The CEO of Adidas has recently come out in defence of Kanye West, who last year caused the company to lose approximately $771million due to his anti-semitic and racist outbursts.
The company were forced to cut ties with the rapper after employees accused West of “toxic and chaotic” behaviour in the workplace, and a video of West showing a porn film to Adidas executives got leaked online.
However, the company’s current CEO, Bjørn Gulden, recently unveiled he doesn’t believe the “he’s a bad person” but did allude to West’s delivery of ideas as troublesome and slightly unprofessional, to say the least.
In a recent on the In Good Company podcast hosted by Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, Gulden raved about Ye’s creativity, exalting, “I think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world. And both in music and what I call street culture. So he’s extremely creative and has, together with Adi, created a Yeezy line that was very successful.”
He continued to highlight how, like many creative people, West’s outbursts were sometimes disrespectful, stating, “And then as creative people, he did some statements which wasn’t that good. And that caused Adi to break the contract and withdraw the product. Very unfortunate because 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.”
Gulden then accepted that by cutting ties with Kanye, Adidas lost out on a lot of revenue, revealing, “That meant we lost that business. One of the most successful collabs in history — very said. But again, when you work with third parties, that can happen. It’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, that can happen with an entertainer. It’s part of the business.”
Bjørn Gulden seems highly sympathetic towards the College Dropout creator. However, it is doubtful that Adidas will ever attempt to collaborate with West again despite the extraordinary success of Yeezys.