Why These Women Stopped Buying Ivanka Trump's Stuff
CNN/Stylemagazine.com Newswire | 2/28/2017, 10:45 a.m.
Ivanka Trump
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Five years ago, Carolyn Handley walked down the aisle wearing Ivanka Trump shoes in the Trump International Hotel in Chicago. At that point, and until last year, Handley would have called herself a fan of the Trump brands.
"I thought the hotels were great. I thought her clothing line was well designed and well thought out," said Handley, a Republican who voted for Hillary Clinton for president. At one point she counted almost two dozen Ivanka Trump items in her closet, including about 10 pairs of shoes and three purses.
In the fall, she got rid of them all -- including her wedding shoes.
Handley talked about her decision on Twitter, where a number of women have gone to discuss their relationship with the Ivanka Trump brand. CNNMoney reached out to some of them and asked them to elaborate.
They offered insight into why they're breaking up with -- or staying with -- Ivanka Trump.
Those who have turned away from the line, for reasons political or otherwise, have made an impact. Online sales of the Ivanka Trump brand dropped 26% in January compared with a year earlier, according to the retail analysis company Slice Intelligence.
Nordstrom dropped the brand -- triggering a Twitter attack from the president himself -- because it wasn't selling well. TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Neiman Marcus, Belk and Burlington have all announced plans to eliminate or scale back their inventory of Ivanka Trump products.
Rosemary K. Young, senior director of marketing for the Ivanka Trump brand, has said that sales grew 21% last year, and the company said in a statement for this story that it plans to continue growing this year.
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