For Puma, 2025 is not a year of celebration; it’s a year of strategic, necessary pain. The “fast cat” is deliberately slowing its own pace. The company’s Q3 2025 results, released on October 30th, were a stark confirmation of this new direction: sales decreased by 10.4% (currency-adjusted), a jarring number that was, surprisingly, all part of the plan.
CEO Arthur Hoeld has been blunt, branding 2025 as a “year of reset.” This is not a downturn; it’s a controlled demolition. For years, Puma’s growth was fueled by a high-volume wholesale business that, while profitable, had begun to damage the brand. The company was over-distributed, especially in the US, and was too reliant on promotions. The result was muted brand momentum and elevated inventory levels across the trade.
Hoeld’s new strategy is to “clean up” this distribution. This means Puma is actively cutting ties with lower-quality wholesale partners, reducing the volume of products it pumps into the market, and taking a short-term, multi-million-euro hit to sales. The goal is to build a “healthy foundation for 2026 and beyond,” repositioning Puma as a more premium, desirable brand.
The financial results reflect this painful cleanup. The gross profit margin fell to 45.2%, hit by the very wholesale promotions it’s trying to eliminate and the costs of clearing out old inventory. But this is seen as a necessary cost of “brand elevation.”
While the top-line numbers look grim, there are bright spots that show the future direction. The “Go Wild” brand campaign, its biggest ever, is running globally to build a stronger emotional connection with consumers. And within its product categories, Puma is sharpening its focus. While Sportstyle (its lifestyle division) is down, its performance categories are showing resilience. Training is growing, thanks to its exclusive partnership with the global fitness race HYROX, and its long-standing dominance in Motorsport and resurgent Basketball categories remain key pillars of brand credibility.
This is a high-stakes pivot. Puma is willingly sacrificing revenue and short-term profit to protect its long-term brand health. It’s a move that requires discipline and investor patience. The company is navigating away from being the “affordable alternative” to Nike and Adidas, and repositioning itself as a true “Top 3 global sports brand.”
The “reset” is also about efficiency. Puma is simultaneously running a cost-efficiency program to streamline its operations, ensuring that when growth returns, it will be more profitable. In short, Puma in late 2025 is a company in deep-clean mode. It’s sweeping out the old, absorbing the cost, and preparing a new, premium foundation for its next big leap.
