How Kanye West Built Yeezy

These are Yeezys. People camped out in shoe stores, hired Taskers to stand in line on their behalf, and even used sneaker-buying robots to snag a pair online before they sold out in seconds. Others spent thousands of dollars on the resale market. The man behind that madness is Kanye West. But recently, some of that enthusiasm has turned to skepticism. Are Yeezys dead? Is Yeezy reselling dead? Is Yeezy still cool? Certain Yeezy models cost much less on the resale market than they used to, and resale prices are a telltale sign of a product's prestige, especially to hypebeasts. But it turns out this is all part of West's grand plan for his sneaker empire.

Here's how West created one of the most hyped sneakers of all time and the struggles he faces trying to turn the brand into a household name. When I started wearing sneakers in middle school, in high school, I just had this pair of Adidas Superstars that I thought was the end of it. Then I remember scrolling through my Facebook timeline and this beautiful red image of a pair of Kanye's Nike Red October sneakers popped up in my feed, and that was the first time I stopped to look at a sneaker just from a standpoint. purely artistic view. of sight.

And I thought, wow, I need to find a way to get them. Over the course of five years, West and Nike released the Air Yeezy 1, Air Yeezy 2, and Air Yeezy 2 Red Octobers. Retailing for over $200, the shoes were released in extremely limited quantities and sold out instantly. They now resell for thousands of dollars. The success of the shoes finally put West on the map of the fashion industry. For years, his designs were mocked. Many fashion watchdogs tried to stop Kanye by calling him a clothing manufacturer or saying that he was not a real designer. Kanye West was really passionate, desperate and really thoughtful.

He didn't want to just be some kind of famous fashion designer. To break into the fashion industry, West interned at Fendi in 2009, where he was paid about $500 a month. In 2015, West even said he went $16 million into debt trying to get a clothing line off the ground. But no matter what he did, he still couldn't break down those doors. And so he took an alternate route through the sneaker world. West says he was a speaker as a child, even though he didn't have money to buy the shoes he loved. When he was in fourth grade, he would draw Jordans when my mom couldn't afford them.

She was drawing those Jordans and I got kicked out of class for drawing them. West got his start as a producer on Jay-Z's 2001 album, The Blueprint. He achieved great success as a hip hop artist after releasing his own album, The College Dropout, in 2004. West then set his sights on another of his passions: fashion. He even told a New York Fashion Week crowd in 2016 that his dream is to be the creative director of Hermes. While West had a hard time getting people to buy his clothing designs, his shoes immediately clicked with fans. The first pair of sneakers that really got me into sneaker collecting was that pair of Red October Yeezys.

He articulated something in those sneakers that really resonated with me without saying a word, without knowing anything about them. That sneaker was the spark that cascaded into the rest of everything you see here over the past three years. In Yeezy's first eight years or so, the hype around the shoe was at its strongest. Yeezy began as a partnership with Nike in 2009 before West began working with Adidas in 2013. During the Nike years and in the early years of its partnership with Adidas, customers went to great lengths to get their hands on a pair. On any website you visit, Yeezys will probably sell out in about five seconds.

I've seen people camping out to buy Yeezys in the cold winter. I've seen people with their little tents or whatever. Or just bundled up with lots of jackets or something like that. Caleb Chen is one of the many sneakerheads taking advantage of the Yeezys hype. I bought the Bred V2 for about $220 and sold it for about $1,100 to $1,200. But some of West's designs have been an acquired taste. People have scratched their heads or recoiled at certain Yeezy models that West released with Adidas, like the Yeezy Boost 700 Wave Runner, which came out in 2017. It was compared to ugly dad shoes.

Everyone on the Internet was like, "Oh my God, what is this? This is disgusting. Is this a joke?" And I had all those same thoughts. But thinking about the bigger picture, I said that every time people or myself thought the exact same thing about a sneaker that Kanye had put out, people would finally turn around and say, "Oh wow, I was wrong. I wish I had gotten on it." to those." sneakers when I had the chance." But designing sneakers just for hypebeasts wasn't good enough for West. That's why he eventually left Nike for Adidas in 2013: more creative freedom and making Yeezys a household name.

West told BBC Radio in 2013 who didn't want to be another celebrity with his name attached to a sneaker. People didn't love Yeezys like they did for no reason. Imagine this for me, making Yeezys and not having an endorsement deal with Nike up to date. Next it would have been like if I had made Jesus Walks and they had never allowed me to make an album. West told Ryan Seacrest that he found the partner he was looking for in Adidas. They offered to let me make a full line and give me an office and all these things that I want. do just to create more.

The hype around Yeezys fueled West's ambition. Except the more shoes he released, the less special they became. If you look at someone like Kanye West, I think he's really one of the most ambitious people we've ever seen. seen in recent decades. Kanye West has called himself Walt Disney. He calls himself Steve Jobs. So we know it's not just a physical shoe. It's about when he left and we're talking about Kanye West, we're not just talking about the music. We talk about what he has created, what he has left us, his mark on the world. West wants his Yeezys legacy to go far beyond an expensive and inaccessible shoe.

