Will Adidas be an even more diverse and inclusive company? This is what said its CEO
The Chief Executive Kasper Rorsted declared earlier today that Adidas has seen no impact on its sales even though many were the employee complaints about racist attitudes within the German sportswear company.
He also added that the company was not dealing with any legal complaints connected with any race issue. Even if apparently the company is doing fine in handling any race inequality situation that might be present within Adidas’ work environment, however, after 23 years at Adidas, Karen Parkin, 55, Executive Board member of the company and responsible for Global Human Resources, has informed the Supervisory Board that she will step down from the Executive Board and leave the company.
She stepped down in June after a group of employees called for an investigation over her handling of racism at the company which she had described last year as simple “noise” only discussed in the US.
Rorsted, speaking at Adidas’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held via videoconference, was asked by a shareholder if sales had been affected by the complaints received recently.
“We haven’t seen our customers shunning purchases,” he explained.
The giant company also has claimed that it has not given enough credit in the past to the many prominent Black athletes and celebrities - like James Harden and Kanye West - as well as Black employees and consumers who have helped to make the sportswear brand so successful.
Rorsted explained today that the company’s employees had told him there were not enough equal opportunities for everybody: “This is not acceptable. So, it’s a priority for us to make Adidas an even more diverse and inclusive company.”
Adidas has reopened four stores badly damaged during the protests in America after the brutal murder of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis in May, and it plans to reopen the fifth store, Rorsted announced in the meeting.
Adidas earlier declared last week that it expected sales to recover and profitability to bounce back in the third quarter assuming there are no new major lockdowns, therefore benefiting from more people exercising and dressing down as they work from home.
Comments