Getty Image
Last year, as a result of his rampant anti-semitic comments, adidas parted ways with rapper and fashion designer Kanye West.
Despite the fact that Kanye proudly proclaimed that adidas “can’t drop him”, the German apparel giant did exactly that with a move that they estimated would cost them $250 million in the final quarter of 2022 alone.
Now, over half a year since their decision to axe West, adidas reportedly has $1 billion in Yeezy products sitting around that they don’t know what to do with.
“The fate of $1.3 billion worth of unsold Yeezy stock is weighing on the German sportswear company as it tries to engineer a turnaround from the loss of the lucrative sneaker line and the continued fallout over its former ties to Ye,” reported the Associated Press.
“Adidas is ‘getting closer and closer to making a decision’ on what to do with the sneakers and the ‘options are narrowing,’ new CEO Bjorn Gulden said in a conference call Friday after reporting $441 million in lost sales at the start of the year.
adidas wasn’t the only major brand to part ways with West, as Balenciaga and Gap did the same. Due to these lost partnerships, West’s net worth plummeted by over $500 million, according to a report from Forbes. West was also suspended from both Twitter and Instagram due to his anti-semitic posts.
Most recently, West was in the headlines for claiming that Jonah Hill and his role in the 2012 comedy 21 Jump Street made him “like Jewish people again.”
“Watching Jonah Hill in 21 Jump street made me like Jewish people again. No one should take anger against one or two individuals and transform that into hatred towards millions of innocent people,” West said in a now-deleted Instagram post.
“No Christian can be labeled antisemite knowing Jesus is Jew. Thank you Jonah Hill I love you,” he said.
At the time of West’s release from adidas, the 45-year-old father-of-four made a litany of anti-semitic comments on a variety of different platforms. While making an appearance on Alex Jones’ show InfoWars, for example, West made shocking comments such as “I love Hitler” and that people need to “stop dissing Nazis.”