Jezze Shoes – Yeezy shoes on sale last year. The shoe helped Adidas compete with Nike’s Air Jordans. Photo: Seth Wenig/AP
After cutting ties with Kanye West, the company faces more financial and moral problems than profitable sneakers.
Jezze Shoes
What Adidas should do with all the unsold Yeezys is a 1.2 billion euro ($1.3bn, £1bn) question that no one has a good answer to. The brand was put in jeopardy when Kanye West cut ties in October over his anti-Semitic comments.
Amazon.com: Women’s Shorts Yoga Pants Essential Low Waisted Legging For Workout Sports Running Leggings Black
The rapper, who goes by Ye, is a huge profit driver for the company. A pair of his signature rubber Yeezy 350 V2s cost around $220 (and often resell for much more than their retail price). Ye saved Adidas, improved the image of the brand and allowed it to compete with heavy attackers such as Nike’s Air Jordans. Following Ye’s series of pro-Nazi tirades, the image was shaken, with Adidas shares falling 10% after the company announced an earnings loss last week.
It also provoked a moral problem. How can Adidas ignore the factors that cause a PR nightmare without fueling further outrage at the waste? This is the first test of leadership for the company’s new CEO Bjorn Gulden, who has been Employing only Puma.
“The numbers speak for themselves. We are not performing the way we should be now,” said Gulden, who started in January. “2023 will be the year of change to set the foundation as a growing and profitable company again.”
Adidas Yeezy Kids Shoes
Adidas was widely criticized last season for taking a week to terminate its contract with Ye, who said on a podcast: “I can say anti-Semitic things and Adidas won’t let me go. Now what?”
What the brand does with sneakers, experts say, is an opportunity to make up for its lack of performance. “They can’t ignore the shoes,” says Charcy Evers, a social and sustainability advocate. “Adidas can use this as an opportunity to set new standards of performance with 100% transparency and ownership of this unique challenge.”
Evers said a “common industry practice” to eliminate excess stock would destroy it, but called out Coach, H&M and Urban Outfitters for such practices.
Gembera Women’s Scoop Neck Long Sleeves Fitted Bodysuit Soft Lined Body Suit Black S At Amazon Women’s Clothing Store
What else can be done with a unique sneaker with a design that is definitely associated with Ye? Alden Wicker, a journalist who covers sustainable fashion, says that shoes should be recycled responsibly. The company has launched products aimed at recycling waste, such as the Adidas Terrex Futurecraft Loop Anorak made from ocean plastic. Wicker suggested that Adidas use the Yeezys to test the new program. “It’s a perfect source of material for testing, especially since Adidas knows exactly what the composition of the material is, and that’s important information for the recycling process,” she said.
Shelton Boyd-Griffith, assistant style editor at Essence, suggests a hybrid donation-recycling approach. “I think it would be good at home to create shoes used by other designers or create other shoes,” he said. Bases or other non-identifiable materials from shoes can be used in existing Adidas designs. “I know it’s quite Frankenstein, but it can work.”
The problem with this strategy is that Yeezy’s value is tied to branding rather than raw materials. If they are used for other projects, it is difficult to recover more investment. Also, the amount of stock makes it difficult to find adequate replacement tools.
Air Jordan 6 Retro Gatorade
Trying to retrieve articles is a risky strategy. While “transparency” is the real goal, some say Adidas shouldn’t be shy about tying sneakers to Ye’s comments or hiding its own brand history. (Although the founding of Adidas predates Nazi Germany, the two German brothers who founded the company played an active role in the party, as a youth sports coach for Hitler).
Rachel Weingarten, brand strategist and founder of the non-profit RWR Network, which supports Holocaust survivors, hopes the brand will launch a charity that allocates items to survivors of the disaster. Yeezy shoes may be the first product donated, with the idea of adding more for future events. “Adidas can create a new collection that represents their history and Kanye’s opinion and not shy away from it,” she said. “They can change the name of the collection to show that they are an alliance and not a fake brand.”
Can Yeezys Be Branded as Holocaust Remembrance Shoes? This is very close to the strategy presented in an episode of Nathan Fielder’s parody business advice show Nathan For You. After discovering that the jacket he wore on screen was made by a company with proud links to Holocaust deniers, Fielder created his own line of jackets, which he described as “the first outdoor clothing company to promote the true story of the Holocaust”.
Amazon.com: Axe Heaven Electric Guitar Body (gg 224) White
Weingarten says it’s not a crazy idea, and Adidas needs to do more than just make another statement against hateful ideas. “There’s a lot of Holocaust misinformation out there, history is being rewritten as we speak, and by not mentioning it, a lot of people see Adidas as condoning it,” she said.
It’s an almost impossible line for Adidas; One wrong move can be a PR disaster. A bellwether for people who own too many Yeezys to consider what they do with their sneakers.
Zeke Hanula is a sneakerhead from San Francisco who owns about 80 pairs of Yeezys. He doubts the recycling program can be sustained at this level forever, and says many fans will buy the products if they return to the shelves. He thinks Yeezys are not about Ye.
Shoes Worn By Kanye West At Grammys Break Sales Record
“A lot of people who wear Yeezys don’t care what you have to do with sneakers,” Hanula said. “Over the years, they’ve become really popular. You see parents wearing them because it’s convenient.”
Half of Hannula’s family is Jewish, and he was “really disappointed” by Yeh’s stupid comments. That didn’t stop him from wearing boots. “I don’t feel like wearing them is a political statement – Yeezys are stupid, and not glamorous, and a lot of people don’t notice them,” he said. “I know a lot of the designers behind the shoes, and I feel sad for the people I know who worked at Yeezy, who lost their jobs and never saw their designs come out.”
Anyone who wants to get rid of their Yeezys after Ye’s comments can sell them — Hannula said she’s never seen angry fans burn or destroy their shoes, as some Dolce & Gabbana shoppers did after the Italian label faced its own racial scandal in 2018. “I’ve seen people do customs or paint on the label,” he said.
Owo By Yungjezze: Listen On Audiomack
It’s a move that many sneaker collectors try to make. On resale site StockX, Yeezys continue to sell at a brisk pace — more than 200 pairs of the bone-colored Yeezy slides have sold in the past three days, often for three times the original price ($60). Although expensive, this is less than what Adidas sold the shoes before dropping Ye. And 150 shoes are listed as “below retail price” – meaning the seller isn’t making a profit.
Hannula believes that the easiest thing for Adidas is just to sell shoes, “but for discounts and not profit from them. They don’t have that big stock. I think they will lose anyway.
Jezze, young jezze, nobull shoes, rothy's shoes, taos shoes, merrell shoes, zappo shoes, sperry shoes, orthopedic shoes, adidas shoes, skechers shoes, on shoes
