Adidas' CEO says he gave his cell number to 60,000 employees and was slammed with 200 messages a week, report says

• The CEO of Adidas, Bjørn Gulden, gave his cell number to 60,000 of his employees.
• Gulden said he did it in an effort to be more transparent.

Adidas' CEO Bjørn Gulden shared his cellphone number with 60,000 employees at a town hall meeting in an effort to boost transparency at the firm, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Adidas had been in the midst of a tricky period when Gulden, a former professional soccer player, took the helm in January 2023.

The company had recently severed ties with rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, and was reeling in the wake of a 724 million euro operating loss in the final quarter of 2022.

Gulden's first step to righting the ship was to try and address some of the transparency concerns that had also been raised by employees.

After giving out his number, Gulden said that for a while he was contacted about 200 times every week by staff asking him to make changes to the company, per The Journal.

"Some people think I'm crazy," the Norweigan national told the outlet, before adding that he thought it was important for leaders to be open.

Gulden had previously spent nine years at Puma, where he was credited with leading an impressive sales turnaround that he's now trying to replicate at Adidas.

After a year that saw the company caught up in controversy following Ye's antisemitic remarks, struggling sales, and worker discontent, Gulden said he was aware that turning the company around would be a challenge.

"There was a culture of finding reasons not to do things," he said, adding that it was holding the company back.

Much like he did at Puma, Gulden made a quick impact at Adidas, starting by dumping consultants who he said made decisions industry-experts would never make, per the report.

Some of Gulden's other changes included reintroducing sports like cricket that have loyal customers in big, albeit specific, markets such as India, streamlining communications at the top of the business so that he had more direct reports from department heads, and binning a laborsome evaluation practice.

He said that the company was now on track to return to profitability this year.

For decades its main competitor Nike has been the number one player in the industry, but weaker sales caused the company's stock price to drop over the last year.

The company announced in December that it planned to cut hundreds of jobs to try and save $2 billion.

Nike also recently ended its iconic partnership with Tiger Woods, which had started back in 1996.

Adidas did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, which was made outside of normal working hours.