‘I can say anti-Semitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what?
Kanye West’s two biggest sponsors, Balenciaga and JPMorgan Chase, severed ties with him after he made numerous anti-Semitic comments, but Adidas has been noticeably quiet.
Kanye West’s two biggest sponsors, Balenciaga and JPMorgan Chase, severed ties with him after he made numerous anti-Semitic comments, but Adidas has been noticeably quiet.
However, Kanye West made fun of the German sportswear giant by suggesting that he could be as anti-Semitic as he pleased and still have the support of the business. The corporation may not be able to ignore the controversy for much longer.
If I say things that are anti-Semitic, Adidas won’t fire me. What happens next? In a brief video clip from the Oct. 16 episode of Drink Champs, a hip-hop podcast produced by N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, Kanye is heard asking. The video has since been removed.
The hashtag #BoycottAdidas has been trending on Twitter since the video was posted on October 21. The video has renewed calls for the German sportswear giant to dismiss Kanye West.
However, Kanye West made fun of the German sportswear giant by suggesting that he could be as anti-Semitic as he pleased and still have the support of the business. The corporation may not be able to ignore the controversy for much longer.
If I say things that are anti-Semitic, Adidas won’t fire me. What happens next? In a brief video clip from the Oct. 16 episode of Drink Champs, a hip-hop podcast produced by N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, Kanye is heard asking. The video has since been removed.
The hashtag #BoycottAdidas has been trending on Twitter since the video was posted on October 21. The video has renewed calls for the German sportswear giant to dismiss Kanye West.
The Adidas Yeezy Boost 350 v2 was introduced on Sunday in a brand-new colour, Salt, and has already been purchased and resold 899 times on the online reseller marketplace StockX. However, Adidas is debating whether to drop Kanye West and the very lucrative Yeezy brand from its product range.
a difficult future for Adidas
For Adidas, the growing public relations problem comes at a horrible moment.
Due to an excess of inventory that will need to be discounted, Adidas reduced its expectation for this year’s operating margin from 7% to 4% in its most recent third-quarter earnings report, which was released last Thursday. Due to declining retail visitation patterns in Greater China and a decrease in demand in Western countries since September, Adidas cautioned that unsold goods were accumulating in warehouses.
The revelation caused Adidas shares to drop by as much as 9.1%, wiping away all the gains gained during CEO Kasper Rrsted’s six-year leadership and leaving it with a market valuation that is around one-sixth that of American rival Nike. Adidas may be tempted to keep Kanye West on staff even though the company’s profitability are on the decline because a disproportionate amount of Adidas sales come from the Yeezy line.
Adidas does not provide exact revenue figures from the 2013–2026 Yeezy partnership, but Morningstar analyst David Swartz projects that Yeezy sales for Adidas will be in the neighbourhood of $2 billion yearly, or maybe 10% of Adidas’s overall sales.
“Adidas was having trouble ten years ago in the United States, the biggest sportswear market. Its U.S. company has recovered, in part because of Yeezy,” Swartz added. “It has made Adidas relevant in the collectors’ market and probably allows it to reach a demo that it has missed,” said the author of the study. “It has helped bring its North America company back to relevance.”
Kanye West said to reporters outside his daughter North West’s basketball game on October 22 that “we’re going through legal right now, so anything can happen” when asked about the future of his relationship with Adidas.
By the time of publication, Adidas had not reacted to Fortune’s request for comment.
A propagandist for anti-Semitism
Using the hashtag #RunAwayFromHate, consumers may contact Adidas directly and demand that the firm denounce West’s remarks. The Anti-Defamation League is a Jewish NGO.
“In light of Kanye West’s increasingly vehement antisemitic remarks over the past few weeks, we were disturbed to learn that Adidas plans to continue releasing new products from his Yeezy brand without any seeming acknowledgement of the controversy surrounding his most recent remarks,” the ADL wrote in an open letter to Adidas.
They point out that while hate organisations like White Lives Matter and the Goyim Defense League are cheering and publicising Ye’s remarks, Adidas has condemned West’s anti-Semitism.
Recently, Kanye West has put up a bid to purchase the alternative technology social media site Parler. Ye stated in a press release on October 17 that “we have to make sure we have the right to openly express ourselves in a world where conservative viewpoints are perceived to be contentious.”