Source: Jonathan Leibson / Getty
adidas announced that they would be donating millions of dollars from the sales of their remaining Yeezy shoes to anti-hate groups.
On Wednesday (March 13), the German sportswear giant adidas announced that they were planning to, and in some cases, already donated $150 million to groups fighting antisemitism and other forms of hate from the sales of their remaining stock of Yeezy shoes. The company had an estimated $1.3 billion worth of sneakers created from its partnership with Ye aka Kanye West in their warehouses.
The company began to sell its remaining stock in batches after severing ties with West in October 2022 after his tirade of antisemitic and other hateful comments on social media and in interviews. After the dissolution, adidas sold off Yeezy shoes in two batch releases in 2023 and launched another release sale on Feb. 26 of this year. Part of the proceeds that have been donated have gone to such groups as the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, run by social justice advocate Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd (who was the subject of one of Kanye West’s rants) as well as the Anti-Defamation League.
adidas reported that the sales helped stabilize their operating profits at $283 million last year – it still wound up leaving the company facing a deficit of 60% in comparison to 2022. “Although by far not good enough, 2023 ended better than what I had expected at the beginning of the year,” said adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden, the former footballer who took over the position at the beginning of 2023 and advocated for the move to sell the Yeezys and donate part of the proceeds. The company expects to improve about 10% in growth over the second half of 2024 with more emphasis on other shoes and a boost from the Olympic Games this summer in Paris, according to its earnings report.
Ye isn’t too happy with adidas’ sales of his Yeezys. As the new batch release sale began in February with the “Steel Grey” 350 V2 version, he voiced his displeasure in the caption of a now-deleted Instagram post. “Anybody who loves Ye would not buy these fake Yeezys I never made these color ways I’m not getting paid off of them and adidas is suing me,” he wrote, adding: “All the new non-approved 350’s are cooorny and everybody know the 350 been corny.”
