Updates: Herbert Hainer was CEO until 2015. My years were wrong on 2014, but the statement is still correct. Kasper Rorsted became CEO in 2016.
I shared this graph yesterday showing adidas’ growth over the last twelve years. I needed a baseline for the data, so I chose to look at two-year increments from 2010 to 2019. I stopped short of 2020 because of Covid quarantine store closures and supply chain issues. In sneaker culture there has long been commentary from people that Ye lifted adidas to the highest point in the history of the company. While adidas has attained greater revenue during his time with the brand, their most significant growth arrived prior to his arrival and before he really could be factored into the growth of the brand. When you dig into the numbers the most significant time for the brand took place from 2010 to 2012. adidas grew revenue by 9.2 billion.
The last 12 years of @adidas growth holds interesting numbers. adidas' biggest jump in growth happened from 2010 to 2012. Revenue grew 9.2 billion. Their second biggest growth in revenue happened from 2014 to 2016. Revenue grew 4.8 billion. The first Yeezy released in 2015. pic.twitter.com/6I2tqwOr9g
— Chris Burns (@archbyccb) adidas superstar snipes shoes sale online india
I added the following statements after showing this graph.
1. The number of Yeezy’s dropped in 2015 were insignificant to adidas’ growth, although sneaker culture is quick to state that Yeezy made adidas grow, they completely overlook adidas’ performance running improvement with UltraBoost and the rollout of NMD.
2. Sneaker Culture also fails to acknowledge the revival of the Stan Smith & the fact that Nike had begun to close accounts in 2014 through 2017 while flooding the market with bad releases. This gave adidas more shelf space & the Three Stripes moved from the back of the store to the front.
3. Yeezy definitely became an important aspect of adidas’ growth in North America. However, what is always overlooked is that as Nike cut accounts adidas gained more shelf space. The consistent growth from 2018 to today, in my opinion…
4. arrived as Nike gave away more shelf space because of their Nike Direct CDO/CDA strategy. Hidden in adidas’ growth was a continuous promotional environment that saw UltraBoost and other adidas product marked down, but the promotional environment was masked by YZY’s astronomical SRP. adidas’ growth from 2014 to 2016
5. coincided with some of the best marketing the company has ever done. The brand even won the Grand Prix of marketing at one point. As Ye become more important, adidas marketing declined. adidas failed to promote other aspects of the businesses in the U.S. relying heavily on Ye.
6. Now as they end the relationship with Ye they may find themselves at a similar point as they were in in 2014. The parallels are interesting. The change in leadership, is on the horizon, Salomon and TaylorMade had to be sold and now the end of Yeezy and Reebok was sold.
7. This could be a great reset for the brand and open the door for marketing and highlighting the amazing assets the company has. The biggest years of growth happened before Ye and while cutting ties will hurt in the immediate quarters into next year, the brand has an opportunity.
Additional Points of Discussion
This Twitter thread began because of a statement I made that Yeezy has never been a halo, or rising tide for adidas. An adidas account holder argued that YZY had a halo effect because more people bought apparel, but the same store owner blocked another Twitter follower who confirmed a point I raised when talking about how Yeezy releases were always attached to unwritten rules created by store managers who often required buyers of Yeezy product to purchase an additional item of apparel or accessories to pick up their raffle wins. I also made the claim that Yeezy product was often purchased strictly to be resold. I never make a claim without providing some form of research or data. The initial data I attained came from eBay over the course of 365 days. I compared the search terms “adidas sneakers” and “Yeezy”. I searched other terms, but it was important to isolate adidas sneakers from Yeezy to establish that Yeezy products are purchased and resold at a greater rate than other adidas product.
Resale reflects brand heat, but the average resale price of adidas sneakers is only 99 bucks. Indicating that a lot of adidas product sold is arbitrage from markdowns at retail. Yeezy has never indicated brand heat for adidas. Yeezy is an indicator of Yeezy solely. What this means is adidas wasn’t really the beneficiary of the people buying YZY, they simply reaped the financial benefits. Yeezy has an average sold price of $211 dollars. This price is below retail of the most popular Yeezy model the 350 which retails at $220.00. Yeezy drove revenue for adidas, but it doesn’t really help adidas build brand loyalty with the everyday consumer since that person isn’t typically able to win a pair in a raffle and they could never walk into a retail location and simply purchase the products because of adidas’ controlled scarcity model.
