Adidas has severed ties with rapper Ye, also known as Kanye West, stating that it “will not accept antisemitism or any other form of hate speech.”
After he debuted a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt design at Paris Fashion Week, Adidas’s Yeezy brand cooperation with Kanye West was reevaluated.
A few days later, the rapper made antisemitic tweets.
Adidas has said that its merchandise would be removed from sale immediately.
The sportswear corporation has previously stated that the Yeezy brand collaboration with Ye was among the most successful in its history.
According to Adidas, terminating the collaboration will result in a net loss of £217 million for the company in 2022.
He has previously accused Adidas of copying his ideas in an Instagram post that has since been deleted.
Adidas issued a statement on Tuesday stating: “Adidas condemns antisemitism and all other forms of hate speech. Ye’s recent remarks and actions are reprehensible, bigoted, and dangerous, and they violate the company’s diversity and inclusion, mutual respect, and fairness ideals.”
Pressure
Following his antisemitic comments, Instagram and Twitter suspended Ye’s accounts. The pressure on his commercial partnerships has also increased: In October, JP Morgan and Gap announced that they were terminating their connection with Ye.
Ye alleged that Gap violated the terms of their agreement by, among other things, failing to open separate outlets for his Yeezy apparel business.
Although Adidas reviewed its connection with Ye after he displayed his “White Lives Matter” T-shirt, the corporation did not attribute the evaluation to the collection.
After “multiple efforts to quietly resolve the matter,” it decided to reevaluate the cooperation after being accused by Ye of “stealing” his creations.
After George Floyd, an unarmed black man was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, the phrase Black Lives Matter, which expresses opposition to racism and police brutality, was widely popularised.
In October, upscale fashion label Balenciaga and talent scouts Creative Artists Agency also severed ties with the rapper.
Monday, the film and television production company MRC announced that it will not run a recently completed documentary about the rapper.
“Kanye is a music producer and sampler. Last week, he sampled and reworked a song that has been popular for over 3,000 years: the falsehood that Jews are evil and conspire to control the world for their benefit… As leaders of this company (a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian), we feel obligated to inform you that this is a harmful and dreadful application of fallacious logic “On Monday, MRC wrote.
Before Adidas’s Tuesday announcement, the company’s stock price was down about 5 percent. It had cautioned in its most recent financial prediction, issued in October, that deterioration in its business in China and decreased consumer demand in major Western markets have put a strain on its profit projections for 2022. After announcing in August that current CEO Kasper Rorsted will go in 2023, the brand is also searching for a new chief executive.
