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Black Friday is often a strong catalyst for revenue for both retailers and webshops, but more companies see the need to turn Black Friday on its head – and instead focus on giving back to the world.
In 2017, Clearhaus estimated that across Europe, the sales volume on Black Friday is around 260% higher than on an average day – this means that consumers are almost three times as likely to purchase a given item during Black Friday than on any other day.
All this also translates into higher turnover for businesses and is typically driven by discounts, yet several international companies have in recent years chosen to focus on the environment instead. For example, North Face has donated a pound for every purchase made during Black Friday weekend, Lucy & Yak donated 10% of their sales to help women’s educational opportunities in India, and DECEIM, which owns The Ordinary among others, closed all their stores during Black Friday in 2020.
However, not only bigger brands are doing something different. There is also a clear trend among start-ups to choose this route instead. There might be many reasons; transparent pricing, a passion to do good, or a general ideology that Black Friday does not align with their brand.
An example of a start-up that is picking up this trend is the Danish company Scandinavian Biolabs, which produces natural and vegan hair products focused on supporting hair growth and healthy hair.
Instead, they have chosen to work together with the NGO organization Reefscapers, which helps preserve marine life. Instead of offering discounts, Scandinavian Biolabs will donate 10% of their sales during the week to help build coral frames. But what do hair products have to do with marine life?
It is no secret that cosmetics are used in massive quantities throughout the world. Their regular use often results in contaminants that make their way into our sea along with waste byproducts such as plastics that can be found globally. Although a future investigation is needed, certain cosmetic contaminants have been linked to coral bleaching (coral death), while others are thought to directly endanger the health of marine life. For instance, research suggests that chemicals found in some sunscreens like oxybenzone can induce coral bleaching, along with common preservatives found in cosmetics such as parabens and triclosan.
“We have a clear need to always give our customers the best prices – especially because we work on a subscription model. It is therefore also not in our interest to have fluctuations in our prices as it makes it opaque for our customers – we thrive on transparency, both in prices and ingredients, and we, therefore, wanted to use the time to engage our customers in what we all can do to consume mindfully” says Anders Reckendorff, CEO of Scandinavian Biolabs.
He continues, “We often see that our customers often ask about how cosmetics affect the environment and what we concretely do to ensure sustainability – our collaboration with Reefscapers is therefore equally an opportunity to tell our customers about how they can help ensure healthy ecosystems – for example by using natural products without parabens.
We also know that we are not where we would like to be yet in terms of environmental footprint, but initiatives like these are what can help both us and others to improve – as other examples, we are in 2022 Q1 switching to recycled PET-bottles instead of regular PET-bottles.”
It can however be thought to stand out among other brands and retailers during Black Friday – the marketing budgets increase across the board. According to Smartly, the cost of getting the attention of a consumer during Black Friday is up to 50% higher than usual, which means that more brands compete for the same customers. This also means that how the information is being conveyed is extremely important – there needs to be creativity, honesty, and thought behind every campaign, especially if you do not offer monetary incentives. Merely supporting a cause is often not enough to put the right focus on the cause.
As an example, Public Fibre, a London lifestyle brand, offered a “Buy more rubbish” campaign, where consumers were able to purchase used, empty water bottles – with proceeds going to Ocean Cleanup. Another example in 2020 was Allbirds, who raised their prices across the board with 1 pound, with proceeds going to Fridays For Future.
Scandinavian Biolabs are also conscious of this, with Anders Reckendorff mentioning that “we are of course looking to raise awareness around the cause as much as possible, and it is very apparent you need to be creative to catch someone’s attention to go donate, instead of taking advantage of a great offer. We are doing several different things, but some of our key initiatives include the ability to buy digital reef-fragments and frames with 100% of the sale going to Reefscapers, as well as the ability to monitor the reefs that you help build through donations when they are put up.”
You can win your coral reef and a year’s worth of Scandinavian Biolabs product by entering their campaign: https://try.scandinavianbiolabs.com/reefscapers/
Looking at the different initiatives across Black Friday, there is a clear trend for both smaller and larger brands to focus on long-term relationships with their customers – and to consider their impact on the environment. But how can that be? Previously, a Barclaycard survey found that up to 62% of consumers plan to make fewer purchases than usual, precisely because of climate impacts. This further supports the general trend among businesses large and small – that being able to talk about how they care for the environment around them is at least as important as offering discounts.
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