Adidas announces that it will sell the products of Kanye West's collection and donate part of the proceeds

Adidas has decided to sell some products from the Yeezy collection, launched in 2015 in collaboration with rapper Kanye West, and will donate part of the proceeds to international charities working to defend human rights, the company's CEO, Bjoern Gulden, announced on Thursday.

The German sportswear group broke off collaboration with the artist, also known as Ye, in the wake of several anti-Semitic and racist comments late last year. Since then, it has stored in its warehouses products worth 1,200 million euros, whose value has skyrocketed in the resale market since the company stopped manufacturing them. Adidas estimates that it could lose up to 700 million if it fails to dispose of the accumulated stock.

Gulden did not say when and how the sale would proceed, investors gathered in the southern German city of Fuerth on Thursday. "Burning the merchandise would not be a solution," he said. The leader explained that the company had decided not to donate the shoes to prevent them from reaching the market indirectly. If the products are sold, Ye will be entitled to 15% of the turnover, according to the stipulated agreements.

West first signed for Adidas in 2013, after years of collaborating with Nike. The addition of the rapper allowed the German giant to cut ground to the rival company in the US market. Adidas decided to cut ties with the rapper after he starred in several controversial episodes late last year, the most striking of which was showing up at a fashion show in Paris wearing a T-shirt that read White lives matter, a slogan often used by white supremacists in the United States in response to the anti-racist Black lives matter movement. ("Black Lives Matter.") After that incident, the rapper said in an interview on the podcast Drink Champs, that George Floyd died from drug use and not from suffocation when he was arrested by a police officer in 2020.

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