Adidas terminated its longstanding partnership with Kanye West last year
Last year, Adidas terminated its longstanding partnership with Kanye West, now known as Ye, following a series of alleged antisemitic incidents. Notably, Kanye West and Adidas entered into a partnership in 2013 but their deal went off in October 2022 after the rapper openly shared his offensive, racist, and anti-Semitic remarks on social media. Now, an investigation into the 46-year-old rapper’s business partnership with the German shoe brand has revealed other shocking details including Mr. West’s problematic behaviour and comments.
According to the New York Post, the artist had marked a shoe sketch with a Hakenkreuz and asked a Jewish Adidas manager to ”kiss a portrait of Hitler daily”. The initial incident occurred during Mr West’s first meeting with the sportswear giant in 2013 during which employees gathered to “pitch ideas for the first shoe.”
As Adidas employees showed off their designs, the singer became irritated with their efforts. To express his dissatisfaction, he allegedly sketched a swastika on a shoe’s design.
”The Adidas employees, thrilled to get started, had arrayed sneakers and fabric swatches on a long table near a mood board pinned with images. But nothing they showed that day at the company’s German headquarters captured the vision Mr. West had shared. To convey how offensive he considered the designs, he grabbed a sketch of a shoe and took a marker to the toe. Then he drew a swastika,” two employees told the New York Times.
In another instance, Mr West allegedly told Jon Wexler, the company’s former global head of entertainment and influencer marketing to ”hang a photo of Hitler in his kitchen and kiss it every day to practice unconditional love”. He also is said to have told some Adidas employees that he thought Hitler was a ”master marketer” and that he really ”admired” his ”command of propaganda”.
Later, the rapper faced consequences for his actions as he was forced to pay a former Yeezy chief executive a seven-figure settlement after they ”accused him of repeatedly praising the architect of the Holocaust.”
Some former employees also alleged that he displayed inappropriate content during work meetings, and made them watch sexually explicit films. Members of the Adidas team working with him were given a subscription to a meditation app and regularly had group therapy-like sessions to deal with the stress of working with the rapper.
Over the next 10 years, these sorts of instances allegedly occurred frequently, until the sportswear label cut ties with him in October 2022. ”Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness,” a company statement said.
”After a thorough review, the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products, and stop all payments to Ye and his companies. Adidas will stop the Adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect,” it further said.
Forbes reported that his net worth dropped to $400 million after he lost the reported $1.5 billion dollar partnership. Other fashion brands such as Gap, Balenciaga, and Vogue also ended their business dealings with him.
