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\n\tAdidas\u2019 once glorious partnership with Kanye West<\/a> turned sour, then legal, and unfolded as a headache of enormous proportions when the rapper made antisemitic comments on social media and in interviews.<\/p>\n \n\tAlmost a year after the German sportswear company cut ties with Ye, its CEO has no hard feelings. <\/p>\n \n\tBj\u00f8rn Gulden, the Norwegian CEO of Adidas, shared his thoughts on West and the background to that very public fallout for a recent podcast. <\/p>\n \n\tNoting that Kanye\u2019s relationship with Adidas pre-dated his own appointment to the top job on Jan. 1, 2023, Gulden remarked, \u201cI think Kanye West is one of the most creative people in the world, both in music and what I would call street culture. He\u2019s extremely creative.\u201d And together, both parties created the Yeezy sneakers line \u201cwhich was very successful.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tPutting creativity to one side, Ye \u201cmade some statements which wasn\u2019t that good,\u201d Gulden continued. \u201cThat caused (Adidas) to break that contract and withdraw the product. Very unfortunate, because I don\u2019t think he meant what he said and I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a bad person, it just came across that way.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSpeaking with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, for the In Good Company<\/em> podcast, Gulden said those remarks \u201cmeant we lost that business, one of the most successful collabs in history. Very sad. But again, when you work with third parties that can happen. It\u2019s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, with an entertainer. It\u2019s part of the business.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAdidas cut ties with Ye last October, raising questions about the fate of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) worth of unsold Yeezys. At Adidas\u2019 annual shareholders meeting in May of this year, Gulden revealed that Adidas would try to sell part of the remaining Yeezy inventory and \u201cdonate money to the organizations that help us and were harmed by what Ye said.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBy ending its association with Ye<\/a>, Adidas took a bath. The split contributed to a loss of\u00a0600 million euros<\/a>\u00a0($655 million) in sales for the last three months of 2022, helping drive the company to a quarterly net loss of 513 million euros. Adidas reported\u00a0400 million euros ($441 million) in lost sales<\/a>\u00a0at the start of 2023.<\/p>\n \n\tGulden, formerly CEO of rival sneaker specialist Puma, succeeded Kasper Rorsted at the helm of Adidas, who was in charge of the business from 2016 until his departure November 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWatch the interview in full below.<\/p>\n