F%CK BLACK FRIDAY

BFCM… We’re a week out and you can’t look sideways online without being bombarded with hectic sales left, right and centre. When’s enough, enough? How about everyone goes on sale all year round?

We’re not putting our product on sale just becasue everyone else is, it makes no sense. Our products still cost the same for us to make if it’s November or any other month. If we sell new and current products on discount we can’t function as a business. It’s pretty simple.

We have a sale page, as always for previous seasons stock and for all the folks who are looking for a bargain, please get after it. Our new seasons & current products take a lot of blood sweat and tears from us and everyone in our supply chain to create and I can’t put them on sale out of peer pressure.

So, Black Friday, what is it? Originally coined from the Phildelphia police in the 60’s because of the influx of people shopping the Friday after Thanksgiving because of the discounts offered on left over products. In the following decades the retail sector turned it into a major sale event.

Cyber Monday? This was added in the 2000’s when there was another option to grow the sale event with the introduction of online shopping.

Fast forward to today and Shopify recorded retailers generating 7.5 billion dollars on Shopify alone in 2022. Over the weekend. One online platform. No in person shopping. I saw somewhere else that it generated 211.7 Billion. Fucking wild! Who knows if that last stat is 100% accurate but you get the point. Insane right. How good?!!... Or… Is it?

Everyone loves getting frothy on a sweet disso from your fav brand but this manufactured sale event is the holy grail of consumerism and fast fashion and in recent years we have all probably heard something about the negative affects of this. I’m not here to make you feel bad or stop you from swooping up a sweet deal on that awesome bit of kit you’ve had your eye on for a while that you NEED, but some things to think about in regards to BFCM are the, overconsumption (most things are thrown in the bin a week or so later), environmental impact (increased carbon footprint of everyone), worker exploitation (in the supply chain to deliver cheap product) & consumer debt (everyone maxing their credit cards and AfterPay).

The one main thing that I want to point out along with the above and this hits home for me, is the impact it has on small brands and what their future looks like. With this sale becoming such a huge part of brands ‘strategy’ for the year to generate sales it seems like a race to the bottom. Who can offer the biggest discount and the best deal wins. Sweet, you know who can afford to do that? The biggest brands. Brands that have economy of scale that mass produce and can create products for such a low price that they can build this into their pricing. Cool, good for them. Dog eat dog world right? To some degree but you know who owns them… Investment companies and umbrella companies. Look at the surf industry, Quiky, Hurley, Volcom & Billabong. We look closer to home, along with those surf brands you have DC, Roxy, Ride, K2, Salomon bought out, owned by share holders and big dogs. Maybe they are core and maybe they have you and your best interests in mind when they are making company decisions, or maybe it’s just the bottom line. Maybe they are snowbums just like us, they get you, their customer, their community, but I dunno if you’ll be neckin a Chu-Hi at a Seico Mart after the best pow run of your life next to one of these chaps this season.

I’m not playing the poor me hand here. We’ve lucky enough to be in business for 12 years and hopefully there’ll be another 12, 24, 50. Mass consumerism will continue and again this is not written to make you feel bad, billions of dollars get spent employing Neuro Scientists to create advertising to mind fuck the shit out of you and me alike. We’re all guilty of getting stoked and buying somehing we didn’t really need. What I am trying to point out here is the beast that BFCM is and where this dopamine fueled monster is taking us. To me it looks like it is taking us to a grim place of exploitation, mass production and a race to the bottom where the corporation wins. It doesn’t look pleasant to me.

So this is why we’re going to continue to sit this one out.

Our dollar speaks louder than any TikTok video or rant online. Like it or not, money makes the world go round & how we spent our money dictates what the future looks like. What do we want the future to look like for us and who is to come next?"

- Mitch