As CEO of Puma, Jochen Zeitz has energised a flagging brand. He tells Richard Cree why he values style just as highly as substance

Jochen Zeitz, CEO of Puma, jokes he's an "old timer". He's just celebrated 15 years in charge of the German sports brand, so there's truth in his claim. But there's a glint in his eye as he says it. Zeitz may have been running Puma for 15 years, but he's still only in his 40s. He took on the job when he was just 32, causing a sensation in Germany.

"Everybody said that it wouldn't work," says Zeitz. "The German press was going crazy because at the time, every CEO had to have grey hairs before they would be considered for a board position. Manager magazine said I would 'crumble under the pressure', but I never felt any pressure. I was too excited to have been given the opportunity. Being young helped me because I was never bothered by the fuss. If anything, it was an additional incentive. I felt the pressure to achieve something that was good, but not the pressure of failure. I think that comes a little bit with youth."

It may also have helped that as Zeitz took control, things could hardly have got worse for Puma. The company had lost money for eight years in a row and had been going through CEOs at an alarming rate. Zeitz describes the period as "Puma's dark years", and in his colourful way, he says he thinks of it as "the time that the Puma cat went to sleep".

Immediately after arriving in the CEO's seat, Zeitz set about a major restructuring and cost-cutting exercise, which included 400 redundancies and the closure of Puma's German factory and warehouses, which he moved to Asia. He says he conducted most of the one-to-one redundancy interviews himself and claims that when he visited the factory to make the announcements, there was even some relief that he was ending years of speculation and uncertainty, despite the news being bad. He also admits that it was the hardest thing he's ever had to do. Among those who parted company with Puma was the finance director. And within four months, the company was back in profit.

Zeitz claims that a large part of the problem was that there was too wide a gulf between the marketing and finance departments. "It was a classic case of the bean counters on one side and the big money spenders on the other," he says. Thanks to an unusual background that combined both disciplines, Zeitz took on a dual role and remained as CEO and chief financial officer for 12 years.

"The way I look at it, if you are driving a racing car, you want to control the gas pedal and the brake," he says. "And you need to know when to hit the gas pedal and when to hit the brake. That's what I did for a long period of time, until I felt that it was time to give up the brake."

The unusual length of his tenure is partly thanks to a refusal to bow to the sort of short-term pressures that often distract CEOs from achieving their longer-term ambitions. Zeitz laid out an impressively long-term, four-stage strategy when he took over. Staring with the restructuring of the firm, he then moved on to breathing life back into what had been an underperforming brand. It was at this point that Zeitz took another huge gamble, turning the standard industry model on its head and focusing on the fashion and lifestyle aspects of the brand, rather than just sports performance.

For the last decade, this approach has meant that Puma has been as well known for its links with fashion designers such as Jil Sander and Alexander McQueen as it has for its sports endorsements. Zeitz admits that at first, not everyone agreed with his approach: "First they said I couldn't turn around the company and then they said I couldn't rebuild the brand. [I knew we] had to position the brand as the underdog and the edgy brand—an innovative, design-driven brand. By repositioning it, we changed the formula that was driving the industry. We introduced the term 'sports lifestyle'. We invested all our profitability and I knew that it would take five years minimum to reposition the brand as a sports-lifestyle brand."

The arrival of Sander marked a turning point. "It helped that the road we had chosen was accepted by a fashion designer," says Zeitz. "And it changed a lot of people's perceptions, internally and externally—because there were as many critics internally as there were externally. When we first talked about sport lifestyle, I'd say about 80 per cent of the company thought that it wouldn't work."

But Sander's shoes for Puma were an enormous hit, with customers queuing up to get them as they came into stores. That started to change the world's view of Puma.

Today, Zeitz says the brand is split 50-50 between performance and style, but he doesn't see the separation quite as clearly as some. "Athletes want to look good and feel good," he says. "If I talk to the Italian national soccer team or Jamaican runners, they come to us because they want to look good. They come to Puma because they see we treat them as special, but we also provide them with the coolest look. Ultimately, that makes them feel better and perform more strongly. People do want to look good, whether that's when they are on the track or when they go shopping."

Zeitz's hands-on approach to the business means that he gets involved in all the company's endorsements, be they with sports stars or designers. "Pretty much every athlete or designer comes across my desk," he says. "Either I meet them or learn about them. We pick designers or athletes not because they are great, but because they are great and fit the Puma profile. Their personality needs to be in sync with what we as a brand stand for. That's very important. If someone wins a gold medal then fine, as long as the personality fits."

And this is also where fashion and sport collide. "It's about fashion, styling and fashionability—not just blood, sweat and tears," he insists. "If it was just about winning, then 99 per cent of us shouldn't do sports."

Zeitz has stayed in post under three different ownership structures and has been through the switch from public listing to private ownership. "The changes haven't affected me. The strategy is the same," he says. And questions about the current climate get the same straight bat. "It's a little early to talk about numbers, but we are expecting positive top-line and bottom-line growth. I have a long-term strategy, but when it comes to the numbers, I never predict. I don't have a crystal ball. A long-term strategy takes off the pressure for short-term results because I know this is the ultimate goal. And whether we come at that on one curve or another curve, I can't tell you."

Not only did the cat wake up, it took a stroll down the catwalk and has stayed there ever since. Alongside a continued presence in the worlds of football (Puma sponsored the Italian team that won the last World Cup, and is very active in Africa), golf, tennis and athletics, the company is about to get into sailing. Rather than curling up and going back to sleep any time soon, the Puma cat is about to set sail.