Samsung China has taken a lot of flak for announcing a collaboration with an off-brand Supreme at the Galaxy A8s launch event this week. It's not the “real” Supreme, the extremely popular one based in New York. Samsung actually collaborated with Supreme Italia. It had used a bit of intellectual property law trickery to register the same brand and logo in Italy. Supreme Italia actually defeated Supreme NYC in court this summer over the rights to use the brand in the country.
Supreme NYC was also quick to denounce this Samsung x Supreme collaboration. The company clarified that it wasn't opening a store in Beijing or working with Samsung for that matter. It referred to these claims as “blatantly false and propagated by a counterfeit organization.” Samsung China has paid heed to the bad press and has said that it's re-evaluating the collaboration with Supreme Italia.
Samsung China backtracks on collab with Supreme Italia
Samsung China’s digital marketing manager Leo Lau initially defended this collaboration. He mentioned that Samsung was working with Supreme Italia in China. That's because Samsung NYC doesn't have the required authorization to sell its products in the country. Supreme Italia is planning to launch retail stores in China and this collaboration with Samsung was meant to generate hype. Above all, the two companies didn't reveal at the event what products they would be collaborating on.
The criticism from hypebeasts everywhere, particularly in China, seems to have made Samsung reconsider. Therefore, the company has confirmed through its official Weibo account that it is re-evaluating this cooperation.
“Recently, Samsung Electronics announced at the launch of the Galaxy A8s that it will cooperate with Supreme Italia in the Chinese market. We are currently re-evaluating this cooperation, and we deeply regret the inconvenience caused,” it said.
It remains to be seen whether Samsung will be pulling the plug on this collab. Even if it does that, it may not find a willing partner in Supreme NYC if it ever wants to work with it outside China.
