Adidas sells off Yeezy stock to rid their stores of any Kanye West product
Kanye West and Adidas cut ties some time ago, but all remnants of their former partnership have now been erased as the sportswear brand has decided to sell off all of its Yeezy stock to ensure that its connection to West is completely non-existent.
Even after the brand decided to cut ties with West in 2022 after his antisemitic public meltdown, it was still stocking its most popular sneaker model, the Yeezy. As such, it continued to sell its Yeezy stock after West’s contract terminated.
West began to threaten legal action against Adidas after the official severing of ties in 2022, as Adidas was supposedly making money from his intellectual property. However, the legal action was settled last year, and in a statement, Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden explained, “There aren’t any more open issues, and there is no… money going either way, and we both move on.”
The brand has been attempting to offload its stock of Yeezy for years. According to Adidas’ chief financial officer, Harm Ohlmeyer, no Yeezy shoes exist in any of its warehouses. In a recent statement, Ohlmeyer declared, “There is not one Yeezy shoe left. It has all been sold, and that episode is behind us.”
The company worked tirelessly to rid itself of the surplus Yeezy stock they had. Initially, there were billions of dollars worth of stock, and Adidas allegedly struggled to dump the sneakers, so they sold them in batches.
This allowed Adidas to get rid of vast quantities of Yeezy shoes, with some of the proceeds going to charity. However, Kanye fans were still upset with the sportswear brand, which they felt was profiting off West’s name without fully severing ties.
Concerning brands that ditched West and his brand, Kanye was not only dropped by Adidas in 2022 but was also cut off by Balenciaga and Gap, which all cited his tweets and comments on far-right platforms as their reasons for turning their backs on him.
Although the Yeezy shoe as a sneaker model has now been completely ended, the brand still lives on, but it is still toxic as, until recently, the only merchandise Kanye West was selling was a t-shirt with a bold swastika.