adidas Yeezy
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Source: Brad Barket / Getty / Steven Smith / Kanye West
If Kanye West hopes to continue dropping hot footwear, he will be doing so without his longtime collaborator and YZY designer Steven Smith.
Steven Smith is letting the chopper spray on his former boss, Kanye West after the embattled multihyphenate fired him. Speaking with Fast Company, Smith says, “He’s lost his mind. The whole of Yeezy is circling the drain, and this is just part of it. He has surrounded himself with toxic, C-grade losers.”
Ouch.
Smith’s comments are damming because he was described by the website as a “sensitive defender of Ye and, in particular, the treatment of his mental health.”
Now, not so much.
West gave Smith the boot in August and showed how petty he was by blocking Smith on Instagram. Smith has worked with the problematic rapper since 2016 and was one of the instrumental figures in the company’s success following the deal with adidas, which has since been terminated.
Despite losing his gig with YZY, Smith remains optimistic about his future, saying on the website, “I’m in a very happy place with it all. I will certainly be a priceless asset to whoever I work with next. It’s all his loss and the result of his foolishness.”
Smith did reveal the reasoning for his termination, but, according to Fast Company, “reached a breaking point” afterword on the street said the “saved” rapper wanted to launch his own porn company but scrapped the idea.
Bruh.
Other Wild Allegations
Smith is just the latest former high-profile employee to drop some serious but wild allegations against the “Monster” crafter.
West’s former chief of staff and far-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos claimed in an affidavit that the Chicago rapper is addicted to nitrous oxide thanks to celebrity dentist Thomas Connelly, who got Ye hooked on the poisonous gas.
According to Yiannopoulos, West spends up to $50,000 per month on nitrous oxide and underwent scans proving that he has suffered permanent brain damage from his abuse of the poisonous gas.
Connelly has denied the allegations, but in a video he sent to troubled boxer Robert Garcia, he can be seen using an oxygen mask, so he’s making it hard to beat the allegations.
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Source: adidas / adidas
adidas still has Yeezy’s stashed to sell off?!
Apparently they do as Sneakerbar Detroit is reporting that Adidas is preparing for yet another Yeezy Day restock later this year and it’ll feature quite a few silhouettes that were pretty hard to come by back when Yeezy didn’t alienate most of his fans with his antics and out of pocket social-political comments.
It’s been a few years since Adidas split from Kanye West following his antisemitic comments and halted any further production of new Yeezy products, but with a half a billion worth of Yeezy products sitting in warehouses, Adidas wasn’t going to hold that big of an “L” and has been selling off it’s remaining inventory since. Needless to say Yeezy’s remain a hot commodity for sneakerheads and even though Kanye told his followers not to buy them as he gets nothing from the sales and doesn’t want them banking off his name.
Now that there’s more product to be sold, we wonder if fans still have a hankering for Yeezy Boosts, Slides, and Foam Runners as resale prices have tanked over time.
While the original Yeezy Day restock dates were set for the end of this month and beginning of June, it seems like their might’ve been a change of plans as word got out about the event.
Sneakerbar Detroit reports:
According to brandon1an, Adidas has removed all Yeezy releases from their calendar. It’s unclear whether this is due to rescheduling, cancellation, or simply a desire to keep the information private. Consequently, any release lists you see might change, and no SKU should be anticipated to restock until it appears on Adidas CONFIRMED. The restock was initially expected to start on May 27th and conclude on June 13th, 2024. Stay tuned for further updates.
We gotta wonder what went wrong. Though Adidas has canceled release dates before, they always eventually come back with a new one because like we said, they’re not holding a multi-million dollar “L” for no one.
What do y’all think about another Yeezy Day? Are y’all looking to copp any of those kicks? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Source: @kanyewest / Instagram
adidas has just started the process of selling off their remaining Yeezy stock via the raffle system on their Confirmed app. But we don’t think Kanye West for one will be attempting to secure a pair as he took to social media to discourage his fans from buying into the Yeezy hype.
