What would you do if you were partnered on a multi-million dollar contract with someone who fell from grace and has received the official and defining ‘cancelled’ label? Well, that’s exactly what adidas has been asking itself ever since terminating its YEEZY deal with Kanye West after those comments were made.
Today, adidas announces its pledge to donate €100 million to organisations fighting anti-semitism but its road to financial recovery is looking more like a steep mountain rather than a straight road. As far as adidas goes, the YEEZY brand is over & out, or at least on its way.
The deal was terminated last October and since adidas has been trying to find a way to escape millions of dollars in revenue losses. While the fall-out has been highly public, its details were being kept behind closed doors, until recently a reported mishandling of $75 million of a $100 million marketing fund was revealed during a court hearing. adidas claims that the large sum of money, paid in two separate transfers to two different accounts, had been diverted by the rapper, essentially making it all go to waste.
The route adidas has chosen is quite simple: selling its leftover stock over several drops that have not been advertised like a regular drop would be. To the surprise of many, including adidas employees, the May and June drop did better than expected, with a reported 4 million pairs being sold bringing an estimated €400 million. And there’s another drop on its way this month.
While Ye has been living off the grid – and by that we mean he’s been exiled from any social media platform and spotted by fans wearing nothing but socks out on the streets of Shibuya, Tokyo – he’s also been working off the grid. Earlier this year, Ye opened new YEEZY offices in LA, right next to an adidas store mind you, held a YEEZY season 10 show and found someone equally controversial – or even worse tbh – as him to become CEO, all the while the mysterious @0.0archive IG profile has popped up.
Kanye West and his wife Bianca Censori in Tokyo 🇯🇵 pic.twitter.com/WKCSxPZo0B
— iexclusivenews (@iexclusivenews) July 25, 2023
@0.0archive isn’t officially affiliated with Ye or YEEZY, but we wouldn’t be surprised if this was Kanye’s Finsta. The IG profile popped up around the same time as the YEEZY HQ’s were opened, and has been sporadically posting random Ye-related imagery and unreleased YEEZY samples, including the AQUA50s. Whether those, or any product shown on the Instagram account, will make it to production is a whole different story.
But even if they did, who would actually be buying them? Now listen, despite being cancelled, the Ye fans still consider him the God he self-appointed himself on his 2013 release Yeezus. Try and find a post which criticises Kanye without seeing a “Ye the GOAT” comment. Just kidding, we’ll spare you the trouble – it doesn’t exist.
Considering everything Kanye has recently been spotted in – do we really need to remind you about the Yeggings? The YEEZY sock shoes? The fact that Kanye was recently spotted barefoot? I mean, if that isn’t a sign of a man who shouldn’t be designing shoes, I don’t know what is. And with the leaked YEEZY images we’ve been seeing, it’s not the fan base we’re doubting, it’s the actual designs. Are Ye die hard fans really the type to switch out their YEEZY 500s for some socks? Don’t know about that one chief.
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