FEATURE: POST-CONSUMERISM ERA
Surfacing again now that things start to open up and that the two-meter distance rule isn’t much of a thing anymore, mass gatherings can at last become a reality again. Coming together is fun and exhilarating, yet sometimes the most primal, not so glorious side of human nature happens to happen in these situations. On Black Fridays, for one thing, the WalMarts and Tescos of the world get masses queuing for tellys and whatnot offered at half price, the only means of actually getting the deal seemingly coming down to two options: pushing fellow shoppers on the way to the right aisle or, in the last resort, being willing enough to deliberately grab the coveted “steal” from someone else’s hands.
To be fair, this sort of sale day is the perfect time for major chains to get rid of whatever they’ve stocked up on to yet again fill up their shop floor with the latest gadgets. Black Friday has become an all-too-convenient excuse for giant companies with big budgets to justify ordering en masse. If it doesn’t sell — no problemo, it’ll be on sale by year’s end. And the tradition, though American, has made it around the globe, across all sorts of industries. On that day anyone from the big boys to the relatively small companies are pressured to give discounts — just because.
Of course what that does is it pushes us all towards consuming more and more. And though some would argue that that’s fantastic for the economy, is that what all business owners want?
Soulland’s re-seller platform promo
“The money we’d make from Black Friday promos would obviously significantly impact our sales on that very day. That said, we need to think about how that would affect not only us as a business but also the relationship we want to foster with our customers in the long run,” Soulland’s co-founder and creative director Silas Oda Adler tells us. It’s true that when we, as consumers, are bombarded with 50 per cent off sales, the decision whether such steals are actual necessities becomes blurred. Silas goes on, “When someone shops at ours, in no way are we trying to make a sale at all costs. We’re not pushy. We genuinely try to look after our customers and help them figure out if what they’re about to buy is something they actually need and want, that they’ll make the most of it. To us, it’s really important to have an open and honest conversation.”
And so, this past Friday, Soulland has published on their socials a Responsibility Paper, one that recaps what actions the brand has taken throughout the year to find better, less damaging ways of doing business in an industry that already overproduces. “Soulland is a business, and we sell products. But even so, I believe it's possible to question eternal growth and profit built on exploiting the planet and people for profit,” the company’s other co-founder Jacob Kampp Berliner states in the report.
Noah’s Consumer Power blog post
One purveyor of the anti-Black Friday day is streetwear brand Noah. They stood against the tradition of excess consumption since they opened their shop and have never partaken in it. Perhaps that’s because, being established in New York City, they’re just well familiar with the utter madness that goes on when discounts tempt holiday shoppers at every corner. “In America, it’s reached a point where people literally get hurt buying things. It just seemed appropriate to not be a part of that,” says the label’s designer Brendon Babenzien, who was enjoying an additional day off from work after Thanksgiving, just like everyone else at Noah. “It’s a simple way of reminding ourselves and our customers that there are 364 other days in the year to shop.”
“It’s a simple way of reminding ourselves and our customers that there are 364 other days in the year to shop.”
While an efficient way to avoid fuelling excesses of consumerism, what Noah does — or doesn’t do — on Black Fridays won’t turn the long-standing, well-rooted tradition into a worldwide shopping boycott anytime soon. The brand’s whole point isn’t to discourage people from buying nor make other industry players feel guilty for participating in big sales days, but rather to remind us all to be conscious of the impacts of our consuming habits.
Forced or not, some brands, especially new ones, just couldn’t afford to miss one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Such was the case with recently launched outdoor clothing and mountain equipment company Ostrya. “To us it was about putting our products out there. We’re breaking our backs to make durable technical clothing locally, but we were happy that those who weren’t sure they could afford our relatively pricey jackets had a chance to buy them,” co-founder François-Xavier Tétreault shares.
And so, knowing very well that not every company was in a position to skip Black Friday, Noah have linked, along with a brief Instagram caption stating they personally wouldn’t be open, a few brands, shops and not-for-profit organisations they deem to be doing business ethically, including Brooklyn’s Labor Skateshop, Union Los Angeles and Patagonia.
If the latter had, some years ago, run an ad reading “Don’t Buy This Jacket’ in the New York Times, this time around their website welcomes shoppers with a message that, frankly, couldn’t sum up this article better. It reads, pretty straightforwardly: “Give a Damn.”