Which national hardware retailers have sold Trump-branded products and when did they stop?
Executive summary
Large national chains that once carried Trump-branded home and lifestyle merchandise included Sears and Kmart, which removed Trump Home listings from their online shops in February 2017 [1] [2], while a variety of online furniture and home retailers such as Wayfair and Bellacor also dropped Trump Home assortments in late 2016 or November of a campaign-season year reported by outlets that tracked the pullbacks [3]. Advocacy-driven boycott lists cataloged who still carried or had stopped carrying Trump products through 2017 and into 2021, but the record in available reporting is uneven and many smaller or licensing partners quietly let agreements expire earlier [4] [5] [6].
1. Sears and Kmart: the clearest national hardware/home chains to stop selling (February 2017)
Sears and its subsidiary Kmart are the most clearly documented national retail chains that had sold Trump Home merchandise and then ceased online sales; both confirmed removing 31 Trump Home items from their online shops in February 2017 as they said they would focus on more profitable lines [1] [2]. Reporting at the time framed the move as part of a broader wave of retailers reassessing ties to Trump-branded goods after his 2016 campaign drew organized consumer pressure and media attention [1].
2. Wayfair, Bellacor and other online home retailers: removed listings in late 2016/early 2017
Several online furniture and home-specialty sites that at one point carried Trump Home products quietly removed those listings around November of the campaign season and into early 2017; Wayfair was reported to have dropped the brand in November and Bellacor also removed Trump products in mid-November according to coverage compiled by lifestyle and consumer-tracking sites [3]. These were not big-box hardware chains but national online retailers that sold lighting, furniture and fixtures that overlap with hardware and home-improvement customers [3].
3. Bed Bath & Beyond and specialty partners: staggered discontinuations (March 2017 and earlier expirations)
Bed Bath & Beyond, which sold Trump Home light fixtures among other items, discontinued sales of those products in March 2017 as documented in summaries of retailer pullbacks [2]. Beyond that, multiple licensing partners either let agreements expire before the 2016 campaign or ended deals afterward — industry summaries found many named manufacturing partners had ceased production or allowed licenses to lapse well before 2018 [2] [6].
4. National hardware chains that did not carry Trump-branded goods (what reporting records show)
Consumer-advocacy lists and shop-guides assembled after 2016 explicitly note that many traditional hardware chains did not carry Trump-branded home lines — for example, the GrabYourWallet list specifically notes that the Do It Best hardware network didn’t carry Trump products and questions whether typical hardware assortments (e.g., at Lowe’s) would even include Trump Home items [7]. Reporting does not provide a comprehensive, sourced checklist for every national hardware retailer, so absence of evidence in these sources should not be read as definitive proof that a chain never carried any licensed Trump item [7].
5. Why retailers pulled products — politics, poor sales, or expired licenses (multiple explanations in the record)
Contemporaneous coverage and later industry summaries attribute retailers’ decisions to a mix of forces: some partners said licenses naturally expired, some cited weak sales, and others acted after public pressure and protests tied to the GrabYourWallet boycott movement and critical media scrutiny [6] [1] [4]. Major retailers’ public explanations varied — some framed discontinuations as business decisions while advocacy trackers presented cutbacks as responses to organized political pressure, revealing competing narratives and agendas in the coverage [1] [4].
6. What remains and reporting limits: a faded merchandising empire but incomplete public record
By 2018 reporting concluded that most of the merchandising network around Trump had faded, with only a few international partners still selling Trump-branded home goods and furniture, and many U.S. retail relationships dissolved or quietly expired [5] [6]. Available sources provide clear examples (Sears/Kmart, Wayfair, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bellacor) and activist lists that tracked ongoing sellers, but they do not offer a single authoritative, up-to-date ledger of every national hardware chain and the exact date each stopped carrying Trump-branded items; researchers should treat the record as patchwork assembled from press statements, licensing disclosures and boycott trackers [2] [4] [5].