Black Friday Is Not Your Friend.

Written By Allie Perry November 30, 2024

Black Friday is a sham.

But you probably already figured that out for yourself. It used to be that in the wee hours of Black Friday morning, you could claim your stake in front of some not-yet-open big box store and, when the doors finally opened and you battled your way inside by throwing elbows with grandmas and children, you could get just about anything you wanted for 75% off thanks to some crazy Black Friday Door Busting Super Sale. (For the record, I was home in bed while all of that was happening because you can’t put a price on sleep.)

We later learned that those uber-cheap items were frequently made with different parts or in different ways and were in some way inferior to the products we thought we were buying, but that’s another story altogether.

Now, Black Friday sales are no more spectacular than any other run-of-the-mill holiday sale…that TV you wanted will cost the same on Black Friday as it does on President’s Day,  Memorial Day, or any other arbitrary holiday that’s only celebrated to bolster consumerism.

Even worse than that, companies have been proven over and over again to cheat the system altogether.

I once went sneaker shopping and saw that the sale sticker that had been sloppily placed over the original price was peeling off a bit, and my curiosity insisted I peel it all the way off to see how good the sale was. Only, as it turned out, the price on the sale sticker was higher than the MSRP listed on the box. This wasn’t even a black Friday sale, and when I confronted the store staff about it, they had no answer for me.  Needless to say, I left without the sneakers.

Those shady games are so commonplace now, there are entire apps and websites devoted to tracking prices online so you can see if that thing you just scored a “great” deal on had changed prices recently. Marking items up just so you can mark them down is not a new trick, but it’s predatory and deceptive and should be banned from the earth along with chunky peanut butter and non-stretchy jeans.

This deceptive pricing is why I will never offer a Black Friday sale. Or any sale at all, actually.

I price my jewelry to fairly cover the costs of materials, labor, overhead, and nothing more. There’s no upcharge built into the price to cover any discount you want to see, because I don’t want you paying more for my handmade jewelry simply because you’re not lucky enough to buy it when it’s “on sale”. I don’t want you to get that incredible sense of annoyance when you buy something on Monday and then it goes on sale on Tuesday. And most importantly, I never want you to feel like I’m deceiving or playing games with you. 

Your trust is the most valuable thing you can give me as a customer, and I won’t betray it.