Broken cooperations
Fynn Kliemann lost these deals because of the mask scandal
Finn Kliemann
© Hauke-Christian Dittrich/ / Picture Alliance
Fynn Kliemann was a jack of all trades who had a lot of deals going. Because of the mask affair, the partners are now terminating their cooperation in rows – from beverage companies to hardware stores.
Fynn Kliemann is a musician, handyman and social media star. Above all, however, he is also an entrepreneur who has used his reputation and image for numerous projects and cooperations in recent years. The scandal surrounding the veiled origin of mask deliveries in the Corona crisis brought this structure down. There is still some legal work to be done, but the reputation of the influencer is in ruins.
Since the publication of Jan Böhmermann and his team, more and more partners have turned their backs on Kliemann. “I failed to check more closely where my name was advertised, where customers might trust my name,” Kliemann said in the star-Interview justified. Now nobody wants to have anything to do with the name Kliemann anymore – not just the online shop About You, which has removed the scandalous masks from the range.
St. Pauli and Viva con Agua terminate their collaboration
FC St. Pauli was one of the first partners to distance itself. In response to the allegations, a project with Fynn Kliemann and his textile company Global Tactics was stopped. In a statement it says: “FC St. Pauli stands for fairness, sustainability, diversity and social compatibility. If the allegations against Fynn Kliemann and Global Tactics prove true, FC St. Pauli will have all available legal consequences examined. “
The Hamburg non-profit organization Viva con Agua was also “dismayed and affected” by the events, which “stand in stark contrast to our values, our idea of community-oriented entrepreneurship”. “We are therefore terminating all business relationships between Viva con Agua and Fynn Kliemann, including all affiliated companies.”
The German Sustainability Award has revoked Kliemann’s award from 2020 “because he used unfair methods and betrayed us with greenwashing”. The association “We’re going to do it”, which provides emergency aid for refugees and bought thousands of Kliemann masks of dubious quality for a refugee camp in 2020, was dismayed by the “doing business on the backs of those seeking protection”.
Toom renounces the do-it-yourself king
The DIY chain Toom is one of the prominent advertising partners who now want to get rid of Kliemann. This had entered into “a temporary cooperation” with the self-proclaimed do-it-yourself king and his creative project Kliemannsland, “which is focused on the creation of do-it-yourself and DIY videos”, according to a Toom spokeswoman star said. The allegations against Kliemann are taken very seriously. “Toom immediately suspended all ongoing cooperation measures immediately after the report was published,” said the spokeswoman for the hardware store chain belonging to the Rewe Group. “We are currently examining legal options.”
The beverage manufacturer Berentzen is also looking for space. With his Mate brand Mio Mio, Kliemann had brought out a merchandising collection and sold it through his online shop. The collaboration ended after the ZDF report, Berentzen told the Lebensmittelzeitung.
Global Tactics under criticism
In general, the focus is now on the entire business with supposedly sustainable textiles, which Kliemann sells in his online shop “Oderso”. Because the production partner is the company Global Tactics, which also handled the mask business at the time and in which Kliemann is involved today.
Global Tactics founder Tom Illbruck asserted that star to produce “clothing exclusively in Europe”. But the online giant About You also assumed that when it wrongly sold the Global Tactics masks under the Kliemann label as made in Europe, for which it now blames Kliemann and Global Tactics. In any case, trust in the “textile manufacturer for fair and sustainable clothing”, as the company calls it, has been shaken.
Kliemann evidently recognized that something had to change himself. “I have to clean up my life,” he said in the justification interview with the star. “My past few years have been a rush. One project followed the next, every week I started something new, everything just got bigger.” Some of the clean-up work is now done for him by others.