Foot Locker is reportedly declining to sell Yeezy shoes during recent Adidas efforts to sell off its remaining inventory over fears of a public backlash. Adidas first partnered with rapper Kanye West on the brand in 2013 but dropped him in the wake of a series of anti-Semitic comments in October last year.
Foot Locker had originally planned to take on stock of the footwear, but later decided against it, according to reporting from Complex.
On October 26, 2022, Foot Locker announced they were pulling Yeezy products from their stores following Adidas’ move the day before end its Yeezy partnership and the sneaker chain vowed not to sell any Yeezy product in the future (read SGB Media‘s coverage here).
Foot Locker said in a statement at the time, “Foot Locker, Inc. does not tolerate any form of antisemitism, or hateful and discriminatory behavior. While we remain a partner with Adidas and carry a wide assortment of their collections, we will not be supporting any future Yeezy product drops, and we have instructed our retail operators to pull any existing product from our shelves and digital sites.”
Foot Locker was also reportedly struggling to integrate a charity aspect into the sale of the shoes, according to Complex.
The fall-out left Adidas with a $1.3 billion stockpile of Yeezy products, which it eventually decided to release in waves rather than destroy, donating a portion of the proceeds to charity and anti-hate groups (read SGB Media‘s recent coverage here).
Adidas’s first batch of Yeezy sales, sold exclusively through Adidas’ owned e-commerce channels earlier this summer, following the controversy appears to have been met with minimal backlash – with the company confirming it generated $437 million in revenue from the initial relaunch earlier this summer. It also confirmed it is donating $120 million from the sales to charity.
“We had a very successful first drop,” said Bjorn Gulden, Adidas’ CEO, last week on Adidas’ second-quarter analyst call while admitting to being “nervous” about the distribution. He noted that a second batch of previously unreleased Yeezy sneakers and slides were released in the first week of August and smaller drops will follow in coming months.
“As we said from the beginning, we will not report this or take any of this revenue into account until we have it in the box,” said Gulden. “We’ve been very careful with this and we’ll continue with that. And I hope you agree with that strategy because six months ago people said we should burn, destroy the product, and now we have found ways of selling it and we can use part of that revenue to actually do something good in society. And instead of writing off the inventory, we can actually create cash. I’m very proud of how the team has worked on that so far.”
The second batch (read SGB Media’s coverage here) will be sold online through select retail accounts in a few days, including Foot Locker’s major competitors including JD Sports, Finish Line, DTLR, Shoe Palace and Snipes with their sales announced via social media. The shoes are not being offered on Foot Locker’s urban subsidiary WSS either.
Photo courtesy Foot Locker
