In recent years, we’ve seen a growing “anti-Black
Friday”
movement by retailers and
consumers
that counters the shop-till-you-drop mentality, not to mention the
environmental impacts and product
waste,
characteristic of Black Friday — a frenzy of deep discounts, limited-time offers
and last-ditch efforts urging you to “save” by spending more that has become
synonymous with overconsumption and unnecessary purchases.
The idea of a backlash against Black Friday and what it stands for may have
first been planted in people’s minds by Patagonia back on Black Friday 2011
with its full-page ad in the New York Times suggesting that people “Don’t buy
this
jacket.”
Since then, Patagonia has continued to lead with this ethos — encouraging its
customers to live in accordance with their values by eschewing the Black Friday
frenzy in favor of “repair[ing]
what we already own, shopping for used gear to keep it out of the landfill, or —
when you do need something new — buying clothing and gear that’s built for the
long haul. We also have ways you can donate your time, money or skills to the
issues that matter to you most.”
REI began its own don’t-buy-into-Black-Friday
movement
in 2015, when it closed all stores on Thanksgiving and Black Friday and paid
employees to instead
#OptOutside,
to enjoy the great outdoors with family and friends — a movement that has grown
year on year. This year, the co-op made it an official
policy and continues to encourage other
retailers to follow suit.
Anti-Black
Friday,
“Green Friday,” whatever you want to
call it — participating simply means following REI’s and Patagonia’s lead and
forgoing the rampant consumerism-driven madness altogether; or, if you do shop,
making purchasing decisions mindfully, sustainably and when possible, locally
(and we don’t just mean at your local big-box store).
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But how effective are anti-consumerist campaigns for the brands behind them? As
sustainability expert Sian
Conway-Wood
recently pointed out, unless you've got the ad budget and reach of a global
brand, counter-narratives against social norms likely won’t be powerful enough
to drive impacts at scale. But since many people will still be shopping as we
head into the holiday season, smaller, sustainability-minded brands’ advantage
lies in highlighting the benefits of their offerings over that of conventional
rivals.
One company embracing that approach is Scrummi – a
UK-based maker of sustainable and biodegradable textiles for the hair and
beauty industry. With its message of “Black Friday is bullsh**t,” the
company is rebelling against the concept by highlighting the benefits of its own
environmentally superior offerings.
Robert Cooper, Managing
Director at Scrummi, told
SalonEVO,
“At Scrummi, we don’t believe in Black Friday. Our mission is to reduce the
environmental impact on the hair and beauty industry, not encourage
overconsumption and unnecessary purchases. Let us help you reduce your
environmental impact, not add to the destruction of the planet.”
Other brands taking this route include:
-
Swedish outdoor apparel and equipment brand Fjällräven, which is
encouraging its customers to instead think of Black Friday as
“Long-Term-Investment
Friday” — since “we only
know how to make timeless and durable products that last.”
-
Dutch “home and body cosmetics” brand Rituals is celebrating “Green
Friday” by offering
special discounts on its refill products, to help consumers eliminate excess
packaging; and for every refill sold, the company will “plant, protect or
restore a tree.”
-
“Abnormal skincare company”
Deciem has eschewed Black
Friday for the past few years with its “Slowvember” event — which encourages shoppers to think about their skincare needs, goals and regimen, and to research slowly. During Slowvember,
the company offers a 23 percent discount on all products across its portfolio of
brands (Niod and The
Ordinary) for the entire
month of November (except for Black Friday itself, when its stores and
websites will be closed).
-
Men’s sportswear brand Zanerobe has partnered with One Tree
Planted
and committed to planting a tree for every online order to help offset any
carbon emissions.
Brands donating Black Friday profits
Other brands are embracing the holiday shopping binge and using it to benefit
their causes of choice. Examples include:
-
In 2014, women’s apparel brand Everlane created the Everlane Black
Friday Fund as a
way to support its partners and “leave the industry better than we found
it.” This year, it’s partnering with The New Zealand Merino Company —
the world’s leading responsible and regenerative wool
supplier,
which developed the wool for Everlane’s Good Merino Wool products. Every
$100 spent this Black Friday will “kickstart regenerative grazing for 66
sheep in New Zealand. Our goal? $50,000 — which equates to greener pastures
for 33,000 sheep.”
-
On November 21, UK-based conscious clothing brand Lucy &
Yak will introduce a new, limited-edition print
for its popular, organic Original
Dungarees to
celebrate the relationship with its long-time charity partner, the Fior Di
Loto Foundation — in the brand’s
continued bid to challenge Black Friday by upholding positive impact over
overconsumption. 100 profit net profit from the dungarees will go to the
Foundation — which is dedicated to providing an education and improving
living conditions of the more than 700 girls living in villages in
Northwest India — to help even more girls get to school. Across the
Black Friday sales period (November 21-27), Lucy & Yak will also be donating
half of all profits to the foundation, in line with its donation to the
charity for “Fior Di Loto Friday” since 2018.
-
Website translation software provider
Weglot will donate 50
percent of its Black Friday and Cyber Monday proceeds to charity for the
fourth year in a row.
-
Women’s apparel brand Z SUPPLY will allocate all of its Black Friday,
Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday online profits to the Z SUPPLY Foundation
Education Fund. New
this year, the brand designed limited-edition, online-exclusive graphic tees
and sweatshirts that support the campaign.
Championing circularity
Arguably, one of the best ways to shop is to support brands and platforms that
extend the useful life of existing products, rather than buying new. Just a few
examples include:
-
Apparel recommerce platforms – more and more brands are embracing
recommerce
as a way to extend the life of their products.
-
Fashion resale marketplace Poshmark is hosting its second annual
Secondhand Sunday (Nov. 26),
which is focused on redirecting shoppers away from mass consumption and
toward the purchase of pre-loved goods — supporting environmental
sustainability and the livelihoods of individual sellers. To commemorate
Secondhand Sunday this year, Poshmark is hosting an array of live, virtual
shopping events – centered around the company’s popular Posh
Shows feature
– to encourage holiday shoppers to shop secondhand for their gift-giving
needs. For every purchase made during a Posh Show on Secondhand Sunday,
Poshmark will contribute an additional $1 to its partnership with
veritree to fund tree-planting projects in the US and Canada, up to
$10,000. Learn more at
www.poshmark.com/parties.
-
Ortlieb’s ‘repair rather than rebuy’
initiative
— Already renowned for its products’ durability and sustainability,
Ortlieb — a German manufacturer of
waterproof backpacks, panniers, travel bags and other biking gear — proudly
announces the return of its annual Repair Weeks, running from November
13th to December 3rd, 2023. During this time, the company will offer its
repair services at 40 percent off the usual cost of repairs for all products out of
their 5-year warranty period. Ortlieb introduced Repair Week in 2022, in
response to the escalating culture of rapid consumerism often associated
with Black Friday.
-
Vivobarefoot’s
Revivo — the brand’s platform for buying
secondhand Vivos — is an industry-first e-commerce solution tailored to
end-of-life footwear. Revivo allows consumers to return their used footwear
for expert repair and subsequent resale, circumventing the tragic cycle of
landfill disposal. In FY 22-23, over 42,000 pairs of shoes were refurbished
through Revivo.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Nov 17, 2023 6pm EST / 3pm PST / 11pm GMT / 12am CET