Adidas plans to sell its stock of unsold Yeezy shoes and donate the proceeds to charity, chief executive Bjorn Gulden told shareholders Thursday.
The company cut ties with Ye, the rapper and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West, late last year after he made a string of antisemitic comments. Adidas’s Yeezy partnership with Ye was among its most successful, generating close to 10 percent of the company’s annual revenue, according to estimates. In early February, Adidas warned it was looking at massive losses if it couldn’t sell its inventory, raising questions about what it would do with the tainted shoes.
A sign advertises Yeezy shoes made by Adidas at Kickclusive, a sneaker resale store, in Paramus, N.J., in October 2022. Seth Wenig/Associated Press
It appears the company has decided against destroying them.
“Burning is not the solution,” Gulden said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. The company had consulted with several nongovernmental organizations before arriving at a solution, he noted.
“What we are trying to do over time is to sell parts of these goods and then donate to organizations that help us and that also have been hurt by Kanye’s statements,” Gulden added.
If Adidas does sell the shoes, it would put an end to months of back-and-forth as the shoe brand weighed possible solutions – none of which would leave the company unscathed. Options included rebranding the distinctive sneakers, liquidating them, or donating them in some form. Another was destroying the shoes, a practice some retailers and designer brands have been criticized for in recent years over environmental concerns.
Last November, Adidas officials said they could recoup the “vast majority” of losses by rebranding the shoes, which retail for anywhere from $200 to nearly $600, and selling them at a discount. Gulden later indicated that the company might not sell any of the product, which would have left Adidas with unsold inventory that analysts say is worth up to $500 million.
The company ended its relationship with Ye in late October following a string of controversies. He appeared at his Paris Fashion Week show wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt and then made antisemitic comments on Instagram and Twitter, which he doubled down on in an unaired portion of an interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
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