Beyoncé, the popular American singer, dancer and actress, is going to become a “creative partner” of Adidas, helping to design apparel and footwear products that will eventually be co-branded. Adidas will also help relaunch her Ivy Park brand. Adidas has benefited a lot from similar deals with other musical actors such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams.
The same can be said of Puma through its former association with Rihanna, except that she is now going solo, reportedly setting up her own fashion firm with the help of LVMH. Anyhow, it's all in the family, as Beyoncé's husband, the rapper Jay-Z, acts as a creative director at Puma, a big rival and neighbor of Adidas.
Ivy Park is a brand of athleisure apparel co-founded in 2014 by Beyoncé and Topshop, a fashion retailer based in London. In the original deal, each party held a 50 percent share. The singer's actual clothing line was launched in 2016. Topshop is one of several retail banners operated by the Arcadia Group, along with Topman, Burton, Dorothy Perkins and others. Beyoncé bought out Topman's share in Ivy Park last November, after it emerged that Arcadia's chief executive, Philip Green, had taken out an injunction to prevent the publication of allegations that he had harassed his staff. Green denies the allegations. Ivy Park is now wholly operated by Parkwood Entertainment, which Beyoncé founded in 2010 for the production of music, cinema and television content.
A similar attitude toward human rights reportedly led Beyoncé to choose to work with Adidas rather than other sports brands including Reebok, which is owned by the same group. According to Nick DePaula, who covers footwear for the American sports channel ESPN, Beyoncé was, until recently, negotiating some kind of a deal with Under Armour, the Jordan Brand and Reebok. In a recent appearance on The Jump, an ESPN show about professional basketball, DePaula said that Beyoncé had not only turned down a deal with Reebok but possibly walked out of the meeting. In DePaula's words, Beyoncé said something like: “Nobody in this room reflects my background, my skin color, where I'm from and what I want to do.” This version of events is contested by Reebok.
Beyoncé defined the partnership with Adidas as a “lifetime” deal. Adidas noted that the partnership respects her ownership of her own company, “which continues her journey as one of the first black women to be the sole owner of an athleisure brand.”
Beyoncé's name will probably get a big boost later this month as Netflix has scheduled the release of Homecoming, a documentary on a concert she gave at Coachella last year, for April 17.
