You may be familiar with the #grabyourwallet movement, but do you know the woman behind it? In a new interview with The New York Times, Shannon Coulter describes starting her grassroots movement and how a simple tweet turned into a retail revolt against the sitting president and his family's bevy of brands.
Coulter is a co-founder of the Grab Your Wallet campaign, which grew out of the hot-mic video of Donald Trump and Billy Bush. After seeing that clip, which featured President Trump bragging about sexual assault, she sent a single tweet into the ether. It was a short list of brands associated with Trump and his family, but as more and more people saw the tweet and its message, a hashtag became a nationwide movement.
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"The goal," Coulter told the Times, "came originally from a place of really wanting to shop the stores we loved again with a clear conscience."
Through a simple, publically shared Google document, thousands of shoppers have reached out to retailers and asked them to stop carrying Trump products. Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and T.J.Maxx have already dropped Ivanka Trump products. Macy’s and Amazon are still on the list and Coulter is always answering emails and scouring social media networks for information. The list is dynamic: Brands come and go as information comes to light. It's a 24-hour-a-day job, but Coulter says that she's not going to stop anytime soon.
"I don’t think either of us envisioned that some of the things that have happened would happen," Sue Atencio told the Times. She helped Coulter start #grabyourwallet and maintains the site with her. The site has grown, too. What was once a list of stores to avoid has expanded to include a roster of stores that the movement supports. Celebrities such as Gloria Steinham and Lucy Lawless have publicly supported the site, which even offers a script for shoppers who want to voice a complaint.
None of the stores that have removed Trump products credit Grab Your Wallet directly. However, the Times adds that one of the top complaints fielded at Nordstrom involved the chain carrying Trump-branded goods.
Coulter says that she'd like to turn Grab Your Wallet into a nonprofit, but for now, she's focusing on the task at hand. As long as Trump is in office, she says, she has plenty to do.