Adidas said it might have to write off the remaining 300 million euros ($320 million) worth of Yeezy shoes left unsold after it cut ties with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. The company will decide in the coming weeks whether or not to do a third release of the shoes next year to generate more donations to groups fighting antisemitism.
The shoe and sports clothing company, which cut ties with Ye in October 2022 after he made antisemitic remarks online, has sold 750 million euros worth of the shoes in two stages earlier this year through Adidas smartphone apps and its website. Part of the profits went to groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, run by social justice advocate Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd.
To me, all Yeezy products have looked like complete trash. Fools part with their money easily
Agreed. Have always looked like goofy shoes made from burlap sacks to me.
$320 million worth of shoes at retail value. I’m sure they’re actually out a few hundred thousand on materials and $37.50 in labor costs.
They could give them away or whatever…but no…they won’t.
But if they give them away how am I supposed to resell them for $3000? /S
I only found out about shoe hypebeast people recently from my brother and that market is insane I can’t believe people scalp SHOES
People will throw insane amounts of money at stuff if you can convince them it’s valuable.
Even more so in these times of economic uncertainty, people are more willing to buy stuff as an investment.
Yeah, imagine if it was something even stupider like tiny little stuffed animals…
Any mass-produced luxury good has scalpers.
You obviously haven’t looked at the sales and resell value for the last round of Yeezys if you think any of these will be worth $300 let alone $3k on the resale market. Some vendors had to return part of their stock to Adidas because no one wanted them.
Why would you assume that?
There’s nothing in the article that says they will be destroyed, just “written off,” and adidas execs already said that giving them away was one option they are considering with the last batch of Yeezys before they decided selling them and giving proceeds away to charity was the better option.
I assume that because companies do this all the time. Insurance won’t pay them if they don’t destroy the product and give it away instead.
That’s not usually the reason companies deliberately destroy inventory, and this has nothing to do with insurance. It’s a write-off, meaning they write the loss off on their taxes.
Retailers destroy inventory all the time, but it’s almost always to artificially keep scarcity high. Adidas would not be concerned with scarcity on these products because they have no intention to sell them in the future and are not interested in retaining the Yeezy brand.
Which is an arguably worse worse motivation, but you’re absolutely correct.
What’s a worse motivation?
Choosing to destroy resources to encourage perceived value vs being forced to destroy resources by insurance companies.
It’s all bad, of course. We’re stuck in a really awful timeline.
First of all, neither of those options are a possibility in the above situation. We are indeed stuck in an awful timeline, but this Adidas/Yeezy situation doesn’t add to the awfulness in any way.
Adidas are not concerned with perceived value of Yeezy, so there would be no point to destroy the inventory. It would only bring them bad press.
No insurance company is forcing any retail company to destroy inventory unless it is defective. How would purposefully destroying perfectly good inventory be in any way insurable? Just think about how ridiculous that would be for a second. It would be like your car insurance company ordering you to destroy your perfectly good car. It would never happen.
Kramer: It’s a write off for them. Jerry: How is it a write off? Kramer: They just write it off. Jerry: Write it off of what? Kramer: They just write it off! Jerry: You don’t even know what a write off is, do you? Kramer: No. Do you? Jerry: No I don’t!
Nothing says, “I’m a fan of a black Nazi,” like Ye merch.
Obvious choice here would be to auction them off for charity
Benefiting the holocaust museum.
Why would you want to wear shoes that look like Granny knitted them?
I’m confused. According to the article, they sold these after cutting tires with Kanye. What exactly would prevent them from selling the rest?
Though the title omits it, the article says they may “have to” write off the unsold merch, implying they can’t sell it, i.e. no one’s buying it. Not almost a billion euros worth, anyway.
Adding onto that, one can argue nobody is buying because of Kanye’s antisemitic statements. Basically, if you buy one, people might take that as you actually supporting antisemitism - even if you only got the shoes because you like them. Thus, the company finds them worthless because people have reasons to not buy the shoes.
if they are comfortable enough and cheap enough I would get a pair. just spruce it up with gliter, rainbows, and six sided stars
