The giant German sportswear Adidas is expected to lose $1.3 billion due to unsold Yeezy fashion line stocks whose sale has dropped after removal of Kayne West.
Adidas and Yeeze first collaborated in 2013 and anchored their alliance in 2016, where the company marked as, “most significant partnership ever created between a non-athlete and an athletic brand.”
But in the early October, Kanye west came under limelight for his antisemitic remarks and controverses, leading to disputes in business alliances, criticism by localites & industry peers as well as banned from all social media platforms.
Here are some of his antisemitic acts which spread like wildfire across the world.
- Kanye wore shirts with “White Lives Matters” written on them for his Yeeze fashion show in Paris against the civil right movement “Black Lives Matters” by The Southern Poverty Law Center.
- Baseless claims on Instagram by Kanye that LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault “KILLED MY BEST FRIEND” corresponding to Designer Virgil Abloh, who dies of cancer previously. According to West, Arnault’s egoistic nature and his racism affected Abloh’s health.
- After Adidas stated that, it will puts its longstanding relation with Kanye under review, in retaliation West wrote in Instagram, “FUUUUUUCK ADIDAS I AM ADIDAS ADIDAS RAPED AND STOLE MY DESIGNS.”
- West stated on Twitter, that he is to go “death con 3 on Jewish people,” which was an obvious misspelling of “defcon,” and claims that it wasn’t antisemitic, as “black people are actually Jew also” which promptly lead to blocking him on social media platform. And the list continued for another 2 months.
After all the controversies, Adidas said that it would terminate its partnership with Yeeze as it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech” and said his comments were “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous.” Adidas also stated that west’s comments violated the company’s “values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness”.
Adidas gave statement that there will be significant adverse impact from not selling the existing stock. Adidas is Expected to Lose $1.3 Billion Due to Unsold Yeezy stock. Hence it would endeavour to sell the unsold stock by discarding Yeezy Branding, that would save the company about $300 million in royalty payments.
Although after Adidas decided to repurpose his clothes, Burt Flickinger, retail expert and managing director at retail consultancy Strategic Resource Group said, “There really are no good options for this distressed brand that sat somewhere between prestige and luxury”.
The Company’s top leader, Mr. Bjorn Gulden CEO of Adidas said in his statement that, “The numbers speak for themselves. We are currently not performing the way we should”. Eventually, the shares of Adidas thrashed about 11% in Frankfurt trading on Friday Morning. Also, the stocks has crashed by 45% over the past years. Adidas also expects one-off costs of up to 200 million euros in 2023, due to the “strategic review” that the company is undergoing.
