People have been jumping off the Kanye West bandwagon left and right this week amid controversial statements he made regarding slavery on TMZ Live Tuesday (May 1). Adidas just isn’t going to be one of them. The sports apparel brand says it will stick with their premier designer through his contentious remarks and has not had any conversations when it comes to dropping Mr. West.
Now, Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted has commended West’s importance to the brand. “We’re not going to comment or speculate on every single comment that our external creators are making. Kanye has been, and is, a very important part of our strategy, and he’s been a fantastic creator, and that’s where I’m going to leave it,” he said during an appearance on Bloomberg TV Thursday (May 3).
“If you look upon our overall numbers, last year we did almost $25 billion. We’re a very large company. Kanye and Yeezy is a very important part for our brand,” Kasper continued. “So while Kanye is a very important part of the Adidas brand, Adidas is a large, global company with a very, very strong presence around the world, and we’ll continue to perform well.”
Rorsted admitted he hasn’t had any communication with Yeezy during the last 24 hours, but vehemently denied any internal discussions about Adidas cutting ties with the 40-year-old when pressed about the idea. A petition with over 14,000 supporters has grown on Care2 calling for the German apparel behemoth to disassociate themselves from the Chicago native over his slavery comments.
Check out Kasper Rorsted’s interview with Bloomberg TV: