How Nike Lost The $1.5bn Yeezy Deal

I'm a huge fan man I came from the USA you came from the USA just for that Nikon Kanye West began developing the Air Yeezy in 2007 they seem to have been cultivated with one idea in mind what if the Jordan 4 was infected with gigantism but really the idea for the Yeezy was to create an athletic shoe that was more suited for rocking the stage at stadium venue rather than playing basketball the basketball inspiration for the shoe took clear design cues from the night air tech challenge - and the Jordan 3 and Jordan 4 in fact the Air Yeezy was so clearly inspired by Jordan sneakers but when early designs leaks before they'd even dropped Chinese fakers had already connected the dots and started manufacturing fake Yeezys using leftover soles from Jordan sneakers Byronic clean I couldn't actually let Kanye use proper Jordan design assets because the Jordan Brand was technically still a separate company from Nike so in the great words of dj khaled they don't want you to use assets from the Jordan Brand so you know what we do we use a near identical design founder of the night air assault retro I think that's what he says though outside of basketball and tremors another massive design inspiration for the Air Yeezy was the Martin McFly itself lacing Nike mags that were featured in the film Back to the Future these were later reproduced in a limited edition run by Nike specifically cornering that lucrative sneaker head market the aging basement-dwelling hypebeast throughout development of the air Yeezys we saw a lot of design features come and go faster than a man in the Kardashian household for example an early prototype had LED lights in the shoe sole but thankfully these were dropped for a much more tasteful glow-in-the-dark sole because of battery life yes battery life could you imagine being that [ __ ] at the party has anyone got a charger for my Easy's nowadays LED light-up shoes are only found on the feet of neglected children in small town England and of course Soulja Boy's ill-fated shoe line sbz lights that make your feet look like cars from need for speed most wanted another dropped feature was the originally planned circular air bubble known as the Death Star there were originally rumors that these would give the wearer flubber level jumping abilities by filling the Death Star with hot air straight from Kanye's lungs but in the end this air did have to be preserved for yeas tour and radio appearances in the end the Death Star was replaced by more traditional nike air bubble which is a shame because I kind of did think it looked cool the bottom of the shoe was originally gonna feature an obnoxious and frankly uninspired why repeated pattern shaped waffle design and obviously you know what the Y stands for you'll mark this was of course inspired by the iconic elephant print that was found on many Jordan branded sneakers but without any of the inspiration or swag these souls were thankfully dropped but those repeated white front designs did end up in the final product in a much more tasteful fashion on the strap and the suede toe lining throughout 2008 Kanye West was spotted wearing various prototypes of the easy including many color ones that never hit shelves this included an all-black pair that he rocked along with a pair of Phoenician face blinds was performing at the Grammys in 2008 which many people cite as the first time this brand collaboration had really come to the forefront but Knight's Air Yeezy one finally dropped in April 2009 it initially came in the Zen gray light charcoal colorway and this was actually the pair that I originally had when I was a team I miss those every day these were followed in May by a drop of the black and pink colorway and finally in June a tan beige drop they only had a price tag of 215 dollars on lon I myself picked up a pair at resale at for 300 pounds on eBay which to me at the time being around 15 felt like a pretty penny and having sold them on a year later a cool 60 pound profit I felt like a young hypebeast gordon gekko but with today's resale prices sitting at a cool 2,000 pounds plus somebody got an unbelievable bargain but even if the easy one was ahead of its time it was still a popin shoe in spite of its gigantism and pretty much every celebrity you can think of was wearing a pair for a super exclusive shoe everyone seemed to have a [ __ ] pair denied so welcome to a special segment that I like to call easy celebrity hunting where we look at some of the many celebrities that have been spotted wearing the original Air Yeezy ball player an inventor of expensive beef Kobe Bryant the least rare rapper in the wild common kid cudi birdman spoiled son and boss level in time crisis bus edition lil wayne biggest bum bag of 2019 soldier boy overweight kevin hart wale the only man that is so large that he makes these gigantically oversized Yeezys look small Questlove is he waiting for a haircut or is he just finished getting one who knows it's fabulous we heard you like guns in your trunk so we put guns on your guns in your trunk it's TI the first black man in history to receive the II got Huah the Emmy Grammy Oscar Tony hot wife it's John Legend original inventor of dick sunglasses the dream the rap games Alex Jones Jadakiss the most powerful player in hip-hop Tekken P Diddy Kanye's executive Maybach buffer Big Sean that guy in the office that takes credit for everyone else's good ideas Drizzy Drake and of course finally bun B here pictured being told come on over to ovo will definitely make my career I mean your career take off so when you've got a winning formula why would you quit every celebrity worth their salt was wearing the air Yeezys and Kanye was about to come without heat second time so the Nike Air Yeezy two begun development and this time yeh would be coming with a much more animalistic design it came with a reptile inspired heel ribbed for her pleasure smooth snakeskin inspired side panels slit this time the sole was lifted from the Nike Air Tech challenge to tennis shoe and of course never one to miss an opportunity to mislead the public into thinking he's in the Illuminati the easy two had several references to ancient Egyptian mythology see the triangle print on the strap holder the Egyptian hieroglyphics that spell Y Z Y hidden under the strap I assume he stole the idea for those hieroglyphics from Space Ghost perp also including depictions of the ancient god Horus on the tongue and insole in fact speaking of Horus this was around the time Kanye West had been spotted wearing this neck breaking leaf ugly Horus chain that was supposedly a three hundred thousand dollar waste of cash not to mention the amount he probably spent on spiral reassignment surgery but he must have required after wearing that monstrosity for a week chain way too heavy in the lead-up to the release of the Yeezy 2 yeh got another batch of incredibly