0
Traditionally, Black Friday has been a gala day for shoppers in the United States. It is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
Since Thanksgiving Day is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season, the retailers offer huge discounts on Black Friday to maximize the volume of sales. The sales start at midnight and continue till Monday, called the Cyber Monday.
Due to the attractive discounts offered, there is usually a big rush at the retailer’s stores and people even sit through the cold night to be at the top of the queue when the shop opens so as to grab the best of the lot. The crowd sometimes becomes so unruly that there have been incidents of death and injuries in the past. This time, many online casinos have also come up attracting players to play casinos. But not all of them are reliable and hence one must be careful of casino scam.
However, this year it was different, in line with the mood set by the pandemic that has changed life altogether considering that the economies of several countries all around the globe have taken an unprecedented battering. As a result of this situation people have lost jobs and are struggling to make the ends meet.
This year the Black Friday fell on November 27, and though many retailers took it as an opportunity to make the consumer spend more, a few big brands have taken a positive step to make this year’s Black Friday a starting point for socially conscious consumerism.
1. Baukjen and Isabella Oliver:
Baukjen and Isabella Oliver is a London-based online brand for sustainable women’s wear and maternity wear. Considering the joblessness caused by the pandemic that has rendered many shelter-less and without food, the brand has maintained the same price and instead, have donated their profits to charity.
They have partnered with four charities, such as, Centrepoint, The Trussell Trust, Papyrus and the Prince’s Trust. The company’s policy was that it is not the right time to promote consumerism by offering discounts and encouraging people to buy more. They emphasized that the company believes buy less but buy better.
2. Allbirds:
Allbirds is a sustainable sneakers brand. They came up with the unique selling policy of “breaking the tradition, not the planet”. The idea is that thoughtless buying sprees during this festive season aided by huge discounts, leads to piling up of discarded items leading to a colossal waste of resources. So, Allbirds reverse discounted their ware by actually increasing their price instead of reducing them. They raised the price by 1 USD and matched it by 1 USD. The difference was donated to an international climate movement fund, Fridays for Future, founded by the young schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg.
It is generally considered that commercial activities do more harm than good for humanity in general, and benefits a very small percentage of people who become wealthier. The sneaker brand stated that they believe that business also can be for good by balancing purpose with profit. Allbirds also believes that it is high time that people should try to discard wasteful consumption and try to lead a balanced life.
3. Hush:
Another online brand that has thought differently this Black Friday is the Fashion brand Hush.
Mandy Watkins, the founder and Creative director of Hush stated that they had always been against the aggressing shopping concept of Black Friday. As such, what could be a better opportunity but to turn the Black Friday sales as a fund-raiser for charity?
In this venture Hush has partnered with the charity Crisis, which has been making a constant effort to alleviate the sufferings of the homeless people through their new initiative “Connect for Crisis”. The charity has also been working on various activities besides housing such as, health and wellbeing, work, learning and digital inclusion. Hush has donated twenty percent of all online sales proceeds during 24 hours to this campaign. The money received through their website hush-uk.com between 0:01 Hours on November 27 to 23:59 Hours went to Crisis for supporting their various activities.
4. Celtic and Co.:
Celtic and Co., the British fashion brand has had a unique concept of setting an example of making people conscious on the proper way of consumption. They have made an awareness campaign of making their customers think what would be the fate of the stock of materials gathered on discounts. More often than not the materials bought this year would go out of fashion soon, and would not be touched again. So, what is the use of spending money in such a wasteful manner?
In view of this, Celtic has not offered any discount this year. Instead they have made a donation of 1 pound for each order placed on Black Friday to CLIC Sargent charity. Celtic has an earlier partnership with CLIC, as they send all the profit of the sales of their knitted mask to this charity to support their ongoing campaigns.
According to the statement of the company’s co-founder, abnormal discounts actually undermine the quality of the goods. Selling goods of inferior quality actually shows disrespect to the people who take so much care to make them. The company’s intention is to be supportive of a sustainable society and contribute to doing something more than just sales.
5. Belstaff:
Belstaff, a British heritage brand had taken a stand to contribute to charity earlier this year for their spring promotion. During the first national lockdown the brand donated one jacket for every jacket sold online. In October, they distributed 350 jackets to vendors of Big Issue Foundation throughout the UK. This provided relief to many people to keep them warm during the winter months.
On this Black Friday, instead of offering a discount they donated ten percent of all sales on November 27 to Big Issue. The Big Issue Foundation’s CEO said that this initiative of Belstaff, is a great support with health, housing and finance for vendors during the present critical times.
The Bottom Line:
It is heartening to see that the crisis faced by humanity due to this pandemic also has a positive impact, as more and more business entities are making an effort towards a sustainable future instead of encouraging mindless consumerism.