It's Black Friday week
and I used to be all into going shopping and getting the best deals.
And then I looked around and realized how much stuff I already had, realized that everyone else was most likely in a very similar situation and then I subsequently stopped caring about Black Friday.
I flip flop every year on if I want to participate with a Black Friday sale or not.
I may change my mind in the future but I will not be doing a sale this year and here are a few reasons why
- My profit margins are low as it is - a max of 35% profit, and often lower, comes back to the business, and due to startup costs, I'm still currently not even paying myself a salary. Cutting down my profit even more when I'm already on such a small scale doesn't really make much sense. Keep in mind that large corporations are cutting down prices and STILL making profit on your spending. (This is mind boggling for me)
- If you really want to try something we sell, I trust that you'll buy it. I'm not here to promote over consumption or buying things you truly don't need or want, we have enough of that in our day to day lives, I'd rather not contribute. If you want something, you'll get it or tell someone else you want it as a gift.
- We do not overprice our products as it is, so a sale decreases the value we attribute to that quality item. We do have very occasional sales during the year but we're matching vendor prices and our guidelines are to price as fairly as possibly for the quality goods you're getting. Can you get things cheeper? Definitely. Are they as good quality? More than often that's a no.
If you're still here and have been following me for a bit, then I know that you must feel a similar way. Here are 2 documentaries that I recommend watching instead of doing Black Friday shopping (specifically large corporations black Friday shopping). They have great information and pull aside that curtain for you to see how things really are and as a fair warning, they also do have a bit of fear mongering in them. I'm not sharing them to make you feel shame for purchases that you've done in the past but more for you to see what is actually going on and how using your dollars to purchase things you TRULY want and need is actually one of the best ways to invoke change.
1.Buy Now! : The Shopping Conspiracy
This documentary has just recently been added on Netflix. It pulls the curtain away on all the stuff we have, where it goes when it's done, why we truly don't actually need it and how much harm it's causing to ourselves and the planet. Linked here
and
2. The C word
This documentary is narrated by Morgan Freeman, was made in 2016 and is currently on YouTube. It goes over the processed food industry and how it is linked to our health, very specifically how processed food has a negative impact on our body and on cancer cells - i.e. The C Word is Cancer. It's very interesting and eye opening on how our food is processed here in North America. Linked here
*As a side note, I had a great convo with someone at the Greely Good market last week about our food. They immigrated here from Scotland and mentioned how a fridge in Scotland is MUCH smaller then here, they keep left over cooked food on the counter instead of in the fridge (yes, even meat) and how much more sugar is added to processed foods like our bread compared to UK bread. It's all very interesting.
If you still choose to buy from large corporations after watching these documentaries - that is okay, more then okay actually, that is normal I think at this point (even for us). It's a huge challenge to switch our habits and we're all so busy, 'changing our habits' sounds impossible.
All of this to say that it's just time to be aware of what we're buying, where it comes from, how it was made and it's effect on our body and/or planet because it's becoming clearer and clearer that our life and the lives of future generations very much depends on it.
Okay, I think that's it for this week. One thing I can guarantee you, is that I will not be sending you an email to your inbox this Friday morning, but I will include some pretty great products below (we finally got a restock on our chocolate!) that in my biased opinion, are worth spending money on.