adidas stays true to its word, withdraws Yeezy collection from SA online store
JUST a day after announcing that it would be cutting ties with Kanye West, adidas has withdrawn any trace of its collaboration with the US rapper from its South African online store.
In an official statement, the German company said, “adidas does not tolerate anti-Semitism and any other sort of hate speech.
“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 quick search for Yeezy apparel on the local website yielded an error with a message saying, “We can't seem to find the page you are looking for”.
But the rapper’s anti-Semitic remarks may have cost him more than a lucrative deal with adidas and Balenciaga.
Page Six quoted a Forbes report according to which West’s worth is $400-million now after the Adidas partnership was terminated. The Yeezy deal accounted for $1.5-billion of his net worth.
West legally changed his name from Kanye to Ye and had been collaborating with adidas on his Yeezy shoe line since 2013.
This development comes just days after Balenciaga cut ties with the rapper.
Post that, while speaking to TMZ Kanye said, "I ain’t losing no money… The day I was taken off the Balenciaga site, that was one of the most freeing days."
He said that people are merely cutting ties with him to “mute” him. He mentioned that people are doing so to simply “score points,” according to Page Six.
He further added that it’s not easy to cancel him – “We here, baby, we ain'’t going nowhere”.
He defended his anti-Semitic comment and told TMZ, “I want to talk about the Jewish comment, it’s actually proven the exact point that I made”.
Kanye West recently hired Johnny Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez to handle his business matters. However, it looks like the two are not going to work together after all.