The red cap aside, Trump souvenirs are a hard sell
WASHINGTON — On a recent trip to Washington for a research symposium, Michelle Beermann veered into a nearby gift shop, drawn by the prospect of adding to her new bust collection.
The 24-year-old stood in front of the display in White House Gifts, carefully weighing the faux bronze and marble options — Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama among them — before choosing a bust of Abraham Lincoln, her favorite president, to join the ranks of William Shakespeare, George Washington and various figures of Greek mythology in her home.
And while Beermann, a student at the University of Illinois, plans to eventually add those two other presidents to her collection, she is adamant that a bust of President Donald Trump will not be among them.
“I’m just not a fan of his, for political reasons,” Beermann said. “I didn’t want him staring at me.”
Her sentiments reflect an unusual quandary for some distributors of presidential merchandise: Just over six months into the Trump presidency, how do you successfully market a divisive president?
“This is difficult for us as a retailer to determine what to sell,” said Jim Warlick, who owns White House Gifts. The demand for what he describes as anti-Trump items regularly matches or eclipses the selling power of merchandise for the 45th president — with one notable exception.
“That red cap has been the best cap we’ve ever had,” he said with a laugh, referring to the red cap emblazoned with the “Make America Great Again” slogan. The hat, a lasting symbol of the 2016 presidential campaign, is popular at souvenir stands throughout the city. “Our families are so split in America that people buy for both sides,” Warlick said. “Either as a joke or to be nice.”
While his shop has a mix of presidential, District of Columbia and White House souvenirs, he has placed a majority of the Trump items at the front of the store, from “Make America Great Again” T-shirts to troll dolls with flourishing blond locks. But for every person who buys a hat, there is a potential customer looking for anything other than a souvenir of the 45th presidency, he said.
“Do I want to buy something from this place?” one young woman asked her friend, scoffing at the glass display of inauguration items just inside the front doors as they walked inside. “Support the Trump supporter?”
Overall sales in the first six months of Trump’s new presidency are 13 percent below those of the first six months after Obama’s 2013 inauguration, Warlick said. He attributes the decline in part to a decrease in popularity for the new president, particularly among the store’s foreign clientele, who prefer spending money on Obama merchandise. But beyond policy and appeal, he added, it is difficult to compare Trump with the historic significance of the first African-American president.
“The passion for Obama, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Warlick, who had been selling and designing presidential merchandise since 1980 before he opened his gift shop during Obama’s administration. “It never really slowed down, and then picked up in his last year.”
On Cafe Press, an online gift shop based in Louisville, Ky., Fred Durham, the chief executive, said he’s been surprised by the presidential nostalgia. So far this year, roughly 30,000 items have been sold related to previous administrations; there was a 40 percent increase from 2016 in sales for items related to President Bill Clinton and a 20 percent increase in items related to Lincoln.
The tone of the items sold, Durham said, is also different for the Trump administration. It’s less about the candidate and more about gloating over the conservative victory. With President George W. Bush, the merchandise tended to be satirical commentary, and Obama’s souvenirs played off his hopeful, historic tenure.
“A lot of the topics are less about Trump and a lot more ‘Trump won, deal with it,’” he said. “It’s a little rude, and more about the neighbors than it is about the candidate.”
The dynamic between Trump’s supporters and critics is why Debbie Turcio, an artist in Cleveland, initially avoided anything political when she drew greeting cards. But in March, she drew a Trump-themed birthday card for her father, who supports the president, and has since sold several thousand online and through retail buyers.
The $4.50 card, which parodies Trump’s speaking style — “Everyone knows I buy the best birthday cards, believe me. You will never find a better birthday card than this birthday card right here,” reads the caption above a drawing of the president — is by far the most popular item on her Etsy page. She’s sold only about 100 similar Hillary Clinton cards in the past few months.
“I’d say most of my buyers are haters,” Turcio said of the Trump card, adding that she also disagrees with the president’s policies. “For me, personally, it’s a way to make money off of Trump, so it’s kind of therapeutic.”