On Thursday, Kanye West said he’s terminating the contract between his company Yeezy and Gap Inc. in favor of making fashion more affordable. West is looking to move away from Chinese manufacturing as he said is coming to California saying “We can actually bring industry back to America.”
Kanye joined CNBC’s “Closing Bell” and preferred to go as Ye for the future.
“It was always a dream of mine to be at the Gap and to bring the best product possible,” Ye said on Thursday. “Obviously there’s always struggles and back-and-forth when you’re trying to build something new and integrate teams.”
Kanye West Speaks on Terminating His Deal With Gap pic.twitter.com/4NDGdtwI79
— No Jumper (@nojumper) September 15, 2022
“There’s a lot of stuff where they have a lot of commitments to China. We wanted to do localized manufacturing which is completely possible with some of the factories that I’m buying here in California,” he continued.
“We can actually bring industry back to America,” West said.
The split comes after Gap allegedly failed to meet its obligations in the companies’ agreement, including distributing Yeezy products in its stores by the second half of 2021 and creating dedicated Yeezy Gap stores.
In response, Ye announced over social media that he planned to open a chain of Yeezy stores, starting in Atlanta and expanding across the U.S. and then the world.
YE SENT NOTICE OF TERMINATION TO GAP pic.twitter.com/WFAGbnXh82
— YEEZY MAFIA (@theyeezymafia) September 15, 2022
Nicholas Gravante, a lawyer for Ye, told CNBC “Yeezy notified Gap of its concerns in August and gave the company a contractually-designated 30 days to cure its breaches.”
“Everyone knows that I’m the leader, I’m the king, A king can’t live in someone else’s castle. A king has to make his own castle,” Ye said.
To build that castle all on his own he also said he planned to leave his existing partnership with Adidas when it expires in 2026 saying, “No more companies standing in between me and the audience.”
Shares of the retailer fell nearly 4% in reaction to the recent move.
Gap President Mark Breitbart was forced to immediately respond through an email to company employees saying, “While we share a vision of bringing high-quality, trend-forward, utilitarian design to all people through unique omni experiences with Yeezy Gap, how we work together to deliver this vision is not aligned.”
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