Controversial Merch Drops - Kanye West

Hey 👋

In today’s post, we’ll cover a very controversial product that was sold earlier last week on Shopify

And you’ve probably already got an idea what this is about — we’re talking about Kanye West’s "white t-shirt”, the advertising for which he bought out a Super Bowl ad.. 🤔 

We’ll also cover the history of Yeezy, Adidas, Ye’s $20 clothing line, and what we can learn from Kanye’s stunts, plus the diminishing returns of shock value in eCom.

Let’s get into it 🔥

1. Kanye VS Adidas 📉 

We need a bit of context before we get to the drama — here’s a quick recap of the history between rapper and eCom & retail giant. Yeezy was initially a collab between the two, where Adidas owned the rights to produce & distribute, and Ye had creative control while receiving royalties.

After Adidas cut ties with Kanye in 2022 over anti-Semitic remarks, Yeezy’s revenue dropped hard, as shown by the numbers:

As for 2024, the last Adidas Yeezy drop in March generated only about $160M because of the decision to sell all remaining stock at a lower price — and the official Adidas yearly revenue recap didn’t even mention Yeezy sales at all, they’ve excluded those numbers to only show the profits.

But on the flipside, Kanye retained rights to the Yeezy brand. With his full ownership over it, he did something pretty genius — he continued to manufacture Yeezy clothing & footwear, but priced everything at just $20 for each and every item 👀

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2. Kanye’s $20 Collection 💰️ 

After the drop of his album Vultures in February 2024 — he got over 200K orders on merch (in collaboration with Gosha). They made $19.3M in just a single day, along with Ye’s album being #1 in 100 countries, here’s what some of the merch looked like:

Let’s talk a bit about Kanye’s last merch drop, (December ‘24), which featured even more items, all at the same $20 price tag:

Kanye’s affordable merch collection was loved by fans, and his reputation got better from going against the extremely high average retail pricing. Even if shipping increased total costs, his clothing line was much cheaper than most brands.

But he then decided to throw everything away in just one weekend — let’s talk about the the rampage he went on X, and the Super Bowl ad he did for a very controversial t-shirt.. 😬 

P.S. — Want to use Reddit to grow your brand? Check out our Merchant’s Guide to Reddit in case you missed it 👀

3. Ye’s Rampage On X/Twitter 🗣️ 

In spite of everything he built, last weekend Kanye wrote tens of tweets, spewing hatred and anti-semitic remarks.

He then logged out of X and “thanked” Elon for giving him a platform to vent on, and, reportedly, his sales and streams doubled after this — he even shared the numbers on some of his top-selling products since his crashout:

These honestly are very good numbers — but they came at the cost of losing thousands, if not tens of thousands of fans and making his PR even worse than it was already..

He recently came back to X and deleted all of his tweets he wrote during that rampage — but luckily there’s a whole archive if you’re curious on what he said 👀 

This was an effective marketing ploy, but we haven’t even got to the craziest part of this whole stunt yet — the Super Bowl ad..

4. Super Bowl Ad That Broke The Internet 🚫

Kanye West dropped millions on a Super Bowl ad for Yeezy, claiming he spent all his money on his new teeth, so he had to shoot it on an iPhone — no product details, just him at the dentists telling his audience to visit his site, Yeezy.com.

This led fans to his website, which had a single product product listed — a white T-shirt with a swastika, being sold for $20.

Well, Kanye broke the internet yet again. But this time he lost all of the goodwill he’s built in the past years through selling affordable clothing, and also didn’t make as much profit off his last drop as he could have because of his actions 😬 

Supposedly, lots of fans bought this T-shirt, but it’s still unclear whether orders were fulfilled, since his entire store was based on Shopify…

And we all know as merchants that this is clearly against TOS of Shopify — and the platform soon shut down his site altogether.

Selling a clothing item this vulgar has consequences beyond just his public image and short-term profits — he could be banned from selling merch on Shopify & other eCom platforms altogether.

But for us brand owners, there’s actually a pretty big lesson we could learn from Kanye’s crazy marketing strategy (if we can even call it that 😂)

P.S. — Check out our January eCom Recap in case you missed it, we covered everything from Trump’s Tariffs & Memecoin to Zuckerberg putting an end to fact-checking 👀

5. What Can We Learn From This? 🤔 

First off, Kanye’s strategy is as genius as it is extreme. He’s one of the only creators who can make a living off selling through DTC, completely bypassing any labels or distributors.

Thanks to this & his massive audience, he can literally make millions of dollars per merch drop, and this is all taking into account that each item is no more than $20. But obviously his stunts & marketing are on the absolute extreme side of using controversy to sell products.

Kanye selling that T-shirt showed that his DTC site is not a place to perform like he does on social media & in his other work. In the end his store was taken down and many orders were cancelled or refunded 😬 

And, while it’s obvious we need to stay within moral & ethical boundaries, that doesn’t mean we can’t make use of shock value as a brand to grab attention & stand out, just like Kanye, but to a much lesser extent.

Here are some things you should think about as a merchant:

1️⃣ Know Your Audience

Shock value works when it touches your target market — so push boundaries in ways that align with your brand’s identity, but don’t alienate your customers for short-term gains (like how Kanye did)

A good example of this is Diesel — they used provocative ads to challenge the norms of society, but stayed true to its edgy identity and didn’t push their fans away:

2️⃣ Create Controversy (Without Backlash)

Using bold visuals, unexpected and maybe even goofy collaborations can spark conversation and create long-lasting talking points with anyone who knows (or doesn’t even know) your products.

A great example of a brand that does this is Liquid Death — they have had very weird but fitting collaborations, and their products literally advertise “murdering your thirst”:

But as with anything to do with marketing, there are diminishing returns.

Creating ads with the shock value & controversy angles can be great if done well, but if repeated constantly, it alienates your mainstream consumers and hurts your brand long-term.

This is why it’s best to think about using shock-value in marketing when your brand’s sales decline, or it’s a dry time of the year for your brand overall— using controversy as a wildcard for when it’s only needed is something worth thinking about.

That’s that! We covered sales numbers, the insane marketing stunts of Kanye (which we cannot recommend replicating one for one), and what we can learn from this as merchants to grow our own brands🔥

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Daniil from ECORN