BREAKING: Shopify removes Kanye West's webstore after swastika shirt sales

Breaking news isn’t my newsletter’s usual forte, but we’ve got a big story I’m proud to share. It’s nice when the news is business leaders stopping hate.

Shopify has taken down Kanye West’s web store from their services as of Tuesday morning, as confirmed in my chat with Shopify President Harley Finkelstein.

The musician and designer’s website started selling a single product over the weekend: a white t-shirt with a black swastika. This came in conjunction with Kanye buying a regional Super Bowl ad to promote his site, Yeezy.com.

Kanye’s web store was hosted on Shopify, the popular cloud-based commerce platform. Many had taken to social media to ask Shopify to take down the digital storefront, with some Shopify customers even saying they’d leave the platform.

In a chat over direct message, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein confirmed to me that Shopify has removed Kanye’s digital store from their services. No additional quote was given.

From my POV having worked with many companies the size of Shopify: to remove a hateful storefront like this in about 36 hours is a pretty damn good response time. These decisions take time, and we see many people on social counting down every second. I always encourage people to voice their minds on social, and I’m sure that pressure helped Shopify come to this decision. I’m happy with this speed of decision.

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