Though adidas has been slowly selling off their remaining Yeezy inventory since last year without a peep from Kanye West, apparently, this time around, Yeezy felt a way about the Yeezys being sold in 2024. Not too long after adidas announced that the raffles were open for what could be the final round of Yeezy drops, Kanye West took to his IG page with a message for both adidas and his faithful fans. “Anybody who loves Ye would not buy these fake Yeezys. I never made these color ways, I’m not getting paid off of them and adidas is suing me,” Kanye said.
We lowkey thought this colorway was made to match the titanium dentures that Kanye’s been sporting for quite some time now. We guess not.
Aside from the post on his IG page, Kanye dropped a video talking about his situation with adidas reiterating that they’re currently suing him for $250 million and not giving him a cut of the sales from his sneaker line. Saying that adidas is “raping him” via his business contract, Kanye hopes that his followers turn their back on the three-stripe brand in his name and let these sneakers brick upon arrival.
Whether or not this will dissuade sneakerheads from purchasing anymore Yeezys is anyone’s guess. But at this point, we feel like adidas has moved enough of their remaining Yeezy stock to hold a few L’s here and there.
Check out Kanye West’s video below, and sound off in the comments section with your thoughts about the situation.
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Source: adidas / adidas
Looks like rumors of adidas never selling Yeezy sneakers after 2023 was greatly exaggerated as there is now word that more Yeezy sneakers will be releasing throughout 2024.
According to Nice Kicks, adidas still has plenty of Yeezy inventory left in stock and instead of destroying them, they plan on moving the merchandise sometime this year. With a staggering $271 million dollars worth of Yeezy supplies there is no way adidas is just going to hold onto hundreds of millions of dollars worth of L’s in their warehouse.
The release of the remaining inventory was supposed to have happened in November of 2023, but due to the war that broke out between Israeli and Hamas in October, adidas canceled their plans as Kanye West’s antisemitic comments was still fresh on the minds of the general public. Fearing backlash that might have come with their Yeezy drop, adidas pushed back the release to 2024.
Still no word on when the sneakers will be releasing but if history is any indication, the Yeezy silhouettes will sell out like hotcakes just as they did last summer regardless of how people feel about Kanye West. Even the less popular Yeezy silhouettes sold out within days.
What do y’all think of Adidas continuing to sell their Yeezy sneakers? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Source: adidas / adidas
With the hundreds of millions of dollars that adidas garnered with the releases of Yeezy products over the summer, it was rumored that there would be another drop or two of remaining Yeezy sneakers before the end of 2023. But it seems like adidas has pulled the plug on those plans…for now.
Complex is reporting that the war that erupted between Israeli and Hamas in the past few weeks has pushed adidas to reverse course on their planned Yeezy drop as Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks (which led to his deal with adidas being terminated) this past year is still fresh on the minds of the Jewish community and Hip-Hoppers in general. An internal adidas memo that was shared with Complex confirmed the brand’s plan to hold back on the next wave of Yeezy sneakers.
Per Complex:
“As a brand we will not do a new drop for the remainder of the year both for our internal e-com and retail as well as wholesale,” Adidas’ message reads. “We will not be shipping out any new stock, this direction was given at the board level.”
The drop was set to include the “Bone,” “Onyx,” and “Zebra” colorways of the Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2. Adidas’ Yeezy 500 and 700 models were also included in the group.
An Adidas spokesperson declined to comment on the upcoming Yeezys for this story.
Interestingly enough, Kanye West has been mum on the war between Israel and Hamas, but truth be told, it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t opine on the matter. The last thing we need is more divisive, uninformed opinions on the matter from celebrities.
While the previous Yeezy Day drops didn’t garner the backlash many assumed it would and actually proved very lucrative for adidas, no one knows how people would react had the Three Stripes decided to move forward with its next release given the current political climate. With people in the U.S. and all over the world taking to the streets to protest the war between Israel and Hamas, adidas doesn’t want to take any chances that the brand would suffer any more negative publicity in this day and age of social media.
