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Adidas Nets $437 Million After First Release of Unsold Yeezys, Will Donate Some Proceeds to Anti-Hate Groups
by Shiryn Ghermezian
Adidas in a Tel Aviv mall. Photo: David Shankbone via Flickr.
The German sportswear company Adidas made around 400 million euros ($437 million) in revenue in its second quarter from selling Yeezy sneakers left over in stock and will keep its promise to donate some of the proceeds to groups fighting antisemitism and discrimination, after the brand severed ties last year with Yeezy co-designer Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
Adidas dropped its first release of unsold Yeezy sneakers in June and that helped the company reach an operating profit of 176 million euros in its second quarter, which was “substantially higher than our initial plans,” Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said on Thursday.
“The sale of the first part of the Yeezy inventory did of course help both our top and bottom line in the quarter,” he added. “We will continue to carefully sell off more of the existing Yeezy inventory. This is much better than destroying and writing off the inventory and allows us to make substantial donations to organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change and Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism. And it is of course also helping both our cash flow and general financial strength.”
The Yeezy sneakers sold in June by Adidas sold out and the company released its second batch of remaining Yeezy sneakers on Wednesday.
Adidas terminated its partnership with Ye last year after the rapper made a series of antisemitic and otherwise offensive comments in October on social media and in interviews, like threatening violence against Jews and praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Before Adidas released some of the remaining Yeezy inventory in June, it announced that a “significant amount” of the sales will be donated to organizations that focus on combatting discrimination, hate, racism and antisemitism. “There is no place in sport or society for hate of any kind and we remain committed to fighting against it,” Gulden said at the time.
At a shareholders meeting in May, Gulden said Adidas has 500 million unsold Yeezys that have a selling value of more than $1 billion.
