Adidas made one design change that vastly improved its business

When you think of Adidas as a brand, what colors come to mind? Chances are, there's just two: white and black. From the Superstar to the Stan Smith, these grayscale colors have become synonymous with the brand, but The Drum $4 Adidas is doing everything it can to shake that stigma.

"We wanted to dig into this whole idea that color is an emotion," Adidas senior director Kathryn O'Brien said.

Most recently, O'Brien has made a push for purple, which she says was a struggle to pitch. "I almost got thrown out of the window. It takes a lot of trust to dig in to the emotions of what you as a brand do," O'Brien said. Eventually, purple found its way on to one of the brand's biggest sneakers of the year, the $4.

The recent shift comes after a study that found 85 percent of shoppers choose a product based on its color. Adidas hopes that the emotions and feelings tied to certain colors will correlate with the emotions involved in sports, influencing shoppers to opt for color pop over monochrome looks.

Without this line of thinking, we'd never have Pharrell's 50 shades of Superstars.

More from Complex:

$4

$4

$4

$4

$4