Kanye West

Gap Inc. is due to release its quarterly report in a few days and the brand says its heavily anticipated Yeezy line is on track to launch by the end of June, according to Business Of Fashion. BOF notes that Gap is relying on the nearly $1 billion partnership with Kanye West to lift its sales, hoping that ravenous Yeezy fans will pull the brand out of a decades-long slump which has led to store closures and cost-cutting across its holdings. The company expects over $150 million in revenue in 2022, according to Bloomberg. Details about the line remain sparse, but let’s be real: A sellout is almost guaranteed.

Although Business Of Fashion notes that the “basics category grows more crowded by the day,” other brands which have collaborated with big music stars, such as Fashion Nova, PrettyLittleThing, and Boohoo, have seen those collections sell out in a matter of hours, while over the course of the last year of lockdowns and working from home, eBay flippers and their trusty armies of bots have become more sophisticated than ever in clearing both digital and physical shelves to drive up demand and turn the secondary market into a de facto monopoly (when people are getting mugged for Pokemon cards at Target, things would seem to be way out of hand). Unfortunately for Gap Inc., there’s no guarantee that those Yeezy fans — who will almost certainly fill stores and create campout lines at what Gap stores remain — will buy anything else from the beleaguered brand, which it’ll need to reverse course after 20 years of declining relevance.