Nordstrom responds to viral letter calling on retailer to drop Ivanka Trump's 'toxic' brand
The company posted a response on Twitter Wednesday, saying it's not taking a political position by selling Trump's products.
"We hope that offering a vendor's products isn't misunderstood as us taking a political position; we're not," the company said on Twitter. "We recognize our customers can make choices about what they purchase based on personal views & we'll continue to give them options."
The letter's author, a Northern California attorney named Laura, told Business Insider that she is outraged by the company's response and called it "unacceptable." Laura first shared the open letter on Twitter last week using the handle is @shewhovotes.
On Wednesday, Laura spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity, saying she feared Trump supporters would target her online if she revealed her last name.
"When Ivanka appears with her father at his rallies to promote his views, she also simultaneously promotes her clothing and tweets about what she was wearing. Those products often sell out quickly as a result," she said. "So it is inaccurate for Nordstrom to say that it is not participating in politics or taking a position when it is directly benefiting from Ivanka promoting her wares at rallies where her father is making racist and sexist comments."
She said she no longer feels comfortable shopping at Nordstrom.
"Last year, I spent over $15,000 in that store," she said. "I have spent roughly $8,000 with Nordstrom this year to date, but I have not shopped there for the past month and will not shop there for the holiday season as a result of this boycott."
Laura said she rarely shops at stores other than Nordstrom, but will be boycotting any other stores that carry the Trump brand, including Macy's, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomingdales.
Here's the letter:
Laura isn't the only shopper boycotting Nordstrom and others that carry Trump's products.
The boycott movement was launched in mid-October by brand strategist Shannon Coulter. She launched the hashtag #GrabYourWallet on Twitter, which has become a rallying cry in the effort to take down Trump's brand.
As of Monday, the #GrabYourWallet campaign had more than 119 million impressions on Twitter, which include retweets and likes, The Wrap reported.
Some celebrities have shown support for the boycott, including "Ben & Jerry's cofounder Ben Cohen, writer Joyce Carol Oates, Valerie Bertinelli, Lucy Lawless, and Oscar nominee Don Cheadle," according to The Wrap.
There's some evidence that the negative publicity has started affecting Trump's brand.
Searches for her products online soared between July and October, Fast Company reported, citing data from ShopRunner. During a week in October, searches for her products were up more than 335% over April 2016, according to the data.
But search traffic has taken a nosedive since the start of the boycott.
"We certainly see in the data, in the last week or two, very much timed with the boycott, the decline in interest, but hard to say whether that's just a temporary blip," ShopRunner CMO Angela Song told Fast Company.
But she dismissed the boycott on "Good Morning America" last week, saying many women still support her.
"The beauty of America is people can do what they like, but I'd prefer to talk to the millions, tens of millions of American women who are inspired by the brand and the message that I've created," she said.
In 2015, CNN reported that Macy's was would stop selling Donald Trump merchandise after 700,000 people signed a petition calling on the retailer to cut ties with the Republican presidential candidate who made distasteful comments about immigrants from Mexico.