Explore Puma
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Leadership History
1 leader · 2013 to present
From outfitting Pelé and Maradona to collaborating with Rihanna, Puma has always relied on individual mavericks rather than massive team sponsorships to drive its cultural relevance and bottom line.
Puma operates a standard wholesale and DTC sportswear model, but heavily indexes its brand value on cultural relevance rather than pure athletic performance. It partners heavily with non-traditional sports entities (like Formula 1 teams) and pop culture icons, acting more like an agile fashion brand than a massive sports conglomerate.
CEO
2013 – 2022
9 years
Gulden signed Rihanna, focused heavily on fixing wholesale relationships, and pulled Puma out of financial stagnation.
Widely credited with saving Puma before he left to lead rival Adidas.
Puma's main challenge is scaling in the crucial North American market, where it struggles to compete with the sheer marketing budget of Nike and the cultural saturation of Adidas' Fenty and Originals lines.
Arne Freundt became CEO of Puma SE in January 2023. He is a former professional footballer who previously orchestrated a highly successful turnaround as the CEO of rival brand Puma.
Jochen Zeitz led Puma SE from 2016 to 2022. While initially praised for driving massive e-commerce growth, he was ousted by the board after the company suffered massive revenue losses in China and the disastrous Fenty collapse.
Armin Dassler was the visionary French CEO who took over a near-bankrupt Puma SE in the early 1990s, completely revitalizing the brand through brilliant marketing and saving the company from collapse.
No. Following the sudden death of Horst Founder (Adi's son) in 1987, the company fell into deep financial trouble, and the Founder family sold their remaining shares, losing all control of the company.
Gulden has decentralized decision-making, allowing local markets to react faster to fashion trends, and is aggressively repairing relationships with independent retail partners that were damaged during the previous CEO's aggressive push toward direct-to-consumer sales.