Adidas has started moving the last of its Yeezy inventory. Photo Credit: Kyle Brinker
Adidas has officially kicked off the sale of an estimated $1.3 billion in remaining Yeezy inventory – with a portion of the resulting revenue reaching Kanye West as well as “organizations working to combat discrimination and hate.”
The German athletic-apparel and footwear company set the Yeezy selloff in motion today, directing potential buyers to the Adidas Confirmed app (which was ranked third on the Play Store’s list of free shopping apps at the time of writing). As previously reported, Adidas, despite remaining embroiled in a legal battle with West, will have to cut the 45-year-old an approximately $140 million check if it moves all the inventory at hand.
And early evidence suggests that there’s ample demand behind the involved Yeezy products, for which Adidas has arranged a series of “drops.” According to Confirmed, customers over the age of 13 can (after providing a shipping address, a shoe size, and payment information) enter a “queue” to have a chance at securing the items.
Buyers will then be selected randomly from said queue, per the app, which encourages Puerto Rico residents via a homepage notification to switch to the platform’s Spanish-language “Bad Bunny” version. Once again at the time of writing, Yeezy Slides were priced at a relatively modest $70 per pair, compared to a staggering $260 a pop for Yeezy Boost 700 V2 shoes and $210 for Yeezy 450s. Each item ships free and cannot be returned, the platform makes clear.
Meanwhile, several of the hours-long drops have already concluded, with would-be buyers who missed out on the action prompted to register for last-call “draws.” Predictably, more than a few opportunistic shoppers are looking to resell their confirmed Yeezy orders – actual deliveries could take over three weeks, per Adidas – at a substantial markup on platforms including Ebay.
Presumably because of the abundance of available Adidas inventory, the astronomically priced listings (some of which will set sneakerheads back $300 including shipping) appear to be finding few takers at present. And more broadly, it’ll be worth monitoring the aforementioned Adidas-West legal showdown as well as the rapper’s other apparel endeavors in the approaching months and years.
On the latter front, it stands to reason that footwear fanatics willing to part with hundreds of dollars for Yeezys notwithstanding the controversy surrounding West (who’s likewise entangled in a courtroom confrontation with Gap and still boasts north of 55 million monthly listeners on Spotify) may also be interested in new products from the Atlanta native.