Will Adidas Bring Back Kanye West? Here’s Everything We Know

Editor’s Note [2/24/23]: This is a developing story. As of now, neither Adidas nor Kanye’s camp have confirmed these rumors.

At one point, Kanye West was on top of the world. He’d sold millions of records, created his own record label, started a profitable independent brand and forged official partnerships with a few of the world’s most well-known fashion labels: Adidas, Balenciaga and Gap.

But then things changed. Ye, as many know him by now, spiraled out of control, leaving many wondering whether his outbursts were to be met with more compassion, as they were likely the result of an ongoing mental health crisis. (West has been open about his bipolar disorder diagnosis in the past.)

That being said, what Ye eventually did (and said) cannot be overlooked or excused. His actions ranged from anti-semitism to spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and the murder of George Floyd and seemingly everything in-between.

The most high-profile collaborators cut business ties and public boycotts led to the closure of West’s JP Morgan Chase business accounts and the shutdown of his school, Donda Academy. But recent reports suggest Adidas may, despite everything, bring West back. Here’s what we know so far.

Why Did Kanye West and Adidas Split?

On October 25, 2022, Adidas announced its decision “to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products and stop all payments to Ye and his companies.” This sent shockwaves through the fashion sphere, where Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — has been a steadfast fixture for nearly 20 years. At one point, many considered him the most influential dresser of all time, with GQ calling him the “Most Stylish Man of the Decade” in 2019.

His self-sustaining free fall from the public eye, though, wasn’t out of nowhere. First, he sabotaged his own Paris Fashion Week show with “White Lives Matter” merch made in conjunction with right-wing politics personality Candice Owens. They were photographed together wearing the shirts, to which Ye responded: “I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of wearing it was funny.”

Then, his October 6th appearance on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight alerted Adidas execs, who watched his two-hour interview veer into outright extremism: relying on a few ofthe oldest, and most bigoted conspiracy theories, West repeatedly implied Jewish people secretly oversee the world’s finances, citing “them” as the reason his long-standing partnerships were suddenly on the fritz.

While his 360-degree deal with Adidas was officially “under review” for weeks, the brand reached the decision many expected a month earlier: their partnership was over. And for good, Adidas claimed, especially since succeeding appearances on Infowars’s The Alex Jones Show and N.O.R.E. and DJ Effn’s Drink Champs podcast featured Ye openly praising Hitler, denouncing the COVID-19 vaccine as a “mark of the beast” and claiming George Floyd was instead killed with a lethal fentanyl injection, not the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is currently serving a 21-year sentence for murder.

Why Would Adidas Bring Kanye West Back?

In a word: money.

“Should the company irrevocably decide not to repurpose any of the existing Yeezy product going forward, this would result in the write-off of the existing Yeezy inventory and would lower the company’s operating profit by an additional €500 million this year. In addition, adidas expects one-off costs of up to €200 million in 2023,” Adidas’s 2023 Outlook, which published on February 9th, reads.

Within, CEO Bjørn Gulden, who took over shortly after the West deal was terminated, offers a candid assessment of the year ahead.

“The numbers speak for themselves. We are currently not performing the way we should,” he says. “2023 will be a year of transition to set the base to again be a growing and profitable company… We need to put the pieces back together again, but I am convinced that over time we will make adidas shine again. But we need some time.”

Then, in a later earnings call in early March, Gulden said they need even more time to decide: “If you can’t sell and you can’t destroy, what’s your option?” Gulden asked. “That’s why we haven’t made a decision on it, because it’s a very complicated issue… The people that are saying [we should] send the shoes to Turkey or somewhere where people don’t have shoes or there has been a tragedy happening,” he added, “I think [we can] agree that these are not normal shoes. The value of the product is not the physical value of the ingredients. It’s a brand and merchandise that is sold at a high price.”

It seems Adidas is unwilling to offload Yeezys for less they think they’re really worth.

Will Adidas Bring Kanye West Back?

All that being the case, Adidas may actually be preparing to bring West back. Rumors surfaced online this week that the two were “restructuring the deal” that brought West to Adidas in the first place. They were started by an online sneaker “cook up” group called Secret Sauce, which helps members purchase limited and rare sneakers for a monthly fee. They’ve yet to verify their claim, but the rumor has been making the rounds.

“I’d be surprised if it happened,” Complex Sneakers Podcast co-host Brendan Dunne said this week. “I think it makes them look weak as a brand to terminate somebody and then, months later, come back and say, ‘Hey, we realized we’re going to lose a billion dollars if we don’t sell this product. Let’s get back together again.'”

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The unsold product Dunne refers to comprises $1,200,000,000 worth of deadstock Yeezy apparel and sneakers, which Adidas shelved as soon as their partnership ended. But there are further losses looming over Adidas’s execs’s heads, which has made moving forward without West a bleak reality. They’d no longer be profitable this year and 2024 would then be a “rebound year,” which would widen the gap between Nike and Adidas even more.

It’s possible a return is not in the cards. It might just be a rumor. Or people at Adidas may be trying to gauge how the public would react if they did bring Ye back. There’d be plenty of backlash, I’d argue, but that might not stop Adidas from trying to recoup at least some of the money it would otherwise lose on unsold Yeezy merchandise. It’s ultimately a question of which choice is less expensive.

Right now, it sounds like selling the leftover Yeezy stock would save Adidas more money, but that would require bringing Kanye back. Recent rumors suggest they will, although neither Adidas nor Kanye’s camp have confirmed this. The same “cook up” sneaker group that started the initial rumor announced that the two were back on, stating Adidas would sell the remaining Yeezy inventory but create no new products, effectively extending the original partnership through the sale of these leftover goods.

We cannot confirm this is true, but Adidas will likely have to address these rumors either way.

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