Adidas Plans to Sell Kanye West’s Yeezy Designs Without the Name – Report
Following news that Adidas terminated its partnership with Kanye West, the shoe giant reportedly still plans to continue to sell the controversial rapper's designs without the name on them.
On Tuesday (Oct. 25), Bloomberg published a report revealing Adidas will be selling previously collaborated products with Ye solely under the Adidas brand starting in 2023, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets.
News of Adidas' plans to erase Kanye's trademark from upcoming releases came just hours after Adidas revealed the end of their relationship with Ye in a statement released on their website.
"Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism 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," the statement reads. "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."
Adidas also claims to contractually be the sole owner of design rights of Yeezy collaborations.
"This is expected to have a short-term negative impact of up to €250 million on the company’s net income in 2022 given the high seasonality of the fourth quarter," the statement continues. "Adidas is the sole owner of all design rights to existing products as well as previous and new colorways under the partnership. More information will be given as part of the company’s upcoming Q3 earnings announcement on November 9, 2022."
Adidas is just one of the companies who have washed their hands of the controversial rapper-designer following his continual anti-Semitic comments over the last few weeks. Ye has been a breadwinner for Adidas since coming over from Nike in 2013. There were signs that their relationship was frayed before Ye started spreading anti-Semitic rhetoric. Over the summer, Ye called out the shoe company for taking his design ideas. He took the beef further by posting a fake article that proclaimed the death of Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted. Earlier this month, Ye shared video of himself showing Adidas brass porn during a tense meeting.
XXL has reached out to reps for Adidas and Kanye West for comment.