Page 51 - Forbes - Asia (October 2019)

ter, West wasn’t impressed. He sat down and drafted a new “These things are made to bring incalculable joy,” he contin-
logo before personally redesigning the packaging. In any
case, West’s advice isn’t limited to the creative side. “He’s just
taught me as a person to never compromise and to really
take ownership,” says Kardashian West, who ranks No. 26 on
The Celebrity 100. “Before, I was really the opposite. I would
throw my name on anything.”
For a company that makes Lamborghini-inspired sneak-
ers, Yeezy’s headquarters are remarkably nondescript: a
blocky blue-and-gray building just off the main drag in Cal-
abasas, a small city in Los Angeles. It’s not far from where
he’s been hosting his recent Sunday Services—gatherings
where popular songs are repurposed with Christian themes
by gospel choirs and famous guests from Katy Perry to Dave
Chappelle.
When I meet up with West after his return from San Fran-
cisco, the day after our first interview, he’s already fixated on
something enormous out back. In the parking lot behind his
office, laid out in concentric circles, is the sum total of West’s
creative output at Adidas: a trove of sneaker prototypes bak-
ing in the midday sun, variants of his 350s in a rainbow rang-
ing from blood orange to creamy pistachio alongside a few
yet-to-be-released gems like the almost triangular Yeezy bas-
ketball shoe (which, he adds almost proudly, has yet to be ap-
proved by the NBA—echoing the days when the league fined
Michael Jordan for wearing his eponymous sneakers because
they violated uniform rules).
West scoops up a 1050 Vortex Boot, which debuted in
prototype form at Madison Square Garden in 2016. “I just
looked at this line right here,” he says, motioning to a thin
strip of blue masking tape on the sole. “I’m going to make
this part of the boot. The inside of this will be blue. And I just
go with the flow.”
There are about 1,000 pairs laid across the lot, it seems,
but when I ask West for the exact tally, he seems almost of-
fended at the notion of reducing his creations to numerals.
“You can’t calculate love,” he explains. “If you get a surprise
cake from your grandmother, and you didn’t know she was in
town, do you start asking her about the batter and specifical-
ly the frosting?”
Grandmother?
2014 2016
Marries Kim Kardashian in Cancels tail end of
Florence, Italy.
Saint Pablo Tour and is
hospitalized.
2015
Debuts the Yeezy Boost
350 with Adidas.
ues. “So to ask me to somehow translate this to numbers is to
ask your grandmother exactly what the recipe of the cake was.”
West claims to not be a “numbers guy,” but he has reached
an inflection point where someone in the Yeezy orbit needs
to be. His brand built its following through its limited releas-
es and surprise drops, much like Air Jordan. The latter, ac-
cording to NPD retail analyst Matt Powell, has lost a bit of its
cachet in recent years as Nike moved to fill declining volume
in other areas of business with its iconic sub-brand. “What
makes celebrity products sell so well is scarcity,” he says. “So
if they make it too broadly available, I think it crashes the
business model.”
Adidas seems to be aware of this. “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 Adi-
das’ overall expected sales growth,” says the company’s chief
executive, Kasper Rørsted. “Not because brand heat is de-
creasing, but because we have a disciplined approach to man-
aging volumes and product lifecycles.”
In other words, he’s not willing to chase sales at the ex-
pense of prestige, instead continuing to build buzz with sur-
prise drops. The May release of the glow-in-the-dark 350 v2
sold out immediately, even though it rolled out at 6 a.m. in
some countries. In June, customers lined up around blocks
in Moscow to get a reflective version of a sneaker that had al-
ready debuted in the U.S. There are even more far-out con-
cepts in the works, including a shoe made out of algae that
will biodegrade completely over time in landfills—or almost
immediately if sprayed with a certain type of bacteria.
Perhaps most impressively, West still owns 100% of Yeezy.
This is the reason he became a centimillionaire many times
over much earlier in his life than Jordan. Given Yeezy’s suc-
cess, West should eventually join the NBA legend—along-
side sister-in-law Kylie Jenner and mentor Jay-Z—in achiev-
ing billionaire status, though the never-modest West would
claim he’s there already. And then some. “We’ve yet to see all
of the beauty that would be manifested through this part-
nership,” West says. “We’ve only experienced a small glim-
mer of light.” F
Additional reporting by Monica Mercuri and Natalie Robehmed.
2018
Returns with
new album Ye
and produces
records for
Pusha T and
Nas.
OCTOBER 2019 FORBES ASIA | 49