Adidas files for bankruptcy after ‘Asian Hate Matters’ blunder
Customers of sports and retail giant Adidas were shocked on Monday when they received an email from the company with the subject line “Asian Hate Matters.”
The body of the email included a garbled message that read like what one TikTok user described as “a drunk robot’s canned, simultaneous response” to both the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Adidas’ spokesperson, Naveed Rohani confirmed that the company had botched its attempt to show solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, following a spate of hate crimes across the United States.
“I’d ask everyone to just bear with us. We’re new to this whole ‘speaking out against racism’ thing and only picked it up our silence started to cost us business. It’s true that we had an intern copy-paste our Black Lives Matter message from last summer and do a find replace on ‘Black Lives’ for ‘Asian Hate.’ We will do better.”
Unfortunately for Rohani and the rest of his company, it doesn’t seem he’ll get the chance for improvement. A vicious backlash across social media saw the longtime titan of industry’s stock price fall to just 38 cents on Tuesday. The company has since filed for bankruptcy.
