Kanye West has dropped the first piece from his upcoming Yeezy Gap collaborative partnership.
On Tuesday, West’s 44th birthday, a $200 blue nylon, unisex puffer jacket dubbed the “RoundJacket” became available to preorder. Within a few hours, the jacket was sold out. A spokesperson for Yeezy Gap said that the jacket was still available to pre-order, but due to high demand, customers were seeing a “sold out” message.
Gap’s CEO Sonia Sygnal predicts a brighter future about the parternship. She said on a recent earnings call: “What I can tell you is that the creativity is through the roof and it’s spilling over to the brand and it’s inspiring our teams more broadly.”
Gap and West announced the partnership in 2020. They have been designing apparels in Wyoming, where the rapper owns a ranch. The deal is for 10 years and includes apparel for men, women and kids. It does not include footwear, since the Yeezy brand is in a long-term deal with Adidas. The partnership with Yeezy will bring in exposure and mass distribution to a broader market. Meanwhile, for Gap, Yeezy provides a “cool” factor to the company and help the brand create the hype it has struggled with gaining in recent years. Gap saw a flat 2020 fourth quarter while sales amongst its sister brands, Athleta and Old Navy continued to rise.
West is currently worth $1.8 billion, by Forbes’ estimates, with the bulk of that attributed to his Yeezy sneaker line The collection pulled in an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue in 2020 through its partnership with Adidas—earning West $191 million in royalties last year. The rest of his fortune is made up of his music catalogue (worth an estimated $90 million), his stake in soon-to-be ex-wife Kim Kardashian West’s shapewear company Skims (worth an estimated $64 million) and a handful of other assets, including cash, real estate, jewelry and even livestock (worth an estimated $160 million), as reported by Forbes.
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