In fact, he wants just the opposite. West spoke to Ryan Seacrest in 2015. This isn't about elitism. This is not about separatism. It is about getting as many people as possible to participate in this vision. Eventually, everyone who wants to get Yeezys will get Yeezys. Adidas has promised me because there are so many children who have wanted them and who have not been able to get them. And I talked to the bosses at Adidas and they told me we can make them. Instead of the demand for Yeezys being based on rarity and hype, West wants everyone to be able to find and afford a pair of Yeezys and still want them.

Kind of like the Adidas Superstar, which is available at its typical retail price of $100 or less. And it was the best-selling sneaker in the United States in 2016. The Superstar debuted in 1970. To this day, it remains an iconic emblem of the Adidas brand. However, the Superstar's popularity is cyclical and sales have declined over the past two years. Now Adidas bets on Kanye West and doubles its bet on Yeezys. If the goal is to turn Yeezy into a billion-dollar brand, experts say there is still a long way to go. The Yeezy brand has a fundamental impact on our overall brand position.

But it's still in the broader context that we are a $25 billion company, you know, a small part of our company. There were probably a million, maybe a million and a half, Yeezys sold last year in pairs in the United States and around the world. Adidas made 400 million pairs of shoes last year. A million pairs of Yeezys is really a drop in the ocean. There is a reason why there are so many shoes made by Adidas for Yeezy. It's not because there isn't room in the factory to make the shoes. They're just creating this artificial sense of scarcity.

When you think about it from that perspective, it really tells you that the product can't be a bigger story. It has to be limited in what it contributes. In other words, demand for Yeezys simply isn't strong enough to produce the shoe in much larger quantities. Nike and Adidas have never revealed how many Yeezys they release per drop. But West said in 2015 that there were 9,000 pairs of his first Adidas shoe, the Yeezy Boost 750. He then boasted to Harper's Bazaar in 2016 that he was consistently selling 40,000 shoes in two minutes. But Adidas also stopped selling Yeezys less frequently back then.

The German sportswear company tested the extent of demand for Yeezys in 2018 by restocking several popular Yeezy models in much larger quantities. September 2018 saw Yeezys' biggest drop to date. There were rumors that more than a million pairs of the triple white 350 V2 sneakers had hit the market in what Adidas called its most democratic drop in Yeezy history. West tweeted about the event, saying that the launch complies with Yeezy's democratic philosophy, but suddenly the shoes were left on the shelves and flooded the market with Yeezys and cost the brand some of its prestige. They sold out, yes, but it took much longer than they had.

It didn't sell out in hours. The lines were lost. And frankly, the sentiment I saw on Twitter was pretty negative. There was an attitude that Yeezy was over. Yeezys tend to be dying. Is Yeezy reselling dead? Don't you want them to be exaggerated? I remember walking into a store and seeing them sitting on the shelves. Dude, this whole Yeezy thing may very well be as if done. By appealing more to the masses, the Yeezy brand has alienated some of its initial fans. To some extent, I think Yeezys have lost some of their wow factor. You start to think that, oh man, the chase doesn't exist anymore because more people can get the shoe.

Scarcity is really important because ultimately the hypebeast and the sneaker culture love to flex, they love to have what the other person doesn't have. That's all they operate on: essentially clout and bragging rights. Nowadays, buying and reselling certain models of Yeezys is much less profitable than before. Resale prices for many Yeezy models have plummeted after a few re-releases of the same shoe or releases of the same shoe model in a slightly different color. Once the resale price of a shoe reaches its original selling price, it means that supply has met demand. It has become evident how many people really want Yeezys.

And for people to continue wanting Yeezys, analysts say it's critical to make sure supply stays behind demand. The reasoning is simple. When everyone can get one, no one wants one. Powell says Yeezy's longevity will be determined by how carefully Adidas manages its inventory of Yeezys. It's really critical that brands don't try to grow too quickly here. It really takes a tremendous amount of strategic thinking and discipline to build a brand around a celebrity. Powell says Yeezys could look to Jordans as an example of how to grow a brand while maintaining its cool factor. After all, it took Nike three decades to turn its iconic Jordan brand, a collaboration between Nike and former NBA superstar Michael Jordan, into a $3 billion business.

For years, Jordan's business grew about 10 percent a year because that was all Nike allowed into the market: about 10 percent more. They could have put in 20, 30, 50 percent more and probably sold it the first year, but after that it would be over. But Powell says Nike made a mistake when it flooded the market with too many Jordans in 2017 and 2018. The brand has lost its cachet. Now, can they rebuild it? Yes, but it will take years. In 2019, Adidas has taken a step back. CEO Kasper Rorsted told investors in May that there won't be any significant growth in Yeezy's business in fiscal 2019.

Adidas won't repeat another massive Yeezys drop in 2018. Instead, the shoes will be released in more limited quantities. throughout the year. year. The goal is to rebuild enthusiasm around the brand. Experts say it will be a long time before West can realize his vision: a sneaker that everyone wants and thinks is really cool, even if it's not that hard to get.