No word on when adidas will possibly move forward with its next Yeezy drop but best believe it will happen as sneakerheads and collectors are still gobbling up any and everything that’s branded Yeezy.
What do y’all think of adidas decision to pause any more Yeezy sneaker releases for the remainder of the year? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Source: Neilson Barnard / Getty
For the past few weeks rumors had been swirling that adidas was closing a deal with Kanye West to move the remaining half a billion dollars worth of Yeezy products that adidas pulled from shelves after they cut ties with him due to his anti-semitic outbursts on social media.
Now it seems like those rumors was much ado about nothing as Raw Story is reporting that adidas still have no clear plan on what to do with the inventory they have stashed in their warehouses. Announcing that they recorded a revenue loss of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in 2022, adidas find themselves stuck with $500 million worth of product that many sneakerheads still want to get their hands on, but can’t sell due to the circumstance that Kanye West put them under.
“Should the company irrevocably decide not to repurpose any of the existing Yeezy product going forward,” it would have to write-off the entire inventory, it said.
That would lower the company’s operating profit by an additional 500 million euros in 2023, it said.
Y’all know adidas isn’t trying to take a $500 million dollar loss like that but at this point what else can they do? It was reported that Yeezy apparel accounted for roughly 60% or Adidas sales the past few years with Kanye’s popularity easily eclipsing any athlete or celebrity that adidas had under their umbrella. Still, the three stripe brand is going to try to make the most of this year in hopes that it’ll serve as a launching pad into a more fruitful future going forward.
Bjorn Gulden, the group’s new chief executive, said the company will use 2023 as a “transition year to build the base for 2024 and 2025”.
“We need to reduce inventories and lower discounts. We can then start to build a profitable business again in 2024,” he said.
Next year was shaping up to be a key one for sporting apparel companies, with both the European football championships and the Olympic Games taking place.
Good luck with that, b.
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Source: Jeremy Moeller / Getty
In another bad sign for adidas after cutting ties with Ye aka Kanye West, their credit ratings have been cut by S&P Global due
to the company’s expectations of earnings losses for 2023.
In a disclosure statement that was published on Tuesday (February 21st), the noted agency that judges the ability of companies to pay back what they’ve borrowed declared that they were cutting the global athletic brand’s long and short-term credit rating from “A+” to “A-“. They based this on the company’s warnings that their earnings would take a serious hit after cutting ties with the controversial artist. Adidas had previously projected that the dissolution of their deal with Ye could cost them $1.3 billion.
“Adidas faces a multitude of business challenges, including the termination of its Yeezy partnership, ongoing competitive pressures in the Chinese market, and a contraction of consumer demand in Western countries,” it said in the statement. They went on to state that adidas’ warning had a tremendous effect on their decision, especially when it came to uncertainty over their remaining Yeezy stock that it could still write off and not refit for sale. “This estimate is materially worse than our previous base-case scenario.”
Adidas terminated its partnership with Ye in late October after the DONDA artist had made a string of antisemitic comments. This included an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast where he publicly challenged the brand over his behavior and comments taken from an unaired interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
S&P Global Ratings is not the only group of its kind to have a gloomy outlook on adidas’ expected financial fortunes for the year. Bernstein Research published a report that the company might’ve experienced these struggles even if it maintained its ties with Ye. They also projected that Adidas could experience losses of $2 billion, more than the estimated figure expressed in their disclosure statement. “The sales decline is about more than just Yeezy,” Bernstein analyst Aneesha Sherman said in an internal note. “We are concerned about the underlying health of the business that would drive such a drastic guide-down, even after stripping out the Yeezy impact.”
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It’s official, adidas has completely cut ties with Kanye West as the grand closing of the Yeezy Supply website has put the rubber stamp on their very public and controversial divorce.
