New Filing Suggests Ivanka Trump's Brand Saw A Sales Increase Last Year

There’s new evidence that Ivanka Trump’s brand is thriving, despite boycotts and a swirl of negative press that have roiled the company since the presidential election. The company that manufactures Ivanka Trump’s brand, G-III Apparel Group, reported a $17.9 million increase in net wholesale sales of the brand’s licensed products in the 12-month period ending January 31, according to an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commision last Tuesday. The brand had $29.4 million in sales the year before, the filing said.

The company, G-III, which also manufactures products for brands like Calvin Klein, DKNY, and Tommy Hilfiger, cited the Ivanka Trump brand as one of a number of brands that saw “an increase in gross profit” last year. According to the report, gross profit for GIII “increased to $840.9 million for fiscal 2017 from $838.6 million for fiscal 2016...This increase was primarily the result of a more favorable product mix, as well as an increase in gross profit for the Calvin Klein, Eliza J, Jessica Howard, and Ivanka Trump product lines.”

A source at G-III, who declined to comment on the record, explained to Refinery29 that while Ivanka Trump might have been one of its faster growing brands last year, it is not one of the larger brands that the company operates. G-III works with over two dozen brands and had a total of $2.39 billion in net sales last year.

Since Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and election, the Ivanka Trump brand has been subject to a boycott campaign and has been dropped by Nordstrom. In February, Abigail Klem, the brand’s president, claimed to Refinery29 that, despite the negative press, the brand had seen a surge in customers. At the time, that was bolstered by independent e-commerce aggregator Lyst, which found that from January to February this year — around the period that Nordstrom dropped Ivanka Trump goods, and Kellyanne Conway came under fire for promoting them — sales had surged 346%.

That month, it climbed to the No. 11 spot on Lyst’s top brands list — up from 550 in January. The resale platform thredUP, meanwhile, saw sellers flipping pieces from the label in 2016 at a much faster rate than the previous year.

Although Ivanka Trump has rolled the fashion company into a trust, she will continue to receive payments from it. It was also reported last week that she will continue to benefit financially from her other family businesses, as well. This despite the fact that she is now an unpaid employee of the federal government. That last fact prompted two Democrats to pen a letter to the US Office of Government Ethics over concerns that her plans to benefit financially from the brand might pose a conflict of interest, and a lawsuit from a San Francisco boutique over unfair competition stemming “from Donald J. Trump being the President of the United States and from Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared, working for the President of the United States.”

When asked for comment, a representative for Ivanka Trump Collection directed us to a past statement from Klem, in which she noted that February of 2017 represented "some of the best performing weeks in the history of the brand."

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