Judith Treanor is the Founder small retailer Temples and Markets, which sells unique artisan-made products from Southeast Asia. In this piece, Judith reflects on the impact Black Friday has had on businesses like her own.
I wandered through a Westfield mall today. It wasn’t just any ordinary day – it was Black Friday. I braced myself for chaos: packed car parks, endless queues, and fitting rooms bursting with impatient shoppers. But what I encountered surprised me.
Sure, there were more people than usual for a Friday in today’s struggling brick-and-mortar retail, and the car park was nearly full, but it wasn’t the mayhem I’d expected. No lines snaking to the register, no throngs in the dressing rooms.
And – sorry, not sorry – it almost made me smile.
Why would that make me smile, as someone who’s been in retail?
Let me take you back to the early 1990s. I started my career in the Buying Department of one of the UK’s largest department store groups. Back then, Christmas Eve was the biggest shopping day of the year. People bought gifts at full price, and anything left was discounted after Christmas during the Boxing Day Sales.
The idea of discounting before Christmas? Pure madness. It would get you laughed out of the room (or fired!) if you suggested such a thing.
Fast forward to today, and by the time Christmas Eve rolls around, most stock has been discounted for a couple of months already. This is the upside-down world Black Friday has created.
The origin of the madness
Black Friday began in the U.S. as a post-Thanksgiving shopping day. It was their tradition, not ours.
Meanwhile, we in the UK and Australia had our Boxing Day Sales – shoppers splurged at full price in the lead-up to Christmas, and leftover stock was cleared afterward. A sensible system, really.
But somewhere in the last decade, Black Friday’s influence spread, fueled by retailers chasing quick sales. What started as one discounted day became a weekend, then a four-day event when Cyber Monday joined the fray.
But even that wasn’t enough. Now, Black Friday has morphed into “Black November.”
Black Friday devours the calendar
For weeks before the actual day, inboxes are flooded with discounts for everything from hosepipe accessories to reading glasses to organic vegetables. We delete delete delete.
Stores now advertise “Cyber Week” (what does that even mean?), and sales bleed into the entire pre-Christmas season. As a small-business retailer, this perplexes me no end.
For several years, I ran pop-up gift stores in shopping malls during the festive season. Yet, come Black Friday weekend, my store would be a ghost town unless I caved and offered discounts. Without them, I may as well have shut my doors.
The pressure to discount at the busiest, most profitable time of year is maddening. Retailers sacrifice margins just to compete, and consumers are trained to expect bargains, leaving little room for full-price sales anymore.
The overdose of discounts
I overheard staff at a women’s retailer discussing how quiet their store was – despite offering 20 per cent off storewide. Why? Because their sales had started days ago. Customers, now wise to the endless cycle of discounts, no longer feel urgency. Why rush for Black Friday deals when sales stretch on for weeks, and prices will drop even lower come Boxing Day?
The result? A race to the bottom.
Who really wins?
I get it – we’re in a cost-of-living crisis. People need to stretch their dollars further, and bargains feel like a lifeline. But what happens when retailers can no longer sell at full price? When profitability vanishes? How is that good for the economy, for jobs, or for innovation in retail?
What Black Friday has done to retail is nothing short of tragic. What once felt like a celebration of shopping now feels like a desperate scramble, leaving everyone – retailers, employees, and even shoppers – worse off.
As a small-business owner, I know how destructive this manufactured discount culture has become, Retail deserves better than this endless bargain bin.
