credits the success to a “global brand with a local mindset” strategy that allows markets to decide how they win locally.

In China, between 50 and 60 percent of Adidas apparel is now designed and developed in Shanghai rather than at the company’s global headquarters. The teams behind those products include former Adidas employees who spent years working at Chinese sportswear brands and learning what Chinese consumers actually want, rather than what executives in Germany assume they want.

This is not about rehiring to fill vacancies. It is competitive intelligence turned into a talent strategy.

It also raises an important question for Nigerian brands. When your best employees leave for competitors, are you missing an opportunity to learn what those competitors do better?

The China strategy that changed everything

Adidas spent years losing market share in China to local brands. Companies such as Li-Ning, Anta, Peak and Xtep understood Chinese consumers in ways the German sportswear giant could not replicate from its headquarters in Herzogenaurach.

Local brands knew which silhouettes suited Chinese body types, which colours resonated culturally, which price points worked, and which distribution strategies effectively reached second and third tier cities.

A traditional multinational response would involve consultants, market research and slow adaptation of global products for local tastes. Adidas chose a faster route. It hired the people who had already solved the problem while working for local competitors.

Former Adidas employees who moved to Li-Ning or Anta spent years in organisations where Chinese consumer preferences guided every decision. They learned how local brands design for Chinese aesthetics, price products for Chinese purchasing power and market through cultural references.

When these employees returned to Adidas, they brought back institutional knowledge from competitors. Their insights were practical and specific. They knew which silhouettes sold, which colour palettes failed, which price points were too high and which distribution channels targeted the wrong demographics.

The fact that 50 to 60 percent of China apparel is now designed in Shanghai reflects this knowledge transfer. Products are created by teams that understand the Chinese market deeply because they spent years working for brands that defeated Adidas locally.

The designs do not look like global Adidas products slightly adjusted for China. They look like products created for China that happen to carry the Adidas logo.

Gulden summarised the philosophy clearly. “Being a global brand with a local mindset, empowering our markets to win their local consumers is the right strategy to be globally successful.”

In simple terms, Adidas stopped designing products in Germany and hoping Chinese consumers would buy them. Instead, it allowed Chinese teams who understand Chinese consumers to design what actually sells.

The American parallel

China is not the only market where Adidas has adopted this strategy.

In the United States, the company hired John Miller, a former Nike executive, specifically because he understands how to market sportswear in America better than leaders trained in European markets.

His mandate was straightforward: make Adidas more American.

That means greater investment in college sports such as baseball and American football, areas where Nike dominates. It also means understanding American sports culture, athlete endorsements and retail dynamics from someone who has spent a career competing in that environment.

Miller is not simply executing global strategy in the US market. He has the authority to make decisions based on American realities, even if those decisions differ from what works in Europe or Asia.

Adidas in the United States can therefore look different from Adidas in Germany because American consumers are different from German consumers.

This represents a major shift from traditional multinational brand management. Many global brands try to maintain strict control over product, messaging and identity to ensure consistency everywhere.

Adidas is betting on the opposite approach. Consumers should experience locally relevant versions of the brand, even if Adidas looks and feels different across markets. Global consistency matters less than local resonance.

Why this approach works

The logic is simple. Local competitors succeed because they understand local consumers better than distant headquarters can.

If you are a Chinese sportswear brand, you do not need market research to know what Chinese consumers want. Your team lives the culture, speaks the language and instinctively understands preferences that foreign executives study through reports.

Multinationals cannot become local brands, but they can hire local expertise and give it real decision-making authority.

The mistake many companies make is hiring local talent and then forcing them to execute strategies designed elsewhere. In that situation, the talent becomes translators rather than strategists.

Adidas reversed that model. The Chinese team does not adapt German designs for Chinese tastes. It creates designs that reflect Chinese preferences while remaining consistent with the broader Adidas brand.

The difference is critical. One approach treats local markets as recipients of global strategy. The other treats them as creators of strategy within brand guidelines.

Hiring employees who worked for local competitors accelerates this process. These individuals already understand how local markets operate because they spent years inside companies built entirely around those markets.

The financial results support the strategy. Markets where Adidas introduced strong localisation, particularly China, recorded stronger growth than those that maintained strict central control.

What Nigerian brands can learn

Nigerian companies face a different situation from Adidas. They are not multinational giants trying to understand local markets. They are local brands themselves.

Yet many operate with the same centralised decision-making model that Adidas is abandoning.

Adidas’ strategy offers three lessons Nigerian brands can apply.

Turn brain drain into competitive intelligence

When a talented employee leaves for a competitor, most Nigerian companies see only loss.

Instead, they could stay connected and consider rehiring that person after a few years. By then, the employee has gained insights into how the competitor operates.

For example, a brand manager who moves from GTBank to Access Bank and later returns would bring valuable knowledge about Access Bank’s strategy, customer targeting and product positioning.

Adidas shows that rehiring former employees can be strategic rather than awkward.

Give regions more autonomy

Many Nigerian brands centralise marketing decisions in Lagos and then roll out the same campaigns nationwide.

Yet consumers in Kano, Port Harcourt and Enugu often respond differently.

Imagine if Indomie’s Northern team designed campaigns specifically for northern audiences rather than adapting Lagos campaigns. Or if Peak Milk’s South-South team created products and pricing suited to that region.

Local relevance often matters more than national uniformity.

Treat hiring as market research

Recruiting employees from competitors should not simply fill roles. It should also bring new knowledge.

If a Nigerian bank wants to understand why fintech companies attract young urban professionals, it could hire product managers from Kuda or Moniepoint. Their role would not just be execution. It would include transferring knowledge about what makes fintech models successful.

When boomerang hiring works

Not every former employee should be rehired. For the strategy to succeed, certain conditions must exist.

The ideal candidate has spent enough time at the competitor, usually two to four years, to understand their systems and advantages.

They should return with specialised expertise the company currently lacks.

Their role should also involve sharing insights across teams, not simply performing routine tasks.

Leadership must support learning from competitors rather than dismissing them.

Finally, compensation and position should reflect the additional value the returning employee brings.

The larger shift in global business

Adidas’ strategy reflects a broader trend in global brand management.

The era of strict central control is fading. Markets differ too widely, consumer preferences evolve quickly, and local competitors have become increasingly sophisticated.

Technology now allows local teams to design products, test them and manufacture them without waiting for approvals from distant headquarters.

Local competitors are also stronger than before. Chinese sportswear companies are no longer low-cost imitators. Nigerian fintech firms are no longer small experiments.

Competing effectively requires local expertise combined with global brand strength.

The bottom line

Adidas turned employee departures into a source of competitive intelligence. Former staff who left for Chinese brands returned with valuable insights into how those brands win in local markets.

That knowledge now shapes Adidas’ strategy in China and contributes to strong financial performance.

Nigerian brands could adopt similar thinking. Instead of viewing departing employees as losses, they could see them as future sources of insight. Instead of enforcing uniform national strategies, they could empower regional teams to shape local campaigns.

The shift requires humility. It means recognising that competitors sometimes do things better and that learning from them can strengthen your own strategy.

Adidas’ €24.8 billion in revenue and extended CEO contract suggest the approach is working.

The question for Nigerian brands is simple. Will they adopt similar strategies now, or wait until competitors force the change?

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