What’s Next For Yeezys?
In this article, we go through the recent events involving Yeezy and Adidas as well as speculate what happens to the brand going forward.
Adidas and Kanye West, now known as Ye, have had a falling out recently over comments made by the rapper on Twitter, as well as a few comments during interviews. With the end of Yeezy x Kanye, we have to ask, What’s next for Yeezys?
Stick around, as that’s exactly what we’re going to try to find out in this article.
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We have some ground to cover, so let’s get right to it!
Why did the company split from Ye?
After the rapper made antisemitic remarks, the German sportswear company severed relations with him, terminating what may have been his most important corporate fashion connection.
After West departed Nike, Adidas started working with him about a decade ago. West is now known as Ye. One of the biggest sources of Ye’s riches is his association with Yeezy, the artist’s firm that sells shoes and clothes, and which is reported to be worth billions.
“Adidas does not allow antisemitism and any other kind of hate speech,” the brand said in a statement. “Ye has recently made remarks and taken acts that are undesirable, harmful, and against the company’s principles of inclusiveness, respect, and fairness.”
After opting to discontinue the brand’s operations with immediate effect, the corporation said that it would suffer a “short-term” loss of €250 million (£217 million) in revenue for this year. It aims to halt Yeezy goods manufacturing as well as any payments to Kanye West and his businesses.
After the Gold Digger producer’s contentious Paris presentation earlier this month, when models walked the runway wearing “White Lives Matter” shirts, Adidas first placed the collaboration up for review.
One of the firm’s directors criticized the corporation for how it handled Ye’s words. Adidas Director of Trade Marketing Sarah Camhi, who is of Jewish background, said via a public LinkedIn post that the company has to do more for its workers and community.
As a member of the Jewish community, she said, “I can no longer remain quiet on behalf of the company I work for. Being silent is equivalent to expressing everything. You can also check out our article on the full version of this story.
What’s next for the Yeezy line?
It will hurt for Adidas to lose relations with the once-dominant Yeezy brand.
But they’ll probably keep releasing new designs. Obviously, they won’t continue to utilize the Yeezy moniker.
I believe Adidas will keep a portion of the revenue. They won’t lose the $1.5 billion to $2 billion in Yeezy sales, but there will be a reduction in sales since it isn’t also being branded with that name.
Adidas will have a huge financial gap to fill after dissolving their partnership since the well-known Yeezy brand accounts for between $1 billion and $2 billion in yearly sales for the business.
Adidas just released their second of two early financial reports and guidedowns for the year, so this comes at a difficult moment for the business. They already anticipated Q4 to have negative profitability, and this additional $250 million would significantly hurt Q4’s bottom line.
Aside from the turmoil in the West, Adidas is approaching the Christmas season in a vulnerable position as the most recent retailer to be caught off guard operationally as the world’s economies have slowed.
The business warned a week ago that this poor execution has mostly resulted in an excess of Adidas inventory that would need to be aggressively marked down at the loss of profitability.
According to Adidas’ updated outlook, which was released on October 20, “the company’s new outlook takes into account a further deterioration of traffic trends in Greater China as well as a significant inventory build-up as a result of lower consumer demand in major Western markets since the beginning of September, which is expected to lead to higher promotional activity during the remainder of the year.”
As for the Yeezy brand itself, it is hard to say what might happen to them. It might be entirely possible that Kanye West and Adidas ditch “Yeezy” altogether and create something entirely new.
While Adidas does have the rights to some or most of the designs from Yeezy, they will likely not use that same name without their previous partner. Moreover, Kanye might fitch Yeezy altogether as well and create an entirely new brand with similar designs.
Kanye West Escorted Out Of Sketchers
Following his breakup with Adidas, Kanye West showed up at the Skechers shoe firm in Manhattan Beach, California, on Wednesday, according to the company.
The shoe firm stated in a notice that the rapper and his group had to be “escorted” out of the facility after arriving “unannounced.”
West “engaged in unauthorized filming,” according to Sketchers.
The brand said, “Skechers is not contemplating and has no intention of cooperating with West.” “We reject all forms of hate speech, including antisemitism, and we condemn his recent divisive statements,” the statement reads.
He paid Skechers a visit less than a day after Adidas and West canceled their lucrative Yeezy collaboration.
GAP, which had already cut ties with West, committed to taking any products made as part of the disbanded relationship out of circulation.
Following weeks of outrage caused by the Grammy winner’s “antisemitic” statements, West’s business partnerships have collapsed.
Neo-nazis in Los Angeles over the weekend displayed banners with antisemitic symbols and references to Kanye West on an overpass of the 405 Freeway.
Numerous celebrities, including Lizzo, John Legend, Jamie Lee Curtis, and others, have publicly attacked West for his remarks, and a campaign started by Jessica Seinfeld has helped Jewish people get support on social media.
In response to the rapper’s anti-Semitic comments, NBA player Jaylen Brown and NFL star Aaron Donald both announced on Tuesday that they were leaving West’s Donda Sports agency.
From the recent events and if Ye does not get a deal with a large brand and is unwilling to bootstrap another similar business, we may just see the end of Yeezy.
