CLEVELAND — For the droves of vendors selling Donald Trump merchandise in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, business is good – really good.
But hocking Trump swag isn’t necessarily a labor of love. Behind the campy T-shirts and “Make America Great Again” hats they’re selling, many vendors have a less-than-favorable view of the Republican presidential nominee.
“I’m not a fan of either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton,” said Lavonne Williams, 49, a Cleveland-based social worker who started selling Trump merchandise on Monday. “But I need to make money, and the opportunity here is huge.”
As thousands of Republican delegates and GOP faithful descended on Cleveland over the past week, so have vendors from around the country. Disha Williams, who owns a screen printing business in Columbia, South Carolina, has been selling Trump gear downtown all week. She’s not a Trump supporter, she said, but the RNC presents a prime business opportunity.
“We make all our own shirts, and we started going to the local rallies (to sell them),” Williams said. “We started with Bernie Sanders, then we went to Trump, and Trump became more profitable so we stuck with him.”
Travis Cook, 24, from York, Pennsylvania, started a company called Huge Ideas, LLC, to sell pro-Trump shirts for women. He said there weren’t many T-shirts made specifically for women, and that opened up a market for his business.
“People love or absolutely hate Trump,” Cook said, “so they have that passion.”
Street vendors aren’t the only ones trying to cash in on the Trump fever sweeping the RNC. Throughout the city, businesses appear to be hopping on board. A pizzeria downtown boasts a banner that reads, “Make Cleveland pizza great again.” And at the Society Lounge, not far from the convention, a variety of Bloody Marys are named after GOP officials, including the Trump, the Kasich and the Priebus.
Of course, there are Trump faithful among the vendors, like Jessica Jaworski, 35, who lives in Cleveland. The potential for profits drove her to sell Trump merchandise, she said, but she also plans to vote for the the GOP candidate in November.
“We’ve been out here for a week now and, yeah, the money has been really good,” she said. “But we printed our shirts a long time ago, right after Trump said he was running, because we believed in him, we believed he would win. I wouldn’t be doing this with Hillary Clinton stuff.”
Natalie DiBlasio and Michelle Martinelli contributed to this story.
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