How much did U.S. President Donald Trump‘s tweet about Nordstrom help or hinder the retailer’s sales?
“I think it’s not really discernible one way or the other,” company co-president Peter Nordstrom said Thursday.
The question came in an earnings call that accompanied the release of the retailer’s fourth-quarter earnings.
It also came after Trump slagged the company on Twitter for treating his daughter Ivanka “unfairly” after it pulled her products because sales didn’t meet expectations.
In the call, analyst Omar Saeed asked Nordstrom executives whether they saw “any trend in your business at all around the president’s tweets, whether it’s helped you or hurt you at all?,” according to a transcript posted by Seeking Alpha.
“No, that would be negligible,” Peter Nordstrom answered, before the call moved on to other matters.
READ MORE: Donald Trump Twitter criticism of Nordstrom raises conflict of interest concern
Trump’s tweet might not have had any discernible impact on Nordstrom’s business, but it did raise concerns among ethics experts — one of whom worried that other brands might now decide against dropping Ivanka’s products because of fear of being criticized by the president.
“The implicit threat was that he will use whatever authority he has to retaliate against Nordstrom, or anyone who crosses his interest,” Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor, told The Associated Press earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Trump aide Kellyanne Conway was accused of breaking ethics rules when she encouraged people to buy Ivanka’s products.
Sales of Ivanka Trump’s products at Nordstrom dropped by almost a third in the 2016 fiscal year, and they fell especially sharply in the weeks before the U.S. election, The Wall Street Journal reported.
They were over 70 per cent lower in October 2016 compared to the previous year.
READ MORE: Nordstrom sales of Ivanka Trump line fell sharply just prior to U.S. election: report
Nordstrom’s net earnings were $201 million in the fourth quarter of 2016, up from $180 million in the same quarter for the previous year.
Full year net earnings were down, however. They were $354 million for 2016, down from $600 million in 2015.
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