When a massive re-release of Kanye West’s Yeezy shoes — the Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 V2 in triple white — dropped this week, fans noticed something different: While the shoes have historically sold out in minutes, this time around, sneakerheads found them easily available.
Fans of the shoes said as much on social media, where rather than the usual complaints about the shoes selling out before they could buy them, customers marveled that they were able to fetch pairs so easily.
Is the sudden availability of the sneakers linked to the fact that 2018 has arguably been the most controversial year of West’s career? Between his repeated expressions of support for President Donald Trump, his remark that slavery was a choice for African Americans, his beefs with various celebrities for purportedly disrespecting his wife, and his just-announced plans to move back to his hometown of Chicago, he’s made plenty of headlines lately.
All this press may have helped drum up hype for the rerelease of the Yeezy Boost 350 V2 — on Thursday, both West and the sneakers topped Twitter’s trend list for several hours. But the ease with which fans, and normies, for that matter, can now purchase a pair of Yeezys likely has little do with West’s many scandals and everything to do with Adidas’s marketing strategy.
This drop marks Adidas’s largest release of Yeezys, with up to a million of the sneakers reportedly available. When the Adidas Yeezy made its debut in 2015, the company released it in very limited quantities, and the scarcity of the product helped to give the shoes a cult following. But research shows that it’s bad for companies to use product scarcity as a long-term strategy. Rather than promote brand loyalty, the ploy can actually make customers stray.
So Adidas’s decision to release enough Yeezys to allows fans to buy multiple pairs doesn’t necessarily mean the shoes have lost their appeal or that West’s many scandals have hurt the brand. It signals Adidas has decided it’s the right time to give customers what they’ve been clamoring for.
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