Adidas may have officially ended its partnership with Kanye West, but apparently, that won’t stop the sportwear giant from using the designs spawned by the Yeezy line, according to Complex. During its Q3 2022 earnings call, Adidas CFO Harm Ohlmeyer said the company intends to continue using those designs as early as next year, while figuring out what to do with its current inventory of Yeezy products, which were recalled after Kanye made antisemitic remarks on social media and in interviews.
As Ohlmeyer said, “I want to repeat very clearly that we are the sole owner of the intellectual property rights to the current and future colorways and we have a lot of things in the archive so there are plans that we are vetting right now.” Meanwhile, Ohlmeyer predicted a short-term impact on Adidas’ income due to the end of the Yeezy deal but said that the company would save €300 million in royalty payments to Kanye as well as marketing for the products. The company could lose $250 million.
Of course, the brand still owns the Yeezy designs so it makes sense that it’d use them after paying for all the research and development upfront. Besides, depending on who you ask, signature atheletes and entertainers rarely have as much input as Kanye seems to want people to believe that he did. If anything, the designs that remain may just be rebranded without the Yeezy name, which Kanye owns and which no one seems to want to associate with at the moment anyway.