CEO Bjørn Gulden: “I don’t think he meant what he said. It just came across that way.”
After the sports brand Adidas ended its multi-year collaboration with Kanye West in 2022, CEO Bjørn Gulden spoke positively about the rapper and producer in a recent interview. In it he says, among other things, that West is “not a bad person.”
The brand’s split from the rapper followed a series of anti-Semitic comments West shared on Twitter (now X) and Instagram in October 2022. Gulden now says: “When you work with third parties, something like this can happen. It is part of it. It can happen with athletes, or an entertainer. It’s part of the business.”
Gulden continues: “In my opinion, Kanye West is one of the most creative people in this world, both in music and in what I would call street culture. He is incredibly creative. […] I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person. It just came across that way.”
The separation from West, whose Yeezy brand made the group a lot of money, sharply reduced Adidas’ sales in the first quarter of 2023. In North America alone, the company experienced a loss of 20 percent. However, the brand announced that after the collaboration ended, it would sell the remaining Yeezy products and donate part of the proceeds to relevant charities.
“This is much better than destroying and writing off the inventory and allows us to make significant donations,” says Gulden. The organizations that will benefit from the sale of the products include the Anti-Defamation League and the Philosine & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, which was founded by the relatives of George Floyd.