Months after adidas announced that they’d be terminating their business contract with Kanye West over his antisemitic comments, adidas has finally shutdown the Yeezy Supply website. Sneakerheads would frequently flock to the site whenever a hyped up Yeezy sneaker or slide would release. Nice Kicks is reporting that they noticed that the popular domain went dormant sometime this week. And many sneakerheads didn’t notice as their was no need to enter the website ever since adidas stopped selling Yeezy brand products.
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From the web browser, the Nice Kicks team noticed that the info attached to the Yeezy Supply site reads, “UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE UNABLE TO GIVE YOU ACCESS TO OUR SITE AT THIS TIME.”
After attempting to enter the site, the web page fails to load and states that the site cannot be reached. The “DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN” error message then confirms that the site is non-existent.
Well, that was bound to happen.
Though adidas will continue to sell the popular 350 Boost and Slide silhouettes without the Yeezy name attached to them, the question remains whether or not those products will continue to be a hot commodity now that they’re no longer associated with the controversial MAGA rapper.
It’s worth noting that adidas says it has over $350 million worth of Yeezy sneakers stashed in a warehouse somewhere with no clear indication on what to do with them. Will they sell them off? Give them away for a good cause? Maybe even re-sell them on the low and make even more money on the secondary market? Who knows at this point.
What is clear is that they want nothing to do with the man who made their brand more popular in these streets than they have been in decades. But hey, at least they signed Jenna Ortega to an endorsement deal. Sure, she doesn’t have the sway that Kanye West once had in pop culture. But that’s sure to help with something, right? Maybe they’ll just rebrand those stored Yeezy sneakers the new “Wednesday Addams” Boosts and make some money back.
Either way, it’s officially the end of an era and Kanye West has no one to blame but himself. Ultimately he’ll probably blame liberals and maybe even Jewish space lasers, but that’s neither here nor there.
What do y’all think of adidas shutting down the Yeezy Supply website? What should they do with their remaining Yeezy’s? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Source: Jeremy Moeller / Getty
A few months ago adidas decided to cancel their partnership with Kanye “Alt-Right” West due to his antisemitic tweets and statements and in the process recalled all their Yeezy related products from Foot Lockers and other participating stores across the board.
Now TMZ is reporting that adidas has hoarded a half a billion dollars worth of Yeezys in their warehouses and no clear idea on what to do with them going forward. Though adidas has made it known that they’ll continue to release all OG Yeezy sneakers and silhouettes without the Yeezy brand on them, it looks like they’ll be sitting on a ton of Yeezy products for the time being.
Per the report, the inventory the company has amounts to about $530 million … and Adidas is apparently eager to hawk them to avoid taking an even bigger hit than what it’s publicly disclosed thus far — which was already looking quite grim for end-of-year numbers.On top of the staggering amount of shoes it has to move — which Adidas is reportedly scrambling to figure out how to do it — the FT story goes into some detail about how deeply tied it was to Yeezys and to what extent Adidas was hinging its success on it.
Though many thought that the resale value of Yeezy sneakers would skyrocket due to adidas cutting ties with the controversial rapper, the value of said sneakers only has only jumped up a few dollars in the weeks following the dissolving of the Kanye and adidas partnership. Still, adidas can resale their inventory on the low and the secondary market if they want to recoup that money and then some, but they can’t be public about it as the backlash will be swift and merciless. Just sayin.’
It will be interesting to see how sneakerheads react to the release of the first unofficial “Yeezy” sneaker dubbed the Adidas 350 V2 “Granite” when it drops in January for $230 ($10 cheaper than the average Yeezy). Without the Yeezy branding, many sneaker aficionados feel like the 350 V2 Boosts aren’t anything more than a $150 pair of kicks. What do y’all think adidas should do with the remaining pairs of Yeezys they have in their possession? Should they resell them? Destroy them? Give them away? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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