In the meantime, Green and Blue Friday (e.g. Lanius donates ten percent of every purchase to the Healthy Seas initiative on November 15) have established themselves as a sustainable counterpoint to the discount battles of conventional providers. At Armedangels there is this time the ‘slowember’ – discounts on selected products that are available cheaper for one month (November). An alternative to quick consumption – you can spend a month thinking about whether you really want the item of clothing. There are no limits for your creativity.
Discounts or activism. How do sustainable brands deal with the Black Friday topic?
What does Black Friday mean for small sustainable labels? I’m wondering what the correct approach is. Go along, offer ‘good’ discounts and do better. Donate the profit or give the consumption day a different color to draw attention to the fact that the discounts are sustainable? The warehouses must also be emptied here before the new goods arrive. Or should one distance oneself and block the topic. The answer is harder than you think.
Wunderwerk founder and sustainability expert Heiko Wunder has a clear opinion on this topic: For him, Black Friday is a price war that robs small and large companies of the much-needed margins. That’s why Heiko Wunder distances himself from premature sales campaigns and discount battles, because in the end these are at the expense of the quality, the producers and their workers who manufacture the products. Heiko calculates fairly from the start and does not include discount campaigns in the price from the outset in order to generate profits after the reduction.
Means: If you calculate fairly and plan well, you don’t need Black Friday.
And the textile workers? Let’s take a look back at the early part of the textile value chain. To textile workers in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia… What do discount campaigns mean for textile workers? What do they have to do with the discounts? Incredibly much. Because they pay the real price for the far too cheap prices in the Global North.
Black Friday meant enormous pressure for the workers in the production countries under already inhumane working conditions. In order to be able to guarantee discounts of up to 80% at all, companies already lower the prices when purchasing the goods. Fashion Revolution Germany
But textile workers must not continue to pay the price for our consumer madness. With the EU campaign ‘Good clothes # fair pay’ we collect one million signatures via petition. It takes that many for the European Commission to put the issue of living wages on the agenda. Together we can hold companies and producers accountable.
Use your vote instead of a Black Friday discount.
Sign here >>>
A living wage is not a luxury but a basic human right. And this must be anchored at European level. This is exactly what we are demanding across Europe with “Good Clothes, Fair Pay”. Carina Bischof, Fashion Revolution Germany
How do you see that? What approach would you like to see from the fair fashion stores?
