Ivanka Trump’s brand is losing a major sales channel. High-end department store Nordstrom has confirmed it will stop selling the label, which includes shoes, clothing, and jewelry.
Nordstrom insists the decision isn’t political, and says it’s dropping the brand because of poor sales. “We’ve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance,” the company said in a statement. It carries more than 2,000 brands, and each season cuts about 10% to add new offerings to its assortment. “In this case, based on the brand’s performance we’ve decided not to buy it for this season.”
The phrasing leaves the door open for Nordstrom to resume selling the Ivanka Trump line in the future, and it isn’t clear whether the sales decline is tied to rancor toward Trump and her father, now US president Donald Trump, that arose during the recent presidential race. The Ivanka Trump brand said in an email that its revenue grew overall in 2016.
But the GrabYourWallet campaign, a boycott of Trump-affiliated companies that only began in October after a 2005 video surfaced of Trump bragging about groping women without consent, is claiming Nordstrom’s decision as a victory. The group has rallied thousands to its cause on Twitter, and Shannon Coulter, one of the leaders of the campaign, told shopping and fashion site Racked she had noticed a steep decline in Ivanka Trump products on Nordstrom’s website throughout the last few months. At the start of December, she said, the site had 71 products for sales. As of yesterday, it was down to just four.
The upscale chain was a key partner (paywall) in the launch of Ivanka Trump’s line in 2011. It started off selling shoes and accessories before ultimately branching out into a full fashion line as well. The Washington Post reported that, according to the Ivanka Trump brand, Nordstrom did initially buy clothing from its line for spring 2017, but then changed its mind.
Trump herself has committed to resigning from her fashion line, which reportedly did $100 million in sales its last fiscal year—an amount boycotters are hoping to put a serious dent in.