为何 Black Friday 200 亿美元消费是 200 亿美元品牌伤害

Once upon a time, Black Friday was an annual sale day that ran for one day a year. A Friday, as its name suggests.

One day wasn’t enough, so we turned it into a four-day frenzy by adding Cyber Monday. Then came the sneaky Thursday and the ‘Cyber 5’.

Now, Black Friday discounts start two weeks out, but 14-day sales were never designed by or for small and sustainable brands that price with integrity, manufacture responsibly and market honestly. And this kind of discount culture is crippling small Australian brands.

I’ve been watching it happen for more than a decade. I built one of Australia’s largest online stores for sustainable fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands, and I never ran a Black Friday sale. I never ran sales at all.

No Boxing Day rushes. No EOFY flash sales. No Afterpay Day discounts. Nothing.

That decision was ideological, yes, but it was also commercial. I like making money. I just never understood why I would spend the entire year asking customers to value the full price of a responsibly made product, then arrive in November and announce that, surprise, it’s suddenly worth 20, 30 or 40 per cent less.

Shouldn’t the price just be the price?

As I grew my business over the years, I learnt more about consumer behaviour and sales psychology, and discounting for the sake of discounting made less and less sense.

Because people remember what you teach them.

When you teach customers to expect regular discounts, they learn that the full price is negotiable. When you run a sale at the same time every year, they learn to wait for it. Then brands become frustrated that customers won’t buy at full price anymore, but we trained them not to.

The irony is that discounting absolutely works. That’s exactly why it’s so dangerous. It lowers resistance. It creates urgency. It gives people a reason to buy now instead of later. But when it becomes your default selling strategy, you teach customers that your product is better when it’s cheaper. And running sales to boost cash flow is not a sustainable strategy.

Nor is running a Black Friday sale simply because ‘everybody else is’. Good business decisions should make sense for your individual products, margins, customers and goals. Sometimes the smartest thing a small brand can do is the complete opposite of the crowd.

Take one of my clients, Slappas Thongs, as an example. After deciding Black Friday had become commercially unsustainable, the brand replaced its 2025 Black Friday discount with a price rise campaign instead. It generated nearly $10k in website sales over four days and set a clear brand position on discounting moving forward. Since dropping discounts from the business strategy, Slappas reports a higher average order value, lower expenses and a significant lift in annual profit.

Other Australian brands are taking a stand

Mia Fratino first closed its online store over the Black Friday weekend in 2021 to protest overproduction and mass consumerism, and has repeated the strategy every year since.

Merchants of the Sun publicly rejects Black Friday and instead uses the period to promote intentional purchasing.

Citizen Wolf has run its ‘Black Fridye’ alternative to Black Friday since 2018, encouraging customers to extend the life of clothing rather than simply buy more.

And there are hundreds of sustainable and independent brands boycotting Black Friday, choosing to think for themselves and do things differently. These campaigns work because they’re more than just a refusal to discount. They’re a statement, a campaign, an opinion.

And opinions build brands.

For sustainable businesses especially, Black Friday presents a choice. Either join the most chaotic discounting period of the year, or use it to show customers exactly what you stand for.

You do not need to be the cheapest brand to get the sale. You need to be the brand people connect with, trust and value if you want your customers to pay full price.

Because 20 per cent off might buy you a transaction over Black Friday, but a strong point of view will build you a brand for the long term.

• This story was originally published on Inside Small Business.

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