Despite severing their partnership with Ye West almost a year ago after a string of antisemitic statements, it looks like adidas is still making a pretty penny from the embattled rapper.
The apparel giant recently shared a third quarter business report that discloses the company made around $158. 5 million from already existing Yeezy brand merchandise already on hand since the split. Thankfully, West will still receive royalties from every sale, so he isn’t completely cut out of the picture. Adidas has also made good on a promise to donate proceeds from every sale to to various Jewish organizations and charities as well.
Of course $158. 5 million is just a drop in the bucket of what the partnership was on pace to earn before coming to an abrupt halt. Since making the controversial choice to resume selling Yeezy brand products, adidas has been able to cushion their projected losses of $474 million to close to only $100 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,” a spokesman said via statement.
Just last month, adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden spoke highly of West in an interview with Forbes and shared that he doesn’t believe the creative meant the things he said.
“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 said. “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 [weren’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.”
