Adidas’ somewhat controversial decision to resume selling Kanye West‘s Yeezys shoes continues to pay dividends for the apparel giant.
adidas shared its preliminary earnings disclosure for the third quarter of 2023 on Tuesday (October 17), revealing the most recent Yeezy drops generated around $158.5 million.
The sneaker sales have helped reduce the German sportswear brand’s projected operating loss for 2023 to around $106 million, a significant improvement on the previously expected loss of $474 million.
“While the company’s performance in the quarter was again positively impacted by the sale of parts of its remaining Yeezy inventory, the underlying adidas business also developed better than expected,” adidas said in a statement.
adidas shares are also reportedly up 34 percent since the start of the year, when the company’s vision looked to be a more murky situation without Kanye’s dollars in the fold.
It’s approaching exactly one year since adidas terminated its lucrative Yeezy partnership with Kanye West due to his string of antisemitic remarks.
However, adidas pivoted and decided to rush out Yeezys for sale to distributors in May which has proven to be a lucrative move.
West still receives a royalty check with a share in every sale, while adidas has vowed to continue to honor its promise to donate a portion of proceeds to various Jewish organizations and charities.
A better picture of Kanye’s impact and adidas’ financial situation will be painted when the company reveals its full third quarter earnings report next month.
adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden hailed Kanye West as “one of the most creative people in the world” during an interview last month, before walking back his comments and apologizing for saying Ye didn’t mean the antisemitic things he said in the past.
“I think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world. And both in music and what I call street culture,” Gulden told Forbes. “So he’s extremely creative and has together with Adi created a Yeezy line that was very successful.
“And then as creative people he did some statements which wasn’t that good. And that caused [adidas] to break the contract and withdraw the product. Very unfortunate because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person it just came across that way.”
“That meant we lost that business. One of the most successful collabs in history — very sad,” he continued. “But again, when you work with third parties that can happen. It’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, that can happen with an entertainer. It’s part of the business.”
