Why we're swapping Black Friday for Green Friday
This week, many of us are going to embark on the shopping equivalent of the Hunger Games. We'll be bombarded with Black Friday offers, we'll dash from website to website, trying to find the best 'deals' whilst picking up as many Christmas presents (and, let's be honest, presents for ourselves!) as possible. Sound familiar?
We’ve been asked so many times over the last couple of weeks whether we’re going to be doing anything and the answer...is YES.
But possibly not what you’d expect.
This week and over the whole Black Friday weekend, we’re inviting you to join ourselves and other independent businesses in supporting Green Friday.
Say whaaat?
Black Friday originated in the early 2000's in the USA where the phrase was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that occured the day after Thanksgiving. It's typically the biggest Christmas shopping day in terms of revenue and big American businesses decided to amplify it even more by offering significant discounts on stock they wanted to get rid of.
Small businesses struggle with Black Friday....
- We can’t afford to offer big discounts like larger companies can. We’ve got smaller budgets and much tighter margins.
- Environmentalists have shown serious concerns over the event as it makes people rush into purchases that they probably don’t need, that will end up in landfill. That really goes against our ethos too.
- From our perspective, we believe that we offer value all year round. We really believe in the quality of our products and know they are worth a fair price. If you've followed us for a while you'll know that if we are discontinuing a style, we'll put out a fantastic offer for you to take advantage of samples and the last few of each size.
- If we discount our clothing, it means that we can't make a charity donation and that makes us really, really sad.
So you see, Black Friday just doesn't work for us as a business. We're not alone either. There are thousands of other independent businesses that feel the same.
So what's the deal with #GreenFriday then?
We’d really love you to #shopindependent #shopsmall #shopbritish this week.
We’ve joined with many other independent equestrian brands, who are also supporting #greenfriday
So if you want to discover some awesome, top quality presents from brands that really care this Christmas just follow the hashtag and discover some real gems!
Honest Riders #GreenFriday
You know us, we really want to be able to reward our loyal followers and customers. So we're going to be adding some value to our service this week, to say THANK YOU!
- All clothing orders will come with a FREE Honest Riders tote bag-for-life
- We'll be offering gift wrapping for free (just add a note requesting it at checkout)
If you've signed up to our newsletter (there's a form at the bottom of the page if you haven't) you'll get 10% off your order. If you're already on the list we'll be sending out another 10% off code to all of our existing subscribers.
Thank you for supporting us this Christmas (and all year round!) x
