Adidas has passed the Jordan brand as the second-most popular sneaker in the United States, market tracking company NPD Group announced Monday.
"I've never seen a brand in the sneaker industry grow this fast," NPD sports industry analyst Matt Powell said.
From January through August of this year, Adidas had 11.3 percent of the U.S. market share by dollars. That was up from the 6.6 percent the brand had over the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the Jordan brand essentially stayed steady, growing only from 9.4 percent to 9.5 percent year-to-date.
The leader in the marketplace, Jordan brand owner Nike, dropped from 39 percent of the market share for the first eight months of last year to 37 percent for the first eight months of 2017.
A declining player in the U.S. shoe game in 2015, with only 4 percent of the market, Adidas started to push out its CEO of 14 years, Herbert Hainer, in search of greater stability.
Over the next two years, Adidas grew steadily through its originals brand like Superstar and Stan Smith, its new Ultraboost line and an endorsement deal with Kanye West to bring his Yeezy brand over from Nike.
"Kanye is often given credit for the rise, but his product offering is tiny," Powell said.
In the past two reported quarters, Adidas' overall U.S. sales growth went up 41 and 45 percent, while Nike, which has a significantly larger business, saw an increase of 3 percent in one quarter and none in the other. It hasn't helped that basketball shoe sales have slowed down across the board, although Nike has strength in basketball with LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving as endorsers.
"Nike's U.S. sales started declining around back-to-school in 2015, and it has been negative ever since," Powell said. "You have to believe at some point they're going to wake up."
Shares of Adidas are up 31.3 percent over the past year, while shares of Nike are down 3 percent.