How Adidas Is Whipping Reebok Into Shape

At a CrossFit gym in Nuremberg, Germany, customers sweat through a workout called “Fight Gone Bad.” The same could be said for Adidas’s effort to turn around the foundering Reebok, the shoemaker it bought in 2006. The workouts require people “to keep up the intensity, each and every time,” says Ginger Sladky, 40, who set up the gym in March with support from Reebok, which sponsors CrossFit worldwide.

Adidas hopes sponsoring CrossFit, an exercise routine done in gyms called “boxes,” will restore Reebok’s intensity. The brand that helped make step aerobics a staple around the world two decades ago has posted sales declines for three of the five full years since Adidas bought it for $3.7 billion. The company, which won’t say how much it’s paying for the sponsorship, has designed clothing and shoes for the routine and splashed the Reebok name across 70 gyms in 30 countries affiliated with CrossFit, a Washington, D.C., licensing company.