Kanye West Invested His Own Money Into First Adidas Yeezy Boost Collection

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Fri Dec 4, 2015 02:02AM

Kanye West put up his own money to help cover the cost of producing his first Adidas sneaker collection after receiving too tight of a budget from brand bosses.The Power rapper, who signed a deal with the German company in 2013 after splitting from executives at rival firm Nike, debuted his first Adidas Yeezy Boost line in February (15) at New York Fashion Week, and he reveals he had more than just a professional interest in making the range a success.
Speaking at Wednesday´s (02Dec15) Footwear News Achievement Awards in New York, where he was honored with the Shoe of the Year prize for his Adidas collection, Kanye confessed, "The (Adidas) contract said 25 SKUs (stock keeping units), and the fashion show, I was supposed to do a collection with 25 SKUs - I don´t know how that was supposed to happen.
"And the original talent budget was $500,000 - I don´t know how I was supposed to put a design team together for that, but luckily, I´m a multi-millionaire rapper and I covered the rest of it."
The rapper also credited some of his success to Nike bosses, although he refused to actually name the firm: "The company that I won´t mention, that I´ve been very angry with in the past, they were very helpful too to launch the name Yeezy as a shoe."
Kanye´s honor was announced in October (15), and at the time, Footwear News chiefs explained of their decision, "The sneaker releases dominated the market in 2015, as demand for the product crashed servers, sparked extraordinary resale value, and created a need for mob control in stores."
Pregnant Kim Kardashian took to Twitter to congratulate her husband on the big win on Wednesday, when she shared a picture of Kanye beaming as he collected his prize.
She captioned it, "So well deserved! Congrats babe on winning Shoe of the Year Award! I see how hard u (sic) work & how meaningful this is!"