Yeezy.com website goes offline after Shopify stops handling orders for swastika T-shirts
Shopify, an e-commerce platform, has taken down an online store belonging to Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, for selling T-shirts bearing a swastika.
The T-shirts were available for sale on yeezy.com on Monday, after a local ad featuring Ye that ran during the Super Bowl in some markets directed viewers to the website.
On Tuesday, Shopify told CBS MoneyWatch that it was no longer processing orders for the item. The yeezy.com store was "unavailable," according to a message on its homepage.
"All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify," the company said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.
The swastika was adopted by Germany's Nazi Party as its emblem in 1920 and is associated with Adolf Hitler.
Representatives for Ye did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment.
Ye formerly had a lucrative partnership with Adidas, which severed ties with his Yeezy brand after the artist made a string of antisemitic remarks.
"Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech," the company said in October 2022, when the two entities parted ways. "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."
Morningstar analyst David Swartz told the Washington Post at the time that Yeezy product sales had generated roughly $2 billion a year for the German sportswear giant, or nearly 10% of its annual revenue.
Adidas began its partnership with Ye in 2016, and made popular footwear under the Yeezy label. Adidas at the time called the deal "the most significant partnership ever created between an athletic brand and a non-athlete."
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