Sunday, 12 February 2017
Sears, Kmart Join Other Retailers in Dropping Trump-Branded Merchandise
Sears, Kmart Join Other Retailers in Dropping Trump-Branded Merchandise
Yet another retailer has dropped Trump-branded merchandise.
Last week Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus announced they were dropping first daughter Ivanka Trump's eponymous collection.
Now, Sears Holdings -- parent company of Sears and Kmart -- has announced a similar move, dropping Trump Home items.
"As part of the company's initiative to optimize its online product assortment, we constantly refine that assortment to focus on our most profitable items," a spokesman for Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Sears Holdings told ABC News in a statement Saturday. "Amid that streamlining effort, 31 Trump Home items were among the items removed online this week. Products from the line are still offered online via third-party Marketplace vendors. Neither Sears nor Kmart carries the line in brick-and-mortar stores."
The Trump Home collection includes furniture, lighting, and bedding.
After Seattle-based Nordstrom said it was dropping Ivanka Trump's collection "based on the brand's performance," President Trump jumped to his daughter's defense.
"My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom," the president tweeted last Wednesday. "She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!"
White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended Trump's tweet, saying said he had "every right" to stand up for his daughter. "This is a direct attack on his policies and her name, so there's clearly an attempt for him to stand up for her because she's being maligned because they have a problem with his policies," Spicer said.
Nordstorm fired back, reiterating that the decision to pull the clothing line was 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," Nordstrom said in a statement. "We've had a great relationship with the Ivanka Trump team. We’ve had open conversations with them over the past year to share what we've seen and Ivanka was personally informed of our decision in early January.”
Similarly, Neiman Marcus last week said in a statement that it has "a very small Ivanka Trump precious jewelry business which is comprised 100 percent of consigned merchandise (merchandise owned by the vendor). Based on productivity we continuously assess whether our brands are carried in stores, on our website, or both."
The decisions to no longer carry the line follows a grassroots campaign spearheaded by foes of Donald Trump called "Grab Your Wallet," which called for a boycott of retailers that carried Ivanka Trump or Donald Trump merchandise.
None of the retailers, thought, cited the "Grab Your Wallet" campaign as a factor in dropping the collection.
Credit:http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sears-kmart-join-retailers-dropping-trump-branded-merchandise/story?id=45435154
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