Yeezy forms management team

By

Olivier Guyot

Translated by
Jennifer Braun

Published
Sep 3, 2018

Adidas seems ready to fast-track its collaboration with Yeezy, Kanye West’s label. For three years, the German giant has been creating the collections imagined by the rapper/entrepreneur’s team, which has seen much media hype and commercial success. The label’s next Yeezy model drop is scheduled for September 21, in the midst of the international fashion weeks.

But Yeezy is much more than a "franchise" shoe. Kanye West has made a global brand that wants to be able to address various creative fields. Recently, it even considered delving into architecture.
 
It’s a company in its own right, whose operational direction has evolved in the last year. In fact, in just a few months, Yeezy has recruited high level executives. Donté Smith, a specialist in legal and financial matters, who made his mark at Bank of America and equally worked for Lorna Jane, as well as Jaguar-Land Rover, arrived at the end of 2017 as vice-president in charge of finance.

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Meanwhile, a new CEO took over earlier this year following Ivan Ing, Vivienne Westwood's former chief operating officer, who had only stayed with the company for a few months last year. Eugene Kim is a former Credit Suisse, Boston Consulting Group and the Gores Group specialist in mergers and acquisitions in which he was vice president of operations. Former Chairman of the Board of eveningwear brand J.Mendel, he earned his stripes developing the Pressed Juicery concept, which offers fruit juice.
 
Yeezy also welcomed Deborah Palmer Keizer in the first quarter to oversee his supply chain. A sourcing specialist, the manager, who has in recent years especially evolved in consulting, was previously vice president sourcing at Gap and Williams Sonoma. 
 
On the design side, Yeezy taped Tessa Matthias as head of design. Formerly at Theory, the Los Angeles-based American created her brand, Tessa, in 2015. She designed pieces for the launch of Kanye West's latest album, Ye, last spring.
 
Though Yeezy's global strategy isn’t always easy to understand and the company is rather unclear about its organization and intentions, the structure has been reinforced with experienced professionals, leaving the development of new projects still to be discovered.