President Donald Trump criticized Nordstrom’s move to stop selling his daughter Ivanka’s brand, asserting it was politically driven and not due to poor performance.
“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly,” Trump said on his Twitter account Wednesday. “She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!”
Last week, Nordstrom said last week that it would stop selling Ivanka Trump’s brand this season due to poor sales. The decision comes after the Grab Your Wallet campaign in which a critic of the administration asked shoppers to boycott retailers that carry Ivanka Trump or Donald Trump goods.
Nordstrom stated, “Based on the brand’s performance, we’ve decided not to buy it for this season.”
A representative from the Ivanka Trump brand, which is no longer run on a day-to-day basis by its namesake, told Bloomberg the business remains strong with revenues jumping 21 percent in 2016. Growth is benefiting from seven new product categories being added since 2014. Zappos, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Hudson Bay and Dillard’s all still carry the line.
Asked about the controversy in his daily briefing Wednesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer argued that the President’s tweet was “less about (Trump’s) family business and about an attack on his daughter.”
“For someone to take out their concern with his policies on a family member of his is not acceptable, and the President has every right as a father to stand up for them,” Spicer said. He called the company’s decision “a direct attack on (the President’s) policies, and her name,” despite Ivanka Trump having taken steps to separate herself from her businesses.
“There is a targeting of her brand and of her name,” he said. “It’s still her name on it.”
Following President Trump’s tweet, Nordstrom issued a statement to the press, “To reiterate what we’ve already shared when asked, we made this decision based on performance. 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 also reportedly was removing the limited collections of Ivanka Trump merchandise it carried. The New York Times also reported that TJX Cos. is removing promotional signs/display stands for Ivanka-branded merchandise at its TJ Maxx and Marshall locations and stock the items on the racks with everything else in the store.
