Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Ahava Sales Skyrocket in Maryland: When we fight back we win

When the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington found out that the pro-Palestinian group Sabeel DC had organized a protest and boycott call at Ulta in Silver Spring, Maryland last Saturday, the organization sent out an action alert urging supporters to visit the store and buy Ahava.

The store completely sold out of Ahava products.

“They cleaned the shelves out. It was the best Ahava sales weekend the store has ever seen. They had to order an expedited shipment” afterward, said Arielle Farber, director of Israel and International Affairs for the Community Relations Council. “The greater Washington community is not going to stand for this campaign to delegitimize Israel."....

Carrie Lannon, Ulta’s director of public relations, said in a statement that “Ulta selects the products that its stores carry based strictly on products’ sales and customer interest. Ulta does not take a position on or get involved with politically charged issues in relation to the merchandise that it offers in its stores.”

Read the full story here:

The moral, folks? When we fight back we win.
Here's how to help:
sign up here
http://www.buycottisrael.ca/form.php

Do you support Israel? Are you fed up with calls to boycott Israeli goods and services? Want to do something about it? NOW YOU CAN. Sign up for BUYCOTT ALERTS today.

They'll alert you when a boycott initiative needs to be countered, and we'll let you know the results of every BUYCOTT action.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

From Faith McDonnell

http://www.theird.org/Page.aspx?pid=1563

"....Inside Ulta, we were even more pleasantly surprised. The store was almost sold out of AHAVA. The remaining products, spaced throughout the shelves would barely have filled one shelf. The regional distributor, who was there from Richmond, said that the sales that day were the largest in a single day ever! In fact, he said, the sales that day were larger than the total sales in an average month. And it was not even noon yet.

So it seems that this time the Friends of Sabeel boycott backfired. Perhaps if they showed some balance, talked about the value of Israel as the only democracy in the region, condemned without qualification the evil of suicide bombers and Hamas attacks lobbing thousands of Ketushah rockets into Sderot and elsewhere, and reported truthfully about the persecution of Palestinian Christians by Palestinian Islamists, they may not have agitated hundreds of folks in the Washington, DC area to trek over to Silver Spring to buy AHAVA. Now THAT was love!"

Anonymous said...

From the Washington Jewish Week:

http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/main.asp?SectionID=57&SubSectionID=76&ArticleID=13125

The Ahava shelves at the Ulta stores in Silver Spring were bare by Monday morning, after the Jewish Community Relations Council sent an alert on Friday, encouraging purchases of the Israeli-made personal care products.

JCRC’s call came in response to picketing planned at the store on Saturday, calling for a boycott of Ahava...

That boycott seems to have backfired. One buyer alone, according to sources, purchased more than $1,200 of products.

Who knew a boycott could be good for an Israeli firm?