Dive Brief:

• Sportswear giant Adidas unveiled a new mobile app that leverages artificial intelligence and technology from Salesforce to customize shopping experiences for individual users, the company announced during Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week.

• The new app taps the capabilities of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud to provide consumers with customized product recommendations, inspiration through personalized articles, blog posts, videos and real-time updates about the sports, athletes and products they care about, according to a company press release.

• The new app is now available for download through the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in the U.S. and UK. It will roll out in more countries in the first half of next year, per the press release.

Dive Insight:

This is not Adidas' first foray into the mobile app world; the sports retailer has a handful of other mobile apps, and launched its All Day app, featuring expert fitness content and more, last March. This latest app is also centered around content, but brings in AI-powered personalization features as well.

The big players in the sportswear market — Adidas, Nike and Under Armour — have been trying to one-up each other on the mobile app front for some time now, playing up the availability of expert content and a social community structure. Nike revamped its mobile app strategy last year, and Under Armour more recently has talked up its community-building focus, saying it wants to be the Facebook of connected fitness.

For these companies, being aggressive on the mobile front is a huge part of their broader efforts to transition to more direct-to-consumer sales channels. Nike is doing this partly by selling through Amazon, but sales through mobile apps could become increasingly important to all three companies.

With some recent boosts in e-commerce sales, Adidas may be better positioned than the other two at the moment. Strengthening its ability to cater to individual shoppers' interests will be key to Adidas' ongoing efforts. Users can also complete transactions directly in the app through Apple Pay or Android Pay, track their order and chat with customer service. 

Joseph Godsey, Head of Digital Brand Commerce at Adidas, said in a statement following the announcement, "The app gets to know the consumer's sport and style preferences and learns from his or her behavior and interaction with Adidas across all our digital touch points. The most relevant news stories, articles, blog posts, videos and events announcements are surfaced to engage with the consumer on what they are passionate about. It will take into account preferred sizes and colors and shows availability based on the consumer's country location."

That will help forge stronger bonds with consumers, but perhaps the biggest threat to the sportswear giants is Amazon, which is reportedly looking at developing its own line of sportswear. That possibility has already compounded existing problems for Under Armour, which has seen its stock value dive recently, and also waved good-bye to its CMO.