Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden just killed any hope for a Yeezy revival. After a photo of him and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, reuniting at an airport in Las Vegas started circulating online last month, many fans were hopeful that another Yeezy collaboration was on the way after Adidas dropped the collection in 2022 due to Ye’s antisemitic tweets.
While speaking to the press at Adidas headquarters on Mar. 13, Gulden has finally clarified the context behind the photo and the grim future of Yeezy, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
Kanye West and adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden together in Las Vegas 👀 pic.twitter.com/iTV6f7xd99
— Nice Kicks (@nicekicks) February 12, 2024
“It was not a meeting, there was no business discussion,” said Gulden while addressing the photo. “If you meet him at an airport, I don’t know what you do. Do you hide? Or what do you do?”
Gulden then revealed at the press conference that the relationship between Adidas and Yeezy remains severed, and that there is no chance that Adidas would ever revive the Yeezy collaboration.
“The contract has ended,” he said. “We are selling off the inventory.”
Adidas dropped its billion-dollar collaboration with Ye’s footwear and clothing company Yeezy in October 2022 after the rapper tweeted that he was going “death Con 3 on Jewish people,” and made other antisemitic comments.
When announcing the termination of its partnership with Yeezy, Adidas claimed in a statement that it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” and that “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous.”
Wednesday's comments from Gulden comes after Adidas reported in its final earnings report for 2023 that it continues to face headwinds since making the decision to cut ties with Yeezy.
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“Currency-neutral revenues in North America declined 16% as this market was particularly affected by the negative Yeezy impact as well as the company’s conservative sell-in strategy to reduce high inventory levels,” read the earnings report.
Adidas also claimed that the discontinuation of Yeezys “represented a drag of around €500 million on the year-over-year comparison during 2023.”
The company also predicts that it will sell the remaining inventory of Yeezy at cost, which would generate €250 million in sales in 2024 with no operating profit contribution. This is significantly lower than the €750 million it made in revenues and around €300 million in profits it made from Yeezy in 2023.
Since Adidas dropped Ye’s Yeezy brand, the rapper has moved on to sell his own merch based off of his new album "Vultures 1" where everything is $20 a piece, a large price difference from what a pair of Yeezys would sell for with the cheapest models being priced at a little over $200.
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