What will happen to Yeezy’s Resale Values
Since their release in 2015, Yeezy sneakers have become popular resale goods. Adidas may still produce identical shoes without the Yeezy label, but Yeezy footwear is being phased out, and major shops are taking anything linked to Kanye West off the shelves.
The final location where individuals may purchase Yeezys is at resale. Since their release, the shoes have become staples of the resale market, but The RealReal is now prohibiting new listings from the resale marketplace.
Yeezy shoes are becoming more and more radioactive. Numerous people on the /r/sneakers subreddit, the world’s biggest sneaker community, said they would never purchase another pair of Yeezys.
Shoshy Ciment, the business editor for Footwear News, uploaded a photo of her welcome mat on Twitter that said, “Please remove your Yeezys.”
So what will happen to every Yeezy that is now in existence? Google data shows that on the morning of October 26, searches for “sell Yeezy” increased by about 600%.
People from all over the globe have apparently raced to the internet to sell their Yeezy merchandise, either because they no longer want to support its creator or because they believed that because Adidas would no longer be manufacturing them, their value may rise over the coming months and years.
The brand’s EMV skyrocketed around the middle of October, as seen by Yeezy’s earned media value in September and October. In the first week of October, Yeezy’s EMV was $1.7 million; in the second week, it was $5.1 million.
It may make them less valuable if more individuals attempt to sell their Yeezys, overwhelming the market with excess supply.
A simple scan of StockX’s publicly accessible sales data for the different Yeezy colorways reveals that their prices are generally stable or gradually dropping.
On October 26, the cost of one colorway—the Yeezy 350 v2 Salt—did increase by about $100. According to a tweet from sports business analyst Darren Rovell, six of the top eight selling shoes on StockX this week were Yeezy, despite pricing mostly staying the same.
An auction house currently ending up a month-long selling display of incredibly rare Yeezys named Christie’s sneaker department, Department X, was asked I f the business would keep selling Yeezy shoes in the future, but the company did not respond to any requests from journalists.
One of the pairs being auctioned via Christie’s is the Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototype, which the sneaker purchasing site Rares acquired from Sotheby’s for $1.8 million in 2021.
Requests for comment on this report from Rares were also ignored.
The famous Sockjig Sneaker Podcast host Sockjig said on Twitter, “Yeezy 350, and later Foam Runners and Slides were truly the lifeblood of a lot of mall resale businesses,” which was reposted by the brand.
In terms of resale, there could be a minor increase in market price as individuals purchase a Yeezy they’ve always wanted, but it might only last a short while, given how many Yeezy goods are currently available.
I don’t believe Kanye has lost the support of the culture entirely. Because of how he made them feel in 2009, some of his supporters will be inextricably linked to him for years to come.
What happens to the stock of Adidas Yeezys that have not yet been launched is one aspect of the question.
According to sources, they are retaining at least five drops scheduled for this year, totaling at least 20,000 to 30,000 pairs. Adidas may oversupply the market with the sneakers or just trash them. (Gap, for instance, has said that it would not at all issue its Yeezy Gap stock.)
Additionally, even if Ye eventually returns to the sneaker game with a new partner and owns the patents for the majority of the Yeezy designs, Adidas can continue to release the shoes under a different name because only a select few will actually continue to appreciate value, especially the Nike models, which represent the “glory years” version of his shoe history.
Nobody questions that this will benefit Nike in the near future.
What happens to the sneaker market now?
You need to first grasp how shoes become valuable to comprehend why Yeezy’s demise might affect the sneaker industry. The value of an object is mostly determined by its rarity, much as in any market for collectibles like art or jewelry. But when it comes to shoes, sentimentality and the cultural significance of their designer also matter.
Although sneakers have long had their own subcultural semiology (dating back to the Converse All-Star in 1917), it was Michael Jordan and the introduction of the Air Jordan in the mid-1980s, along with the rise of hip-hop, that catapulted sneakers into the center of popular discourse and identity.
Fans fantasized about walking in his shoes, and finally, they could. They recalled Mr. Jordan wearing the sneakers when they watched him play. Jordan sneakers gained such a following that they caused riots in 2014.
While other companies and partnerships had their moments, a true rival didn’t start to materialize until Ye teamed up with Adidas in 2013 after a spat with Nike. Nothing even came close before that.
People often purchase Yeezys to wear, whereas they purchase Jordans to keep and collect.
The final sneaker Ye developed with Nike, the Air Yeezy 2 SP Red Octobers, is an excellent example of one of the three or four varieties of Yeezys you would purchase to keep. Because there are so many more of them in use, that volume makes up for the profit resellers lose on each shoe, as most Yeezys sold for far less than Jordans did.
That’s significant because it clarifies why Ye’s recent comments may be detrimental to the resale market.
Like wearing a MAGA hat could indicate a political stance, if you purchase a pair of shoes to wear and those shoes come to be linked with a harmful ideology, it might tie you to those views by association.
Despite what Ye may have said, Yeezys are quite popular among foreign consumers in China, the Middle East, and Russia.
There now may be a hole in the market left by Adidas, and various brands such as Reebok and New Balance will be looking to fill it.
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