Adidas to move French headquarters to Paris

Sportswear giant Adidas has shared with all its French employees at the end of last week the plan to consolidate its teams at a single new site in Paris by 2024. This means the company will move its corporate headquarters in France to Paris after more than 60 years in Strasbourg.

The move is expected to be completed by 2024, merging the 140 employees in Strasbourg with the workforce in Paris. Currently, the 270 employees in support functions out of a total of 750 employees in France are divided between the two sites in Strasbourg and Paris, the rest being stores employees and sales force members.

Alongside Tokyo, Shanghai, Los Angeles, New York and London, Paris is one of six key cities for Adidas where global trends and important impulses are created. From this point of view, the step taken by the company, which has also consolidated locations in its home market Germany, is a logical one.

Restructuring at Adidas

According to Mathieu Sidokpohou, managing director of Adidas South Europe, the reason for this move is a restructuring of work processes after the pandemic and the proximity to important partners. Therefore, in order to stick to the current status quo, the Strasbourg site will be closed altogether; Sidokpohou rejected a co-working space proposed by the staff there, according to the Strasbourg daily Derniéres Nouvelles d'Alsace.

“Our ambition is to involve all our Strasbourg colleagues in this new chapter. To do this, we are going to completely innovate the way we work - to allow everyone to remain anchored in Strasbourg while continuing a career at Adidas. For the Strasbourg teams, this project will make it possible to envisage, by mid-2024, either an accompaniment to the move, or, for those who do not wish to do so, the implementation of a real flexibility in the organisation of teleworking to minimise the possible impacts,” said Adidas in a notification. However, according to the newspaper, managers fear that this would have a negative impact on team building.

The consolidation project has been submitted to the members of the Works Council for their opinion and contribution, which will require the speedy identification of a new site in Paris and two future relocations.

“This is a real project to support internal change in the medium term, which will require time for discussions and negotiations on the terms and conditions and time for implementation to support each employee in these potential changes and to facilitate them. Working groups will start next week to discuss the needs and the best methods for everyone,” added the company.

The project will not change the brand's support and commitment to Strasbourg sports teams, whose partnership contracts have just been renewed, confirmed Adidas.