Adidas halts Yeezy sales for the rest of the year

Sportswear giant, Adidas, will stop selling Yeezy trainers for the rest of the year amid “geopolitical tensions”.

The German sportswear group has made £652 million (€750 million) in the first nine months of selling Yeezy products of its discontinued collaboration with Kanye West, according to The Times.

This comes after it was left with £1.1 billion worth of unsold shoes and a lawsuit from investors when it cut ties with West over antisemitic outpourings he made last year. The investors claimed that the company knew about Kanye West's problematic behaviour years before the partnership's end and alleged the company failed to limit financial losses and take preventive measures.

In May, Adidas decided to start selling some of the Yeezy stockpiles, despite the designer's anti-Semitic behaviour, and donate “a significant amount” of the proceeds to organisations fighting antisemitism and racism. These charities included the Anti-Defamation League and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change.

On Wednesday, Adidas announced that sales of Yeezy products this year had amounted to £652 million (€750 million) in the first nine months, lower than the revenue of £1 billion (€1.2 billion) during the same period of 2022.

Bjorn Gulden, Chief Executive of Adidas, said that the group immediately stopped selling Yeezy products for the remainder of the year. It is not clear if the brand we recommence Yeezy sales in 2024.

Despite this, the group raised its expectations for the full year to a loss of £86 million (€100 million), a huge improvement from the £603 million (€700 million) loss it expected in February. It expects currency-neutral revenues to decline at a low-single-digit rate in 2023, citing persisting “macroeconomic challenges and geopolitical tensions”.