»Lifestyle« is the name of a pair of trainers that twelve-year-old Philine has just bought. The label on the tongue says they were made in Vietnam. Philine wonders what it’s like there.

For Anne, at corporate HQ in Herzogenaurach (in German Franconia), Vietnam is not a country, but a production site. »The workers are happier,« she says.

Twenty-one-year-old Mai was born at this production site. She threads white shoelaces into trainers and lives in an industrial wasteland near the Adidas factory. At night she dreams of the rice fields of her childhood.

Joel is from the United States, and he is the boss at Adidas in Vietnam. His job is to bow to market dictates. He knows more about the corporate world than he admits …

Lifestyle describes a reporter’s journey across this broad corporate prairie.