Nordstrom not to stress over unfriending the Trumps

In the two weeks following the president’s complaint, the share of his supporters negatively considering Nordstrom doubled, rising as high as 30 percent, according to data from researcher Morning Consult Intelligence. However, the company’s overall favourable rating remained constant at 46 percent among all voters, added the same research.

“Something like this is noise,” said Bridget Weishaar, an analyst at Morningstar. “In the long term, this is not going to change whether this is a company that has a sustainable competitive advantage or not.” Weishaar echoed the generalized positioning of Wall Street analysts, who have on average dismissed Nordstrom’s Ivanka rant as a temporary diversion. Oliver Chen, who works for Cowen & Co., estimated in a note to clients that Ivanka Trump may account for less than 1 percent of Nordstrom’s annual revenue, highlighted the ‘Detroit News’.

It’s worth recalling that pressure generated by the "Grab Your Wallet" boycott group has been mounting in the past months, peaking when both Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus announced at the beginning of the year they would be discontinuing sales of items from Ivanka Trump's brand, citing the brand's performance as the main reason.

In fact, data seems to reveal a rather different truth than that painted by the president of the U.S.: sales of Ivanka Trump's namesake fashion line at Nordstrom's had tumbled sharply prior to the 2016 election, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ reported earlier in February. It was that sharp decline and nothing else what hastened the retailer's decision to drop the brand, argued Nordstrom’s defenders across different forums.

The ‘WSJ’ cites in this sense internal data from the department store chain, indicating sales of Ivanka Trump's fashion line had plummeted by nearly a third in the last fiscal year, being the dive particularly sharper just before November's U.S. presidential election.

During a call with press and analysts to discuss Nordstrom's quarterly results, Co-President Peter Nordstrom called the impact on sales "negligible," adding that it was "not really discernible one way or the other,” reported ‘Fortune’ earlier this month.

Not even 5 minutes: how long Trump’s attack on Twitter dragged Nordstroms’ stock

It was four and not the standard five minutes of glory what Trump’s bitter attack on Twitter cost Nordstrom in terms of negative trading on the stock market. Furthermore, after barely minutes, the upscale department stores operator’s shares recover their upwards trend, shelving the whole Trump affair.

Data gathered by ‘MarketWatch’ show how the stock (JWN) was down 0.3 percent at about 42.65 dollars at 10:50 a.m., then was down as much as 1 percent at 42.36 dollars within a minute of Trump’s ‘Terrible!’ tweet (referring to his dubbed as unjustified treatment from the retailer towards his daughter Ivanka.)

That post-tweet low was above its intraday low of 42.32 dollars, which was hit in the first minute after the open. However, barely five minutes later, by 10:55, the stock had bounced back above 42.65 dollars, effectively erasing the effect of Trump’s tweet. Despite a couple of hiccups, by 11 a.m. the stock was above that level for good. And by 11:01 a.m. the stock had turned positive on the day, and it trended higher thereafter, highlights the editor of ‘MarketWatch’.

The chart shows the evolution of Nordstrom’s share over the month after Trump’s Twiter rant. FashionUnited Business Intelligence

Image:Ivanka Trump Soring Collection, Ivanka Trump Web