This search adidas Sneakers covers the entirety of all adidas products on eBay. The number of SKUs is greater than the number of SKUs sold under the Yeezy banner. There is some overlap since sellers often list Yeezy as “adidas sneakers Yeezy”, but it becomes evident that Yeezy, with a limited number of SKUs is resold at a slight higher rate than other adidas product. According to Complex, in 2020 Yeezy sold 1.3 billion dollars’ worth of sneakers. At an average of 220 per pair, that means close to 6 million pair of Yeezy sneakers sold in 2020. GQ interviewed Ye in 2016 and found that 280,000 of the shoes were released. It’s unclear what the real numbers are, but if Complex reports 1.3 then 6 million sneakers were sold. Per quarter that would be 1.5 million pairs sold. This number feels inflated, but a jump from 200K a year to 6 million has a natural correlation to the decline in resale and over the last year for Yeezy brand. Here are the charts for the searches:
Finding data is complex and attempting to balance this and prove my claim that most of the shoes are bought to be resold is difficult since numbers aren’t readily available from StockX. Those numbers would be skewed considerably as the same pair could be sold over and over. This could also happen on eBay, but at least eBay provides a starting point. I made the claim that Yeezy is often purchased to be resold. If there are 6 million pair of Yeezy sneakers sold a year, a very interesting my theory of all Yeezy product is bought to be resold becomes more certain. (Updated 10/27/2022) On eBay alone 358,659 pair were sold. That’s 5.98% of YZY releases sold on eBay. To factor in the biggest platform for resale, StockX, I’m going to use one sneaker to create a ratio of one SKU. My goal is to establish that StockX sells more Yeezy and this will create a percentage to see how many Yeezy sneakers are resold. This is rough math, but I hope it’s clear. For this comparison I’m looking at the last 12 months of the adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 MX Oat. The sneaker was dropped in October of 2021.
- On StockX 28,543 pair sold at an average price of $260 dollars a pair.
- Using the keyword “Yeezy GW3773” on eBay 4,840 pair sold at an average of $249.57
This data provides us with a comp for the total Yeezy’s possibly sold on StockX. If a ratio is done of the MX Oat 350 this is how the ratio looks:
4840 : 28543 = 358,659 : 2,115,124
What do these numbers represent? Below is a chart showing the MX Oat and the number of sneakers sold on eBay vs StockX. I used these numbers to create a ratio. The ratio consists of the numbers from the Yeezy research on eBay. With 358,659 sold on eBay in the last 12 months, this could mean that StockX sold 2 million+ pair of Yeezy. It’s a very rough estimate, but the math is solid. If data shows that 6 million Yeezy sneakers are sold a year, and 2.1 million are resold, that’s 35% of all Yeezy sneakers made being resold. In 2014 when StockX was Campless they stated that 5% of people buy sneakers strictly to resale. Since the advent of sneakers, that number has increased considerably, but Yeezy is something different at 35%.
I had two claims in my discussion yesterday: most Yeezy product was bought to resale and most Yeezy never ended up with the average consumer. It’s difficult to prove these points, but without a doubt Ye was a valuable asset to adidas. Losing that brand will only shape adidas in the short term. What is interesting is that you would think there would be a spike in the price since everyone knows there aren’t any more Yeezy sneakers on the way. On the 25th when this news broke prices did spike (I researched Sept. 26th to October 26th) from $178.71 on September 26th to $227.62 on October 25th. On October 26th the numbers declined to $215.10. On StockX one of the more popular Yeezy 350s has remained flat. It seems that resale isn’t going crazy with the announcement of “no more Yeezy”. I’ve written on various occasions that resale has been trending down. adidas and Nike have played the scarcity game a bit too long with the consumer and buyers have become disinterested in fighting bots for kicks. Certain models will always garner a lot of interest, but Ye seems to have played himself at possibly the worst time to call the bluff of a billion-dollar business fighting through the complexities of losing a leader that guided the company to considerable growth through a pandemic and now the company is dealing with supply chain issues, the loss of a market in Russia and continued problems in China. While North America and the billion-dollar cash cow of Yeezy is a blow to adidas, the company has a real opportunity to adjust.
Additional Data Graphics
StockX offers a top 10 sneakers chart. I took the time to pull the top 4 Yeezy products over the last 72 hours to see if resale has increased on those pairs. I followed that research up with eBay sales on the same models using the keyword “style code”. You can compare the information below. I also searched keyword “Yeezy” intermittently which showed that after the initial peak, like in the data above, Yeezy overall is dropping. In my opinion this is happening because the buyers who purchased the majority of the product to resale (there are 56,677 active listings on eBay), those sellers increased their average list price to $316.81. The average sold reflects every style under Yeezy and as you notice below the “cheaper” Yeezy product is what is currently the most popular. That product is also the most readily available as many of the top SKUs released in the last six months.
