Adidas Remains Mostly Open, Despite Nike, Under Armour & Others Shutting Down Amid Coronavirus

Peter Verry
·3 min read

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While big-name retailers such as REI, Nike, Under Armour and dozens of others temporarily closed most of their stores worldwide, Adidas is open for business — in select areas, that is.

“At Adidas, the health and safety of our employees, consumers and partners is our No. 1 priority. In an effort to create a safe work environment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and to help limit the spread of the coronavirus, we continue to act upon the applicable local authorities’ directives across all Adidas offices, retail and distribution center locations globally,” the company said in a statement to FN today. “This means that in some regions, Adidas-owned stores are closing temporarily, depending on official regulations. We have a dedicated task force team in place and will continue to monitor the situation closely and take additional measures if necessary.”

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The statement from Adidas comes hours after an internal email that discussed the company’s rationale for remaining open in some cases was leaked. (The email was first reported by Yahoo! Finance editor-at-large Daniel Roberts on Twitter.)

“Closing down is easy, staying open in a healthy environment requires courage, persistence and focus,” the email reportedly reads.

The leaked email also outlined a plan for the company to follow.

“In all regions and countries where legislation allows, we expect the leadership teams to be working from our offices on a daily basis along with those roles which cannot be performed offsite and/or viewed as business-critical to the company. This means that we will sometimes have different decisions for different regions/countries/markets,” the email read. “We will follow the same principles when it comes to our retail stores and distribution centers in the different countries.”

It continued, “In countries where the virus only has a minor impact or — according to the local authorities — is declining, we expect normal daily operations to continue or to be resumed.”

Some of Adidas’ biggest competitors have announced temporary store closures to play their part in slowing down the spread of the coronavirus.

For example, Nike announced Sunday that its U.S. locations and locations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe will be closed through March 27.

Similarly, Under Armour stated it will close all North American stores from March 16 through March 28 “because the health and safety of our teammates, athletes and customers is our top priority.” And New Balance said in a statement on Monday that it is implementing a series of measures “to ensure the health of our associates, customers and communities” and will close office, factory and retail stores in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe through at least March 27.

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