Prince Charles laments Black Friday, learn to remake your clothes instead

Monday, 26 November 2018

Shoppers take advantage of Black Friday sales on London's Oxford Street.

OPINION: Prince Charles and I don't share a lot of opinions – but this week I was hailing the king in waiting.

One day ahead of Black Friday, he called for Britain to 'eliminate its throwaway society and become better at 'unmaking' and 're-making clothes'.

Black Friday – in case you've missed it – is a massive retail sale which follows Thanksgiving Day in the United States, where last year a record US$5 billion (NZ$7.4b) was spent online in the first 24 hours after Thanksgiving.

Weirdly, it's gaining traction around the world with Black Friday creeping into Britain, Europe and now here in New Zealand.

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Prince Charles might be on to something with his anti-capitalism call for Britons to umake and rake their clothes

I say weirdly because last I looked none of us celebrate Thanksgiving. This is not our holiday. This is not our sale. This should not be our thing.

I have never been more inundated with marketing e-bumpf. Oh, aside from Christmas, of course. But at least we celebrate Christmas here.

Sue Alle says Black Friday should not be a thing outside of the United States.

I've had emails pushing sales on: travel, clothes, plants, makeup, electrical goods, massage treatments, even on-line training courses.

New Zealand retailer Farmers went as far as buying wrap-round advertising for the front page of various newspapers.

The term Black Friday came out of Philadelphia in the 1950s when shoppers flooded the city after Thanksgiving looking for bargains at sales widely promoted by retailers causing mayhem in the city.

In Britain, where retailers slash prices on everything and anything to start people spending in the run-up to Christmas, Brits spent an estimated £1.8m (NZ$2.39m) per minute during the now peak sales period between Black Friday and its sales twin, Cyber Monday.

I have to pause here to commend travel agents, Flight Centre. In the middle of this ridiculous barrage of Black Friday sales and promos they made me smile by inventing their own sales day, Red Thursday.

American shoppers spent a record US$5 billion on Black Friday sales last year.

This sales day relates to nothing at all except that red is Flight Centre's brand colour and it wasn't a Friday, which had already been taken. I applaud their quirky sense of fun and deciding to start their own thing: why not?

So, what next? Blue Monday? Taupe Tuesday? White Wednesday?

Meanwhile, over in China they've just celebrated Single's Day.

This annual event on November 11 is, beyond argument, the biggest single retail sales day in the world, with Asian online sales portal Alibaba recording US$30.8b in transactions over its websites and services this day last year.

Single's Day was invented by students at a university in the early 1990s to celebrate their single-status. Now it's creeping into South East Asia and, strangely, some Scandinavian countries.

I'm waiting for that nugget to pop up here as well, but as it falls on Armistice Day that might not work for us. But as we've seen, when did that kind of thing ever stop retailer marketers.

So, I was pretty impressed with our prince last week when he stepped up at an environmental summit saying enough is enough and, with a new grandchild on the way, it was a one-time opportunity to save the planet.

This was followed by calls to boycott Black Friday because of environmental concerns, particularly the focus on the sale of cheap and unethically produced clothing.

Turns out no-one is actually spending less on clothes because of these bargains – they're spending more and dumping clothes after a few wears.

Prince Charles has never really been a powerful role model, but the new royals do have huge influence.

Perhaps he could convince his boys and their wives to celebrate Black Friday next year by pulling out their sewing machines and re-modelling last year's fashion.

- Sue Allen has worked in journalism, communications, marketing and brand management for 15 years in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.