Adidas Kanye West's Yeezy shoes 'collectors' items'

Shoppers in the US are buying Kanye West's Yeezy shoes as collectors' items since Adidas ended its partnership with the rapper, a US shoe chain has said.

Impossible Kicks said sales had risen by 30% since the sportswear giant parted ways with Mr West over anti-Semitic comments he made last year.

Adidas has said it is unsure what to do with the £1bn (€1.2) worth of shoes left from its association with West.

But Impossible Kicks CEO John Mocadlo said buyers had not been put off.

The US retailer, which has 17 stores across 11 states, said sales had risen sharply since the relationship soured and ties were cut last October.

A pair of Yeezy 350 "Zebra" shoes sells for between $340 and $360, (£285-£302) compared with around $260 four months ago, according to Mr Mocadlo.

"People are targeting the product as a collector's item now. When they come into a store they don't even know he's associated with the product," Mr Mocadlo told the BBC's Radio 4's Today Programme.

Adidas said it was considering selling the footwear and donating the profits to charity and had ruled out other options, such as burning them.

The firm said giving the shoes away for free was also complicated, notably because their resale value had surged.

But Mr Mocadlo said the company had "a lot of soul-searching to do".

"The product they're sitting on does have a value. There's a lot of resellers who'd be very interested in getting them because there's still a lot of people who still want the product," he said.

And the retailer did not believe there was a conflict in selling the goods: "We stand against everything he [West] says, we just sell it because it's a collector's item and there's very limited supply at this point."

Adidas ended its relationship with West, who goes by the name of Ye, when the artist posted anti-Semitic tweets after showing a "White Lives Matter" T-shirt design at Paris Fashion Week in October.

The sportswear brand said at the time it would "not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech".

The company said the split cost the firm £534m (€600m) in the last three months of 2022 and warned investors profits could be hit by at least £444m (€500m) in the 2023 financial year.

Adidas boss Bjorn Gulden said: "We should not do a decision just to please someone. We should do a decision when the consequences of that decision are the most positive that we can do."