5 Fashion Brand Boycotting Black-Friday
Black Friday is typically known as being the busiest shopping day of the year. Its heavy discounts and special deals make it a crucial opportunity for retailers and business owners to participate in the biggest shopping event that kick-starts the holiday season.
British shoppers alone are expected to spend £7 Billion in two days over Friday 26th November and Cyber Monday which falls on the 29th. It’s the day of the year where our capitalist society endorses hyper-consumerism and mindless materialism, which we already know is causing huge strain on the planet's environmental resources.
According to the World Bank, we now consume 80 billion pieces of clothing globally each year due to fast-fashion’s ability to exploit workers to produce masses of micro-trend garments that can be sold at a low-cost. One brand that’s directly associated with fast-fashion is PrettyLittleThing, who’s 2020 Black Friday campaign was attacked by critics for their ‘up-to’ 99% off sales with dresses as low as 8p and high-heels for 25p. This blatant encouragement of mindless spending and unsustainable consumerism has left people seeing through the capitalistic dream of Black Friday, and exposes corporations' authentic sustainability efforts.
Anti-Black Friday campaigns have had a surge in popularity amongst retailers over the last few years and is a great way to set your brand apart on social media and prove to your customers your sustainability intentions. Instead of joining in on typical Black Friday deals, take a more creative approach that gives back, raises awareness and potentially attracts new customers. Whether it’s donating money, opting out of deals or completely shutting down your website for a day, alternative Black Friday campaigns are the way forward for sustainable brands.
Here are 5 examples of fashion brands doing Black Friday differently.
FREITAG
The one-off bag company decided to close their online stores on 2019’s Black Friday and encouraged customers to swap their old, used bags through their S.W.A.P. program (the name cleverly stands for Shopping Without Any Payment). Their website displayed the message ‘100% off - Don’t Shop, just S.W.A.P.’, making it possible for customers to exchange their pre-loved bags and satisfy the urge of buying something ‘new’. Through this, the brand aims to promote a circular economy and raise awareness about hyper-consumerism.
ALLBIRDS
Sustainable sneaker brand, Allbirds raised prices instead of discounting for last year’s Black Friday where they asked customers to “break tradition, not the planet”. Each product was raised by £1 which was donated to Greta Thunburg’s climate change campaign, Fridays for Future. Allbirds took Black Friday as a day to give back, closing all its stores and offering complimentary workshops to customers to demonstrate the impact of mindless buying.
DAI
Eco-friendly workwear designers, Dai involved themselves in Green Friday which is a movement started to help raise awareness about the impact of society’s shopping habits. Dai featured a ‘Green Friday Quiz’ on their website which allowed customers to calculate how sustainable they really are. Once completed, it will offer discount codes in relation to their quiz score: the higher the customer’s score the bigger discount they recieve. The quiz takes about 30 seconds to complete and customers are rewarded discounts between 5-25%. This Black Friday alternative challenges consumers to not rush to the shops and instead educate them on shopping sustainably.
BIRDSONG
Birdsong, an ethical and sustainable fashion brand have boycotted Black Friday by renaming it Transparent Friday, making their hatred for the international shopping holiday very clear. Over Transparent Friday, Birdsong not only showed customers the very people who make and pack their clothes and how much they earn, but also exactly how much each garment costs to make, the total revenue for the year and how much the CEO earns. After reading through this information, the brand offers customers to choose either a 10-15% discount on their new winter collection. Their unfiltered approach was appreciated by customers as transparency and honesty is key for customer loyalty.
MUDJEANS
MUD Jeans founder, Bert van Son explained “Black Friday should not exist at all. It contributes to greed and overconsumption. Isn’t it time to detox together?” This led their ‘Nothing New’ campaign where the sustainable denim brand closed its online shop and replaced it with a livestream selling vintage jeans - with MUDJEAN employees on hand to give out personal fit advice. Each pair was sold for $29 and the proceeds went to Justdiggit - a landscape regeneration organisation. By embracing second-hand selling, Mudjeans makes their environmental morals clear by disregarding the narrative of Black Friday’s that encourage brainless buying.
Many other brands have involved themselves in anti-Black Friday movements such as Circular Monday, Buy Nothing Day and Giving Tuesday to name a few. The increase of environmental activism is causing people to think twice about brands engaging with careless Black Friday deals. Yet we should avoid judging those shopping Black Friday as choosing not to is a privilege. Some people can’t say no to sales... so be critical of the brands, not the customers. Although it’s clear people are now looking more towards sustainable brands that use transparency to their advantage by opting out of common consumeristic habits over the shopping holidays.
