Adidas announced that it had reached an amicable agreement with the controversial American rapper Ye to end all legal proceedings concerning them for two years, without this agreement being accompanied by financial exchanges. Adidas and Ye – formerly Kanye West – have been in conflict through lawyers since the three-striped brand decided in October 2022 to abruptly end their juicy collaboration, after anti-Semitic remarks from the American artist.
“There are no more open issues, and there is no (…) money flowing in one direction or the other,” Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said during of a conference call.
The leader refused to give more details on the agreement, negotiated outside the courts.
“There was tension on many issues, and … when you put the demands of one side against the other, both sides said they no longer needed to fight,” Mr. Gulden explained.
The collaboration between Adidas and the American star has long been one of the most successful in the fashion world. Developed since 2014, the Yeezy sneaker collection has enjoyed phenomenal success which helped make Kanye West a billionaire.
By ending this partnership, Adidas was left with stock equivalent to 1.2 billion euros in sales on its hands.
Rather than destroying it, he decided to sell it in batches and donate part of the profits to associations fighting against racism and anti-Semitism, and recently to his new foundation launched in March, active in the fight against discrimination.
The remainder of Yeezy inventory will be sold by the end of 2024 “at cost,” the company wrote.
Mr. Gulden, for whom the story with the rapper “belongs to the past”, believes that Adidas manages to inflate its current sales with other lucrative collections, in particular the flat shoes of the Samba, Gazelle and Campus families which sell like buns around the world.
In China, the Herzogenaurach group is taking market share from its competitors and “would not be surprised” to see sales “increase by 10% or more in the fourth quarter, traditionally beneficial”, indicated Mr. Gulden on the sidelines of the presentation of the third quarter results, already revealed in broad terms in mid-October.
Source: AFP
Adidas announced that it had reached an amicable agreement with the controversial American rapper Ye to end all legal proceedings concerning them for two years, without this agreement being accompanied by financial exchanges. Adidas and Ye – formerly Kanye West – have been in conflict through lawyers since the three-stripe brand decided in October 2022…
