If Ivanka Trump thought becoming first daughter was going to help elevate her lifestyle brand, she can think again. Not only are her sales in the toilet, but at least one brand expert doesn’t seem to have a lot of faith in its future.
Carol Spieckerman is a global retail expert. She says Ivanka’s brand is in trouble because her target customers are women, and many women find Donald Trump‘s comments about them pretty abhorrent. The most recent Quinnipiac poll found Trump has a paltry 36% approval rating among women. (His approval rating among men is only slightly higher, at 41%.)
“The lifestyle branding premise behind Ivanka’s label is in jeopardy,” Spieckerman tells the Telegraph. “The women’s marches put the stake in the ground but arguably were survivable. Ongoing controversies surrounding her father’s actions will continue to impact Ivanka’s brand, though.”
Related: There’s something sinister behind Ivanka Trump’s poise
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But even for those who aren’t turned off by Ivanka’s dad’s behavior, or Ivanka’s complacency with it, the first daughter is doing other things to confuse her customers. Specifically, she hijacked its official Instagram page.
Rather than building her own Instagram following, Ivanka simply took her brand’s page, which had an impressive 3.2 million followers, accumulated over several years, and turned it into her own personal page. That means anyone who followed the brand to see what new items the line was promoting are now confronted with random pictures of Ivanka’s dad, kids, and the goings-on inside the White House. Meanwhile, the Ivanka brand had to start back from scratch with an entirely new Instagram page.
Then, of course, there are unhelpful aggressive tweets like this from her father:
My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017
The tweet drew unwanted attention to the brand as it forced Nordstrom to respond by saying the reason it was dropping Ivanka was because nobody was buying her stuff anymore. Shortly after that, the Wall Street Journal came out with a report that sales were down an alarming 70%.
The situation was further aggravated when Kellyanne Conway violated government ethics rules by urging TV viewers to “Go buy Ivanka’s stuff,” resulting in even more negative attention, and causing other retailers to jump of the #DumpIvanka bandwagon, including Neiman Marcus, Gilt, ShopStyle, Sears, Kmart, and the Home Shopping Network.
Related: Hilarious Kellyanne Conway “buy Ivanka’s stuff” memes are blowing up the Internet
“These controversial endorsements from polarizing figures like Kellyanne Conway, and the tweets from her father about her brand, undoubtedly have caused more damage [than good],” Spieckerman explains. “Ivanka may have technically distanced herself from the brand but the optics around her ongoing connection to her father, to include pictures of her in various parts of the White House, reinforce the link and in the end, the brand backlash.”
So what happens next?
“Ivanka could attempt to take her brand in another direction after Donald Trump leaves office,” Spieckerman says, hesitantly, “but she will have many headwinds to fight until that happens.”
The question is, can she even withstand those headwinds? Or will her brand meet the same fate as so many of her father’s failed business ventures?
whatsaywhat
Isn’t there still a market for her sh*tty (made-in-China) tat amongst Russo-Eurasian kleptotrash?
DCguy
Awww, is the crap she ordered from China and Viet-nam and stuck a lable with her name on it not selling?
Bob LaBlah
Personally I thought Laos or Cambodia.
JerseyMike
Bet she looks just like Eric trump without the makeup… Ewwww!!! The trump brand is sinking fast..
am_psi
Experts: “Hillary has a 98% chance of winning the election.” Hmmm.
JerseyMike
You can give a rest man.. The Russians won..
dwes09
As polls predicted, Hillary easily won the popular vote, what part of that is so darned hard for regressives to understand? Polls measure who people are likely to vote for, they voted for her. An electoral vote anomaly would never be seen by a poll.
Find another way to deflect, people are laughing at you.
mhoffman953
@dwes09 What are you talking about? The polls which showed the percentage chance of winning were an aggregate of state polls. Every accredited polling agency whether its ABC, CNN/ORC, Rasmussen, LA Times, CBS, Reuters, or others realize that elections are won by the electoral college and not the popular vote which is why all of those above organizations conduct statewide polls. Every polling company predicted Hillary Clinton would win every swing state. These “experts” were wrong because Trump won every swing state – PA, MI, WI, NC, FL.
The “experts” from the various mainstream media shows were wrong too when they all predicted Hillary Clinton would reach over 300 electoral votes
Just like these “experts”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut0TaegQ-kw
People are laughing at these “experts”
1EqualityUSA
They have a case of buyers remorse.
DCguy
Oh Look, the Trump Troll does his job and tries to alter the topic.
Her stuff isn’t selling. Her business is floundering and your comment relates HOW?
e.c.
Not a great loss since you could buy many of the items from the designers who actually designed them rather than Ivanka’s cheap foreign-made knockoffs. Given the info coming out about the part she played in some of her father’s shady foreign business deals she’ll be lucky if the worst thing that happens to her is that her business tanks.
JerseyMike
LMAO!!
davidkohl
She can always get a loan from her tax-dodging daddy,
Jack Meoff
The people who support her father are not her target customer anyway. Her fathers supporters are Walmart shoppers going by what we saw at his pre-election rallies.
mhoffman953
Oh really? Then how come Trump beat Hillary Clinton in every income bracket of voters except for people earning less than $50,000 a year?
But there’s another leftist example of hypocrisy. The left will complain about the rich, but then they go around and make fun of poor people (even though your statement isn’t fact based since it was Clinton who won with people making less than $50,000 / year and not Trump)
If you’re going to try and insult a group of people, at least have a fact based insult