Adidas Stuck With $500 Million Of Kanye West Shoes, Considering 'Burning' Them

Adidas ceased its partnership with Kanye West last October after he claimed a Jewish cabal was using its influence to undermine him. 

Ye, as Kanye asks to be called, faced corporate ostracism as brands calculated it could not continue a relationship with a figure whom critics label anti-Semitic.

But the decision could prove costly.

Around $500 million worth of Yeezy sneakers now sits in the possession of Adidas. And the brand fears massive losses as a result.

The Washington Post reports that Adidas sees no solution to unload a quantity of unsellable merchandise on “a scale unseen in the fashion industry.” The sneaker brand will not sell Yeezy shoes at the risk of a public backlash.

Thereby the possibility of "literally burning the shoes" has emerged. A fire of half a billion dollars, that'd be.

Company officials initially believed they could recoup the “vast majority” of losses by rebranding the shoes and selling them at a discount.

Likewise, Adidas now must supplant the lost revenues it projected to generate from the Yeezy line, a brand that produced around $2 billion a year in revenue.

" really a big, substantial part of business — and the abruptness with which it happened is also remarkable," Wedbush analyst Tom Nikic told The Washington Post.

Adidas chose PR over business. Thus, $500 million of sneakers is locked away in some warehouse.

Who could have warned of such a result?

Adidas Has An Abundance Of Unsold Yeezy's

The answer to hate speech is more speech. Big Business set precedent by complying to outrage and conspiring to dismantle Ye's business empire.

We suspect Big Business using consolidated power to exile an individual from the marketplace will only escalate from here.

As was the case with Big Tech censorship. Per our column in October:

In 2018, social media services de-platformed radio host Alex Jones for "abusive behavior." The public collectively dismissed suppressing Jones as an appropriate punishment for a volatile provocateur. Perhaps it was.

But censorship spiraled from there. De-platforming Jones empowered Big Tech. Jones’ rhetoric opened the floodgates for tech leaders to gain control over online discourse. Censorship heightened in 2021 with the banishment of Alex Berenson, an independent journalist who held government officials accountable during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Internet suppression progressed from a tool to prevent baseless conspiracy theories to a means to silence individuals who challenge government rule. The government cannot censor the public on account of the First Amendment. However, social media can. And it has. Big Business can as well.

It's ironic that Ye must now see it that the leader in trying to dismantle his business empire now bears the burden of $500 million worth of sneakers.