Adidas to Sell Remaining Yeezy Shoes, Donate Proceeds to Organizations ‘Harmed’ by Ye’s Antisemitism

Shiryn Ghermezian

Adidas in a Tel Aviv mall. Photo: David Shankbone via Flickr.

The German sportswear company Adidas said on Thursday it will sell part of its remaining inventory of Yeezy shoes and donate the proceeds to organizations “harmed by what Ye [Kanye West] said” on social media and in interviews last year.

“Burning those shoes cannot be the solution,” Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting this week.

Adidas cut ties with Ye in late October 2022 and until now the company was unsure of what to do with its unsold Yeezys, a sneaker line that it launched in collaboration with Ye. Gulden said at the shareholders meeting this week that Adidas has 500 million unsold Yeezys that have a selling value of more than $1 billion. He explained that after months of speaking with non-governmental organization and other groups about a solution, the brand has decided to try selling what Yeezy inventory it has left, and to “donate money to the organizations that help us and were harmed by what Ye said.”

“When we do that and how we’re gonna do that — that remains to be seen. We’re working on that,” Gulden added. “Burning a couple of million shoes cannot be the right thing to do and we’re gonna give you an update as soon as this decision has been taken.”

He also told shareholders that the company’s nine-year partnership with Ye was “sensational.” He noted that Ye is a “difficult person,” but also “arguably the most creative person in our industry and he created a model with Adidas that was sought after around the world.”

Ye made a series of offensive comments about Jews in late 2022. In October,  he threatened violence against the Jewish community and tweeted that he wanted to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” Soon after he shared antisemitic tropes on his social media accounts, including the image of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David, and shared antisemitic conspiracy theories and stereotypes during an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Then on Dec. 1, he said multiple times during a guest appearance on the talk show Infowars, hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, that he admired Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and denied facts about the Holocaust. He also said people should “stop dissing the Nazis” and compared himself to Jews hiding in the Holocaust.

Adidas said in a statement in October that it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech” and that Ye’s comments and actions “have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.” It immediately terminated its working relationship with Ye, stopped production of Yeezy branded products and halted all payments to the rapper and his companies.

Adidas announced last week that it had $441 million in lost sales at the start of 2023. Net sales declined 1 percent in the first quarter and would have risen 9 percent with the Yeezy line.

The Associated Press reported that the decision to cut ties with Ye resulted in Adidas losing $655 million in sales for the last three months of 2022.