Ivanka Trump’s fashion line is reporting record sales since Nordstrom and other major retailers announced they were dropping the collection.
“Since the beginning of February, they were some of the best performing weeks in the history of the brand,” Abigail Klem, who took over the business in January just before President Trump was sworn in, told Refinery29.
“For several different retailers, Ivanka Trump was a top performer online, and in some of the categories it was the [brand’s] best performance ever,” she said.
Nordstrom announced on Feb. 2 that it would stop selling Ivanka Trump products due to poor sales performance. Neiman Marcus, Belk, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls followed suit, to some degree, amid political pressure from the left to boycott Trump brands, dubbed the #GrabYourWallet campaign.
Ms. Klem, a registered Democrat who was the brand’s first hire back in 2013, told Refinery29 that the company is doing well.
“We actually feel super optimistic because, I think, one, a lot of people support Ivanka, even across both political parties. And then I think a lot of other people feel like, ’Oh, I didn’t know Ivanka had a shoe line. Oh, I didn’t know she had a handbag line.’ And they’re buying it,” she said.
Citing e-commerce aggregator Lyst, Refinery29 reported that from January to February, Ivanka Trump sales increased 346 percent.
“If you compare February 2017 to the average orders in 2016, the brand sales increased 557%,” Refinery29 said. “Put another way: The Ivanka Trump brand was ranked as no. 11 in sales for the month of February, a jump all the way up from no. 550 in January.”
Lyst spokeswoman Sarah Tanner told Refinery29 that the brand had never ranked as a top seller before on the site.
“To see such an extreme spike in one month is completely unheard of and came as a huge surprise to us,” she said.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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