Adidas has decided to sell some products from the Yeezy collection, launched in 2015 in collaboration with rapper Kanye West, and will donate part of the proceeds to international charities that work in defense of human rights, as announced by the company’s CEO, Bjoern Gulden, on Thursday.
The German sportswear group parted ways with the artist, also known as Ye, following several anti-Semitic and racist comments late last year. Since then, he has kept in his warehouses products worth 1.2 billion euros, whose value has skyrocketed in the resale market since the company stopped manufacturing them. Adidas calculates that it could lose up to 700 million if it does not manage to release the stock accumulated.
Gulden has not detailed when and how the sale will proceed, as investors gathered in the city of Fuerth, in southern Germany, explained on Thursday beforehand. “Burning the merchandise would not be a solution,” he said. The leader explained that the company had decided not to donate the shoes to prevent them from reaching the market indirectly. If the products are sold, Ye will be entitled to 15% of the turnover, according to the stipulated agreements.
West signed for Adidas for the first time in 2013, after years of collaborating with Nike. The incorporation of the rapper allowed the German giant to cut ground on the rival company in the US market. Adidas decided to cut the relationship with the rapper after he starred in several controversial episodes late last year, the most striking of which was appearing at a fashion show in Paris wearing a T-shirt that read white lives matter (“White Lives Matter”), a slogan often used by white supremacists in the United States in response to the anti-racism movement black lives matter (“Black Lives Matter”). After that incident, the rapper assured in an interview on the Drink Champs podcast that George Floyd died from drug use and not from suffocation when he was arrested by a police officer in 2020.
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