Last week was Black Friday or Black Friday Week as the the big commercial stores ended up doing. As we only started up our store in January I hadn’t taken into account how important this week would be as well as what would need to be done to keep afloat.
As a small business owner I have made many connections with other small businesses and before the week started a few of those businesses decided to boycott the Black Friday sales. I was torn between the two, as I knew as a business I would need to throw some type of sale discount in as that is what everyone was after but I understood the reasons as to why they were boycotting it.
As a small our price margins are tiny, our reach is also not massive and there is competition between larger brands and the smaller ones. In simpler words, us smalls would suffer in a major sale as we cannot slash 50% or 70% off our prices to get customers and nor can we continuously spend large amounts of money on marketing or sales.
So in order to still take part in the sale and yet boycott the actual Black Friday trend, we decided like many others to change Black Friday and make it more prominent for small businesses as well as promoting a unity for each other and support entrepreneurs in the same situation.
We did this by changing Black Friday into Black Bubble. There were other amazing trend sales taking place, one that stood out for me was Indie Friday which was championed by Just a Card. It was fabulous to see that others were thinking of the sales like ourselves and wanted to stand out of the crowd but still show we are united against the odds.
Another way we campaigned and supported each other was through social sharing and shout outs. I love doing this as a small as not only does this help meet new people and business owners but it also shows the diversity there is out in the world of entrepreneurs. And it is massive! This type of shouting out in the form of stories or tagging provides a network of support and free advertising for our brands and when you have a small or no budget for marketing this is a really important tool to be able to rely on.
In honesty I knew this week would damage us a bit, the mass sales would cause consumers to look at the larger retailers than the smaller online based shops. Truthfully everyone is looking for a deal especially so close to Christmas and well gadgets are sought out. But hopefully the storm will bring on calm and with us sticking together, we will be able to help build our base back and show the world of shoppers that without these small independent businesses you wouldn’t get the uniqueness in products as you do when shop small.
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