Adidas Ends Partnership With Kanye West, Ex-Wife Kim Kardashian Speaks.
Adidas, a German sportswear giant has ended its partnership with rapper Kanye West, who in recent weeks has been receiving backlashes, bans, and outright ‘canceling’ by brands over what the media calls vile antisemitism.
The decision was announced Tuesday, by Adidas AG in a statement on Tuesday, terminating its partnership with rapper and fashion designer Ye because of a series of antisemitic remarks he made weeks back.
“Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” Adidas said on Tuesday.
Kanye West’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian also released a statement condemning antisemitism.
Kim wrote, “Hate speech is never OK or excusable,” she wrote on her Twitter account. “I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end.”
Other companies so far that have dropped Kanye West include Gap, Kering SA, his talent management agency, and MRC Studios, all because of his antisemitic rhetoric.
Bloomberg reports that Adidas shares fell as much as 3.2% in Frankfurt trading, reaching the lowest since April 2016.
“The Adidas decision follows weeks of deliberations inside the company, which over the past decade has built the Yeezy line — together with Ye — into a brand that’s accounted for as much as 8% of Adidas’s total sales, according to several estimates from Wall Street analysts,” the site reported.
Adidas believes it owns the intellectual property to the products from the collaboration with West and could therefore continue producing the models, according to one of the company’s anonymous sources.
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