As the boycott on Trump products continues, two major United States retailers added their names to the list of companies that refuse to carry Trump products. On Saturday Sears Holdings and Kmart announced that they will no longer be the carrier of the Trump Home collection available online. The collection sells furniture, lamps, and chandeliers.
Although it is uncertain which of the Trump Home Collections 31 items will be discontinued from the site, at least 14 of the Trump Home Collection products that are sold by third party vendors still remain on the Sears and Kmart website. Those items have even been discounted. For example, a $942 Trump Home mirror down to $624 is marked down on Sears website. Another mirror that had the original price of $818 is now down to a discounted price of $598. On the Kmart website, two Trump Home lamps have been discounted as well.
However, Sears and Kmart join a growing list of companies that have dropped any and all Trump brands as part of a boycott of the first family’s products. Ivanka Trumps name brand clothing line has suffered quite a bit due to retailers like Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Belk dropping her clothing, shoes, and jewelry.
The boycott begins with the Grab Your Wallet campaign. Grab Your Wallet is a list of all the retailers that carry Trump brand merchandise and encourages shoppers to boycott those locations. Though it is clear that none of the companies like Sears, Kmart, Neiman Marcus, Belk, and Nordstrom mentioned the campaign when they announced their discontinuation of Trump merchandise.
The origin of the Grab Your Wallet campaign began back in October after the tape of a 2005 interview with Donald Trump. In the recording, Trump brags on his groping and advancement of women surfaced. The founder of the campaign, Shannon Coulter, posted a tweet which criticized Nordstrom for doing business with Ivanka.
It wasn’t long after the incident that the company reported the rapid drop in sales of Ivanka Trump’s line dropped by 32 percent in the last fiscal year. Ivanka Trump’s products for the third and fourth week of October were even lower by 70 percent.
Even though the previously mentioned retailers didn’t say if the list was a part of the decision, it is a possibility that consumer feedback had a large part in the prompting of their choice. Some retailers have stopped selling the items online even though they continue to sell in a store, like Belk. In fact, Nordstrom said that its choice to pull Ivanka Trump’s line was due to performance instead of fuss brought on by politics.
Nordstrom made a statement saying, “Over the past year, and particularly in the last half of 2016, sales of the brand have steadily declined to the point where it didn’t make good business sense for us to continue with the line for now.”
Neiman Marcus even made a similar comment about its choice to get rid of the brand was due to “productivity.”
Trump took to Twitter to show his unhappiness about the incident. He lashed out against Nordstrom about the company dropping his daughter’s line.
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017
Even the White House has jumped to Ivanka Trump’s defense with counselor Kellyanne Conway appearing to have crossed ethical lines during an interview with Fox News for plugging Ivanka’s products.
Conway said, “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would tell you. I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
This endorsement violates an ethics rule that prevents federal employees in office from endorsing products. It wasn’t long after that the White House claimed to have “counseled” Conway about her endorsement.