powerful celebrity co-signs jay-z rocked a parent shouted them out during his March 2012 South by Southwest performance and Naik officially announced them in May 2012 originally just announcing a set of platinum and black Holloway's and later an Allred Col away famously known as the red Octobers which to become one of the most sought-after pairs of Yeezys in existence but not everyone like them in fact Macklemore hated his so much that in a New Year's 12:13 performance he pulled them off mid-show and tossed them into the crowd the red Octobers were announced in June 2012 and only 5,000 pairs would ever be produced they retailed at two hundred and forty-five dollars but immediately started reselling for the big bucks with some reports quoting prices anywhere from four to $90,000 for Yeezys they initially surfaced in May 2013 on Kanye during an SNL performance and on Kim Kardashian's Instagram and the red Octobers immediately became a mythical shoe in height B sculpture many speculated that they be dropping around the same time as Kanye's yeezus album in June especially considering the fact that their red collar way matched the cover art of Jesus however as the year went on less and less celebrities were spotted wearing the a Yeezys and before they even dropped Kanye would publicly fall out with Nike and according to yeh he didn't even know when these shoes will be coming out himself I mean I asked him when the Yeezy red Octobers coming out I asked them me Kos asked nike when to come out they told they said we're not sure yet by the end of 2013 Kanye had started his usual press talk on mental breakdown and during his onstage rants he began dragging mic and calling them out publicly [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] as well as discussing his tense relationship with Nike and his iconic interview with Zane Lowe on the BBC you guys don't understand you guys don't understand that I did the easies and they Ebates for $90,000 right and people wanted them bad is whatever right but I didn't get a call from Nike the next day for you to have done something to the level of the easies and not be able to create more and you cannot you cannot create that on your own with no support often gay had dragged Mike on his BBC interview supposedly he had been told that they would be putting more effort into their partnership but according to Kanye what he was really looking for was points on the package royalties baby I start turning up in a BBC interview and it came it's ok cool we're gonna give you a bigger sandbox to play in we're gonna give you this amount right here to design you could do two collections a year and 30 skews less amount of items that you have and now is it would that make you happy Kanye and I said okay okay what about this uh I need this I need oil teas it's not even like I even got a joint-venture I'm like at least give me some royalty like Michael Jordan got 5% that business is 2 billion he makes a hundred million dollars a year off of 5% royalty I said I need some type of royalty date night you told me but we can't give you a royalty because you're now a professional athlete I'll turn them I go to guard and play one on no one that relationship completely fell apart and by the time the surprise drop of the red Octobers had rolled around can he had stopped wearing Easy's altogether so it's most likely that the seemingly disorganized to Twitter only surprise drop of the red Easy's was a move by Knight to shed themselves of their canny ideal and free up yeh so that he could go on to make a new deal so in spite of the fact that Naik is and always has been more pop in the nanny deaths yeh says that he was thinking of his family legacy when he decided to take that any steel in December 2013 might have taken the Nike deal because I just love Nike so much blah blah blah but the new me with a daughter takes the adidas deal because I have royalties and I have to provide for my family so I need a swooped in with an amazing offer supposedly worth 10 million dollars plus royalties and yay Dooley took it to be fair I'd been going around for years saying I wouldn't wear out he'd ass unless you paid me to I know I am joking for anybody that is from Audi that's watching this please cut that check please it's kind of ironic after all as in my view and probably canyes at the time as far as the culture goes Nike really would have been the only game in town I'd never set a soul in a pair of a leader shoes until I saw Yeezy wearing them and frankly I never would had until he made them a pop and shoot ironically Kenya was actually rumored to have been working with Audi - even before the Nike deal way back in 2006 on a shoe that ended up never getting released frankly in my opinion this whole debacle proves one thing Mike really [ __ ] up the bag by not giving Kanye what he wanted I mean they could have had another Jordan brand on their hands it and who knows maybe if they'd have kept Kanye happy we'd have been seeing Yeezy brand outlets up and down strip malls all over America I mean who amongst us doesn't want to spend 1783 on a set of size 17 years nines in a vomit-inducing pink and gray colorway but now we all know the story and how things ended up with easy daddy does had a field day with easy and much like night tried to do a d-does finesse the low supply of the Yeezy shoe that people actually wanted to stimulate sales of other addi - shoes that looks a bit like the Yeezys but no one really wanted did they the ultra boost the tubular or even this year's dreadfully named oz wee goes but frankly just sound like a slur for Australian so there you have it that's the story of how Knight really dropped the ball when it comes to the easy deal and put Kanye on the path to his a lead a steal and his only easy brand that would ultimately one day potentially make him a billionaire hope you enjoyed that video if you did make sure that you like and subscribe below and head on over to trap law comm to go and crop some of the new merch I've got trap lure season 2 much better than easy season 2 come on you know it is go copy it go check some of that stuff out and really excited for my new designs and this is one of them you know what I'm saying there's a lot more there and I'm really excited to share it with you thanks again and until next time peace out you

Channel: Trap Lore Ross

Views: 863,042

Rating: 4.8167596 out of 5

Keywords: Trap, Lore, Ross, Trap Lore Ross, Trap Lore, nike yeezy, air yeezy, kanye yeezy deal, kanye yeezy shoes, trap lore ross kanye, trap lore ross kanye west, trap lore ross yeezy, trap lore ross air yeezy, air yeezy red october, kanye adidas, kanye nike, kanye nike diss, kanye nike deal, kanye billionaire, kanye billion dollars, kanye forbes, kanye forbes list, kanye forbes cover, original yeezy, first yeezy, yeezy 1, yeezy nike

Id: YdEN493OIH8

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019