Why Black Friday Sucks...

You've likely all seen and/or heard about the utter chaos of Black Friday in stores - fights breaking out over flat-screen TVs, people getting trampled, etc. Black Friday can be seriously DANGEROUS, it can be extremely stressful (and also dangerous) for retail workers, lots of businesses are competing with each other with who can start their deals sooner (and therefore it's now spawned 'Gray Friday' and also Black Friday week) not only that, but the pressure of competing with big business can also SUCK for small businesses.

First and foremost the reason big companies can offer slashed prices for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc is because they buy stock in huge volume, which manufacturers can then produce for a reduced per item cost, meaning they sell at a massive mark-up already (anecdotally, depending on the store, wholesale to retail mark-up could be anywhere from 50-700% or potentially even more, which is WILD!). Discounting these prices for customers makes a comparatively small dent in their profits.

As is true for many small family-owned businesses and creative entrepreneurs, we at VelvetVolcano sell handmade items directly to the customer. We do not buy in stock to re-sell with huge mark-ups. Everything is designed and handmade by us (Tamsyn and Linda - that's it!) not in a factory or by machines... which obviously takes a lot of time and effort - we sell directly to you and we do so at the fairest possible price for our customers.

Because of the way our products are made and the nature of our business we cannot afford to compete with big businesses who can discount items by 50% and not even feel it - if we did that we would be operating at a loss. 

From the start, we have always wanted to price as fairly (for you and ourselves) as possible and that is why we will not be running a Black Friday Sale - because we believe in fair prices all year round.

Psssst... we do like to reward loyalty though so keep your eyes peeled for our next blog post which will cover our loyalty program 🙂.