Adidas is getting hundreds of offers for the Yeezy shoes and apparel it pulled off the market after it broke off its partnership with rap star Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, over his repeated antisemitic remarks, but the company's CEO says he's not yet sure what to do with the merchandise.
The German sportswear company is saying it may experience its first annual losses in more than three years after being stuck with the Yeezy-branded clothing and shoes and as the company's bottom line could lose as much as $527 million this year, reports CNN.
Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden told analysts this week that he's gotten more than 500 offers to buy out the Yeezy stock, but he thinks that "would not necessarily be the right thing to do."
"I think the goal that we have is to do what damages us the least and that we do something good,” Gulden said.
Initially, the company said it would strip the apparel line of the Yeezy branding and name, but decided against that. Gulden said the issue of what to do with the stockpile "carries a lot of reputational risk."
He said the company could sell off the products at a small margin of profit and then donate that to charity; but burning or destroying the merchandise is likely not an option, as "people will say you cannot destroy it because it’s a sustainability issue."
Donating the shoes and apparel to charity is also not an option, said Gulden, because of the shoes' premium status, meaning they would "come back again" in the market — particularly the shoes, as they are known as luxury sneakers.
"The value of the product is not the physical value of the ingredients. It is the branded merchandise that is sold at a high price," he said, with his comments reflecting the news that demand in the secondary markets for the Yeezy branded shoes is climbing.
John Mocadlo, chief executive of online reseller Impossible Kicks, said in February that demand for the Yeezy shoes climbed by 30% on his website since last October.
"We sell about 30,000 sneakers in total every month," he said. "Probably 6,000 to 7,000 of those right now are Yeezys."
Impossible Kicks has around $2 million in Yeezy sneakers, or about 10,000 pairs of the shoes, in its inventory; but it's getting harder to get more of the shoes because of the controversy with Ye, said Mocadlo.
StockX, a leading sneaker resale platform, told CNN that the average price for Yeezy shoes has increased, but sales have decreased.
"This is in line with the principles of supply and demand and consistent with what we'd expect to happen when no new supply is in the market," Drew Haines, director of sneakers and collectibles at StockX, said.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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