Kanye West is on the latest cover of Forbes, as the magazine takes a deep look into his YEEZY empire.
This year, the brand is expected to top $1.5 billion in sales, halfway toward the $3 billion Jordan Brand rakes in every year.
The story also reveals that West receives a 15 percent royalty on wholesale, plus a marketing fee.
Michael Jordan, for comparison, gets only 5 percent. Suddenly jumping over the Jumpman doesn’t appear so out of reach.
When the writer visits YEEZY’s headquarters in Calabasas, 1,000 shoes are laid out in the parking lot.
West says one of his concepts is a shoe made of algae that’s 100 percent biodegradable, and “will biodegrade completely over time in landfills—or almost immediately if sprayed with a certain type of bacteria,” according to Forbes.
This future-thinking concept is in addition to other YEEZY prototypes that we have seen recently like clogs and scuba boots, neither of which have been slated for an official release.
Despite the wide swath of shoes, and YEEZY’s growing success, adidas says it’ll keep releases scarce.
“We are continuing to manage volumes in a very disciplined manner so that for 2019 Yeezy sales will not make up a significant share of Adidas’ overall expected sales growth,” says the company’s chief executive, Kasper Rørsted. “Not because brand heat is decreasing, but because we have a disciplined approach to managing volumes and product lifecycles.”
West and his team are also working on his team on prefabricated homes inspired by Luke Skywalker’s childhood home on Tatooine to be used for lower income housing.
He recently met with investors in San Francisco to secure funding for the project.
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