Boycotting Black Friday should be a good thing. Companies need to reign themselves in and stop with the opening super early, as well as stop opening on Thanksgiving. But, hey, they wouldn’t do it if some people wanted to shop and buy. It seriously inconveniences employees, though. But, to close for Hotcoldwetdry? Silly
Why Some Brands Are Leading A Black Friday Boycott
Beauty company Deciem is calling for “a moment of nothingness†this Black Friday.
The company, which owns cult cosmetic brand The Ordinary, will close all its stores and take down its website for the whole day on Nov. 29. The aim, according to the company, is to push back against our relentless buying of stuff.
“Hyper-consumerism poses one of the biggest threats to the planet,†reads Deciem’s Instagram statement, “and flash sales can often lead to rushed purchasing decisions, driven by the fear of a sell-out. We no longer feel that Black Friday is an earth or consumer-friendly event.†Employees will still get paid for the day, a Deciem spokeswoman confirmed.
Now, you could say that this sounds like environmental mumbo jumbo, and, let’s face it, some consumerism is bad for the environment. But, this is all code word, it’s duckspeak.
Companies actively sabotaging themselves on one of the biggest consumer days of the year may seem unusual, but Deciem is not unique. For the past five years, outdoor retailer REI has closed its stores on Black Friday, urging its 14,000 staff — who also still get paid — to spend the day outside.
Meanwhile, in France, a collective of 200 brands, organized under the banner “Make Friday Green Again,†has agreed to avoid any discounts on the day and instead donate 10% of their sales to nonprofits. “The aim is to denounce Black Friday and what’s behind it. It’s to educate consumers about a better consumption,†said Diane Scemama, the co-founder of ethical marketplace DreamAct, one of the brands taking part.
These moves fit with a trend of companies looking to take a stand on social and environmental issues: telling us to slow us down, to think carefully about our consumption, to consider whether we really need the things we buy, and in REI’s case, to prioritize time with family and in nature. And what better time to do it than Black Friday?
I’m happy to think about things to buy, I can avoid these companies. They do have a point about spending time with family. So give them kudos for that.
But when it comes to messages around environmental impact, it gets knottier. Companies can appear to deliver messages of responsible consumption, while at the same time tempting us to buy more.
REI’s anti-Black Friday marketing embraces messages around consumption and climate change. This year, it launched a campaign called “Opt to Act,†encouraging employees and customers to take simple actions to reduce their environmental impact. Deciem co-founder and CEO Nicola Kilner, meanwhile, speaks of needing “to feel comfortable in knowing that we considered the bigger impact of our actions.â€
Yet, neither of these companies has ditched deals altogether. Deciem is offering a 23% discount for the whole month (apart from during the blackout). Meanwhile, REI is offering up to 30% off between Nov. 15 and 25. Both defend their sales as providing value to their customers without pushing them into rushed purchasing decisions.
Oops.
But, hey, perhaps we could back down on the consumerism, buying things simply because they are a deal, things we do not need.
TEACH: perhaps we could back down on the consumerism
Two-thirds of the US economy is based on “consumerism” or “consumptionism”.
New cars, new electronics, new clothes, new houses, new pistols…
Cutting consumption would stall the economy, right?
There was a /sarc tag there.
You may be too stupid to see it, but it was there.
Actually,
JefferyJethroMr Dowd is right: without consumer buying products, manufacturing would cease. Our economy depends on consumerism in a different manner than previously. We depend on the velocity of money, on people buying coffee at Starbucks rather than at home, on buying bagels for breakfast and lunch out while at work, on many of the little things that people used to do at home. Because we have a smaller percentage of the population working in production, and the service economy simply moves things around, we need things to move faster rather than slower to keep people employed.Retailers have every right to set heir own hours, and if they wish to close on the Friday after Thanksgiving, that’s up to them.
But the physical store retailers are already suffering from online sales, and you can bet your last euro that amazon.com isn’t going to ‘close’ on ‘cyber Monday.’
Shop locally guys. Every chance you get. Keep the money in your community if you can.
However my wife is constantly saying she goes to Pennys to buy something and they do not have her size. They then tell her to go online and order it and it will be sent to the store and she can then come back and pick it up.
She does. Only she has it come to her home and bypasses the local store because why would she want to make a trip back to the store?
I do not go out of town to buy a car, truck, RV. In another town, it might be 500-1000 bucks cheaper on a 65k Truck but I would rather pay the 500 bucks to keep the money in town.
I buy books from Barnes and Nobel and not Amazon or Apple. Why? Because they have a brick and mortar store in town that employs a dozen-plus locals to run the store.
Brick and mortar are in danger. Keep your money local if you can. It helps your neighbors, even if its 5 percent more expensive, consider it the cost of keeping your community sound rather than paying Jeff Bezos at Amazon to buy more WaPo’s to trash half of America.
They are still having their “Black Friday” sale, just not doing it on Friday. Virtue signaling at its finest.