Source: Reebok / Reebok
For a while there was talk that adidas was looking to unload their Reebok brand to the highest bidder with rumors that Master P and Baron Davis were interested in purchasing the OG sneaker brand.
Well, it’s a done deal and Reebok will officially have new owners (not Master P or Baron Davis, though) as Reuters is reporting that adidas offloaded Reebok for a cool $2.5 billion to Authentic Brands Group. Not quite the profit they might’ve been hoping to get.
Heck, they didn’t even break even as adidas purchased Reebok in 2006 for $3.8 billion only to struggle with sales and profits over the years which pushed them to just give up on the brand. They’ve tried everything from retro’ing classic silhouettes from OG’s NBA players like Shaquille O’Neal and Allen Iverson to collaborating with the likes of Future and Cardi B.
But in the end they just decided that selling Reebok was addition by subtraction.
“After careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that Reebok and adidas will be able to significantly better realize their growth potential independently of each other,” adidas CEO Kaspar Rorsted said when announcing his company’s divestiture plan for Reebok earlier this year. “We will work diligently in the coming months to ensure a successful future for the Reebok brand and the team behind it.”
Still that doesn’t mean they won’t be dropping new kicks as they are slated to release a new Reebok collection which harkens back to their Human Rights Now! tour that went down in 1988.
Reeboks’s new “Product With A Purpose” initiative will feature some new takes on old classics such as the Club C 85, Classic Leather and Workout with hits green, red and black. The original Human Rights Now! manifesto is featured on the back of each shoe’s tongue: “The footwear also features the HRN manifesto on the backside of the tongue, ”Let your voice be heard, wear this product with pride. Not just because you support the fight for human right, but because you have those rights.”
Besides shoes, the capsule includes hoodies, hats and more with graphics from the OG concert series. But there’s more to the Human Rights Now! platform than just a cool capsule collection.
The HRN collection is only part of Reebok’s mission to donate $10M over the next five years to the benefit of Black and LatinX communities via organizations dedicated to ending racial injustice.
That’s hot business right there.
The Reebok Human Rights Now! collection is available on their Website now. Check it out and let us know if you’ll be supporting it in the comments section.
Source: Reebok / Reebok
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