Beyond Black Friday

Our Dear Customers,

I hope you had a good week last week.  I thought I’d let you know why we aren’t doing Black Friday deals this year. 

I was surprised to look on-line and see definitions of Black Friday linked to shoppers in America going crazy shopping on the day after Thanksgiving.  There are stories about retailers being in the red but then going into the black/profit on this big shopping day.  It’s also described as the first big shopping day for the start of the Christmas season as historically, Americans wouldn’t begin anything to do with Christmas until after Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday of November.

The real history is that on 24 September 1869, the Panic of 1869 was kicked off because the Stock Market crashed.  Two ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much of America’s gold as they could to try to corner the market, drive the price up, sell and profit.  On that Friday, President Ulysses S Grant found out what was happening and unloaded $4m dollars’ worth of gold on the market dropping the price of gold and collapsing the gold market. The stock market plummeted more than 20% the next week, ruining many investors across society.  Farmers were impacted more than most and saw the value of their wheat and corn harvests drop by 50%.

So, we’ve decided not to follow the crowd and promote Black Friday.  Instead, our Buying Team will continue to curate wonderful promotions every month for you and we’ll continue with our programme of reducing everyday prices, where we can, to make heathy eating more accessible through the year.

Eat well; live better, 

Renée x