Black Friday: Making a difference every day of the week

For quite some time now, we’ve been having some spirited debate around the Yuppiechef lunch table about Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Traditionally, Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated primarily in Canada and the United States as a day of giving thanks for the agricultural harvest of the preceding year. It is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States.

Since the beginning of the 2000’s, the Friday after Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday in the US has become known as the official start of the Christmas shopping season.

Retailers have christened that day — Black Friday. Because it is said to be the day they go from being in the red, to becoming profitable for the year, or ‘in the black’.

Competition amongst the larger stores in the US has become so fierce that they offer their stuff to the public at ridiculously low prices to lure the hordes of eager season shoppers to their outlets.

The result? Search for videos of Black Friday sales and you’ll get an idea.

In addition to crazy prices, the major chains are now also opening their stores earlier and earlier to make sure that they get to the customer’s full wallets first. Many now even trade on Thanksgiving itself to beat their competitors to the start line.

Following the massive success of Black Friday, in 2005 online retailers adopted their own special shopping day over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend; Cyber Monday is now a virtual frenzy for everything from electronics to appliances.

In the last couple of years, retailers across the globe (including South Africa) have been and continue importing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday as marketing hooks to kick off their Christmas campaigns too. It’s a trend which is catching on and perhaps creating a bit of FOMO for those who haven’t as yet joined in on the festivities.

At Yuppiechef, our mission is to bring people together through the products that we offer; the overwhelming effect of Black Friday and Cyber Monday achieves the exact opposite.

Scenes of crowds jostling and fighting with each other for ‘doorbuster’ bargains doesn’t exactly paint the strategy in a very good light for us.

For many, the Thanksgiving weekend has become less about gratitude for the produce of hard work, but rather an awkward manifestation of rampant consumerism and greed.

So, on the face of it, the whole concept of these competitive ‘sales occasions’ on the international retail calendar has very little in common with what we stand for as a brand.

Plus it does feel a bit misdirected to offer Thanksgiving holiday deals when we in South Africa don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving.

The lunchtime Yuppiechef-debaters in favour of not participating at this stage, definitely have the upper hand.

It’s not that we don’t like offering you great promotions, we just prefer offers that are open to everyone rather than ones available to the selected few who fight the hardest.

Written by Jon Cherry..