Why we hate (but need) Black Friday

Black Friday is everything we are not. Bargain basement prices driving mass over consumption of products people often don’t need, made by people who get 10 cents an hour. It drives prices down for stores that are struggling to survive at the best of times. Buyers now know everything is discounted at Black Friday so they hold off spending until the sales start. Black Friday has become completely consumer driven. 

But Black Friday got its name for a good reason. Retailers often spend most of the year in the red and it is only on the last Friday of November, as everyone plunges into their Christmas shopping, that their accounts go into the black: Hence, “Black Friday". 

But for us, we need to start earlier than the last Friday of November for a very simple reason. 

[Bear with me, it’s a long’ish explanation.] 

We weave and print our own cotton for our reusable gift bags and furoshiki wraps, and that has to start in early November in order for our sewing team to start stitching in January. (Our cotton for reusable crackers was printed in August and production for these is almost finished). All stitching, labelling, and packing must be completed by May 30th at the very latest to get shipped around the world in time for Christmas. Shipping from Kabul to the border of Pakistan is long, painful, and expensive. Getting the Afghan customs “Gumarak” to approve the export is slow. Authorities constantly close the border at Torkhan for any reason, sometimes for no reason. Once it’s actually made it to Peshawar it goes to Karachi where the stock is all transloaded from the jingle truck that left Kabul, to a sea-worthy watertight container (long, painful, and expensive). Then it has to clear Pakistan customs (long, painful, and expensive). Then it has to ship to New York, Adelaide and Auckland (long, painful, and expensive). 

Auckland and Adelaide are quite fast at unloading and moving to our distribution warehouses but the USA takes 4 weeks to clear customs, pay tariffs, transload into different shipments that go to our distributor as well as retailers who order directly (long, painful, and expensive). Once it reaches its destination, it takes another 4-6 weeks for the stock to be received, counted, loaded online and synced with our store (long, painful, and expensive).

All of this is to say, in both 2024 and 2025 we were late – losing 2 months of valuable selling time. Any ecomm owner knows you need to run the algorithms for months to get good data before you start to see sales hit a decent ROAS. We had another late year this year and it’s killing us. 

So, we can’t afford to delay another day. We need to start our cotton printing now. But we can’t do that when our bank account is in the red. We need to start Black Friday earlier so we have the cash to get production underway. It’s that simple. That’s why we’re doing it. We don’t like discounting products that already have a very small margin. The discount you’re getting is great for you but it restricts how many women we can employ in Kabul. It means we can’t buy more sewing machines. It means we still can’t afford the minivan to help women get to and from work safely. 

But here we are. It’s November 10 and we are going all out with our Black Friday with 20% off our entire Christmas range – and that includes 20% off already discounted items such as bundles and our clearance section. 

So happy shopping to you!! Every purchase you make helps us employ women in Kabul and that’s why we exist. So pile your cart up and enjoy the festive season!

Merry Christmas!!!