Sales, soldes, discount!
Did you know that it is primarily a psychological phenomena? Marketers are EXPERT in making you think you are getting more for less. It is a scam. Each season there is a business is caught out raising prices before “lowering” them for a sale. There is even a component of some business models that create products that go directly “on sale”, that is, they were never sold at the “original price”…. ever.
During COVID, there has been much tweeting, talking and some actual discussion about the environmental damage to our planet, and equally as important, exploitation of our fellow human beings to manufacture what we consume. At what cost?
Price reductions are actually anathema to a business (it reduces the profit margin). So marketers have found tricks to make a consumer want more, but making them think they are “getting a bargain”. And where is the price reduction taken from? Not from profits of large fashion corporations. It is taken from the supply chain (humans, material, & our ecosystem or biodiversity) and then already factored into over-inflated prices. In fact, your desire for cheap cheap cheap, has a huge negative impact on the wages of people that make your clothes and the ecosystem in which the material for the clothes is produced.
We hope that you have heard of the 2015 “True Cost” movie, in which Fashion Revolution outlines that “We are increasingly disconnected from the people who make our clothing as 97% of items are now made overseas. There are roughly 40 million garment workers in the world today; many of whom do not share the same rights or protections that many people in the West do. They are some of the lowest paid workers in the world and roughly 85% of all garment workers are women. The human factor of the garment industry is too big to ignore; as we consistently see the exploitation of cheap labor and the violation of workers’, women’s, and human rights in many developing countries across the world.”
For small business, “black friday” is a death warrant. Huge and continuous sales can only be absorbed by fast-fashion or large corporations. They have enormous marketing budgets (available from their large profit margin), that small business cannot compete with. Sadly, many small businesses, that have small profit margins and short supply chains, feel obliged to “join-in” in large sales. This drastically diminishes their revenue and can lead to business closure.
So think this Friday. Are you going to “buy a bargain” in the knowledge that you are further squeezing the already small wage that suppliers of your clothes make? In the knowledge that short-cuts that damage our ecosystem further are being made? Or are you going to say “No!” and support sustainable and ethical business, especially small business, by paying a fair and correct price?
Slow fashion, correct pricing, a better you.
See more on ethical fashion and brands that we suggest here: www.downtownuptowngeneve.com/ethical-fashion/ in addition to buying second-hand from our own small-business boutique here (click below) where we have fair and correct prices 365 days a year!
