Another chapter of the Adidas and Ye saga unfolds as the brand announced a $441 million slide in year-over-year first-quarter sales. Even though Adidas has since cleaned house they have to be struggling to keep the ship afloat. Just last week investors in the brand filed a class-action lawsuit against them and now comes the reports of the Q1 financials.
CEO Bjorn Gulden announced the nearly half-a-billion-dollar slide and blamed it largely on the fracture with the Yeezy subline. He also acknowledged that Adidas still has not decided on what to do with the nearly $1.3 billion inventory that had already been produced at the time of the dissolution. Failure to turn that inventory into revenue could spell and yearly loss in revenue of well over a billion dollar loss.
Ye and the Yeezy line weren’t the only casualties of the partnership ending as CFO Harm Ohlmeyer and CEO Kasper Rorsted were also sacked in the wake of the months-long drama. Gulden inherited a cruise ship-sized ship that is taking on massive amounts of water and is tasked with the job of not only keeping the ship above water but also steering it back on course. This is no easy task and it's highly doubtful that he won't face even more titanic leveling icebergs in the future.
Adidas continues to pump out sneakers though, relying heavily on the Bad Bunny partnership and various Samba collaborations. Only time will tell if the trefoil will again take a seat at the table of sneaker culture relevance.
Another chapter of the Adidas and Ye saga unfolds as the brand announced a $441 million slide in year-over-year first-quarter sales. Even though Adidas has since cleaned house they have to be struggling to keep the ship afloat. Just last week investors in the brand filed a class-action lawsuit against them and now comes the reports of the Q1 financials.
CEO Bjorn Gulden announced the nearly half-a-billion-dollar slide and blamed it largely on the fracture with the Yeezy subline. He also acknowledged that Adidas still has not decided on what to do with the nearly $1.3 billion inventory that had already been produced at the time of the dissolution. Failure to turn that inventory into revenue could spell and yearly loss in revenue of well over a billion dollar loss.
Ye and the Yeezy line weren’t the only casualties of the partnership ending as CFO Harm Ohlmeyer and CEO Kasper Rorsted were also sacked in the wake of the months-long drama. Gulden inherited a cruise ship-sized ship that is taking on massive amounts of water and is tasked with the job of not only keeping the ship above water but also steering it back on course. This is no easy task and it's highly doubtful that he won't face even more titanic leveling icebergs in the future.
Adidas continues to pump out sneakers though, relying heavily on the Bad Bunny partnership and various Samba collaborations. Only time will tell if the trefoil will again take a seat at the table of sneaker culture relevance.
