After cutting ties with Kanye West following the rapper’s abhorrent antisemitic comments in October 2022, Adidas has finally offloaded the last of its Yeezy stock.
“There is not one Yeezy shoe left,” said Adidas chief financial officer Harm Ohlmeyer, following the company’s earnings report on Wednesday. “It has all been sold and that episode is behind us.”
It marked the end of a once-lucrative partnership between the German-based sportswear giant and West, whose Yeezy footwear and apparel line became a cultural phenomenon after the parties inked a deal in 2013. The nearly decade-long relationship boosted West’s net worth by $1.5 billion, Forbes estimated.
But that came crashing down in fall 2022 when West decided to debut a controversial White Lives Matter T-shirt during his Yeezy runway show at Paris Fashion Week. The 47-year-old responded to the criticism by going on a weeks-long antisemitic rant on social media, including vowing to go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” (West later apologized for his comments, but in February he once again began making antisemitic remarks, declared himself a Nazi and began selling swastika T-shirts.)
By the end of October, Adidas decided it had to cut ties with West over his statements and behavior, noting the decision would immediately lead to an estimated loss of nearly $250 million for the 2022 year. “Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” the company said in a statement at the time. “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
In wake of the split, some Adidas staffers who worked on Yeezy wrote an open letter to executives claiming they had known about West’s “problematic behavior” for years. A Rolling Stone report found that West fostered a toxic, chaotic work environment and had a history of showing pornographic materials to employees. Adidas employees accused company leadership of “turn[ing] their moral compass off” due to the amount of money West raked in.
Moving forward, Adidas decided to liquidate the rest of its Yeezy stock, donating a portion of the profits to the Anti-Defamation League and the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. By the end of 2024, Adidas managed to sell the remaining Yeezy inventory, which brought in roughly $54 million in revenue for its fourth quarter.
