Adidas strikes gold by turning 40-year-old vintage into hipster shoes

Frankfurt

ADIDAS AG aims to increase its sales by 40 million pairs of sneakers annually, to more than half a billion by 2020, largely by appealing to fashion-conscious teens and urban hipsters. At the heart of that effort: a decades-old shoe named after a retired tennis player who lives in South Carolina and hasn't won a major singles tournament since 1980.

The shoe is the Stan Smith, a white-leather number with pale green accents introduced in 1971, the year before Stan Smith (the player, now 70) earned his second and last Grand Slam singles title.

Thanks to a well-orchestrated promotional blitz, this unlikely hero has made one of the greatest comebacks in marketing history, from a declining brand popular with suburban dads into a must-have for the fashion-sa…