Love it or hate it, Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a make-or-break retail window that carries many brands through the rest of the financial year. It has also become a totem of the ills of overconsumption.
For brands with a focus on sustainability, this longstanding conundrum is increasingly becoming a question of survival. “How do you deal with Black Friday, the most consumerist of the consumerist moments?” posits Aras Baskauskas, co-founder and CEO of US-based regenerative and organic fashion brand Christy Dawn.
Despite calls to boycott the sales entirely, the data makes a compelling case for finding a workaround and continuing to engage, just as Christy Dawn is doing. In August, McKinsey reported that discretionary spending levels have tumbled, while luxury indulgences are being sidelined amid the cost of living crisis. According to WooCommerce, the e-commerce plug-in for web content management system WordPress, 73% of merchants say Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the broader festive shopping period account for over 20% of average annual revenue. Within this group, 28% attribute 30% to 50% of annual revenue to the sales period, while 8% say it accounts for over half of their annual revenue.
But values-driven brands offering steep discounts risk trapping themselves in this cycle for the longer term, says Anna Woods, a former fashion buyer and founder of resale brand Positive Retail. Since November 12, the Positive Retail store windows in London have been plastered with decals reading: “Don’t buy sh*t for the sake of it.” “We’re holding firm,” explains Woods. “What [has the fashion industry] done in the last 20 years? We’ve trained customers to constantly expect discounting, and we’ve extracted value from the product. Discounting has been the death of the industry.”
British brand Not Basics brought this predicament to light in 2024, posting on Instagram that it was joining in Black Friday, not because it wanted to, but because it needed to in order to “stay in the race”. This year, the brand is partaking again, encouraging its audience to consider discounts of up to 50% as a chance to act on previously considered purchases and make the switch to natural fibers, rather than to splurge on items they don’t need.
They’re not alone. “For many, Black Friday has become a gateway to buy better, by accessing higher quality or more sustainable products at an affordable price point,” says Deann Evans, EMEA managing director at e-commerce platform Shopify. “Shoppers are still hunting for deals, but they’re also looking for authenticity and transparency from the brands they buy from.” According to Shopify data, 20% of consumers are planning to shop more consciously or sustainably during the 2025 holiday season, while nearly the same quantity of businesses are banking on sustainable services or products to build customer loyalty. It’s a strategy the likes of Christy Dawn and Everlane are betting on as they use lower prices to lure customers away from fast fashion.
The fundamental need to make sales and the desire to be a conscious voice in a crowded market is a fine line to tread, says Demet Dagdelen, growth and AI executive at WooCommerce parent company Automattic. But she believes consumers are willing to invest if brands find the right balance. “During Black Friday, the typical WordPress.com shopper’s basket grows about 40% larger, suggesting that shoppers use it as a moment to commit to bigger, more meaningful purchases rather than quick trials or small add-ons.”
Can brands really win on all fronts on Black Friday, or is taking part simply feeding the monster? Vogue Business spoke to four brands taking very different approaches to find out.
Christy Dawn: A door to new customers
This year, Christy Dawn kicked off its Black Friday season on November 1, by releasing a simplified version of its bestselling Dawn dress. It typically retails for $198, but the Black Friday version — made from organic cotton rather than regenerative cotton, as the Dawn usually is — retails for just $99. It’s designed to lure new customers into the sustainable fashion ecosystem, says Baskauskas. “Now you’ve felt the quality of our clothing, you’re receiving our emails and you’re following us on Instagram, and there’s an opportunity to make a shift.”
.jpg)
Not just a bestseller, Baskauskas explains that the Dawn — a simple wrap dress — also has the lowest return rate, which he believes is essential for successful customer acquisition, particularly during a window when as many as a quarter of purchased garments are returned. The data backs him up. According to figures the brand shared with Vogue Business, 44% of customers in November 2024 were new, versus 30% on an average month, while new customer orders jumped by 121% compared to the monthly average.
Once Black Friday hits, Christy Dawn will also hold a wider 30% off sale, which Baskauskas says is helpful for moving any inventory the brand has been sitting on. But the driving external messaging is all about lowering the barrier to entry to bring more consumers on board. “November is typically our best month of the year,” says Baskauskas. “If you try to lean entirely on idealism, you’re going to run yourself into the ground. Then, you can’t do your work anymore, so we’ll play the game a little bit here and there to make sure that we can continue to operate and create beautiful pieces.”
Everlane: An opportunity for philanthropy
US brand Everlane takes a two-pronged approach to Black Friday: deep discounts of up to 70% off for its customers on one hand, and funding for environmental and social projects on the other. Now in its 12th year, the brand’s Black Friday Fund is intended to reimagine a day that often symbolizes overconsumption and channel the cultural momentum into something constructive, says senior director of sustainability and sourcing Katina Boutis.
It started as a fund to expand on Everlane’s worker-focused “radical transparency” tenet and make logistical improvements for the people in its supply chain, such as installing solar panels to supply hot water to onsite dorms in Hangzhou, China, and establishing small, container-based farms to provide workers with healthy meals in Bien Hoa, Vietnam. However, it has since spun out into a wider philanthropic effort, with over $1.57 million donated to date, benefiting projects spanning plastic waste clean-ups to supplying meals to those in need.
This year, Everlane has donated $50,000 to nature restoration organization Good Growth’s regenerative cashmere initiative, which seeks to reverse the impacts of overgrazing on Mongolian grasslands. “Cashmere is one of our most emissions-intensive fibers and its over-commodification has contributed to land degradation and destabilized herding communities in the region. Good Growth represents […] a scalable, science-backed model that improves environmental outcomes, while supporting the people and ecosystems at the heart of our supply chain,” says Boutis.
.png)
Though the fund isn’t specifically tied to Black Friday revenue (after initial experimentation, the brand now predetermines the amount in collaboration with the partner organization), Everlane chooses to align its funding with Black Friday to leverage what it describes as the unprecedented attention and engagement associated with the day.
Veja: A spotlight for repair
French footwear brand Veja made the decision to opt out of Black Friday in 2017. After choosing to sit out the frenzy and deep discounting, the brand took a more proactive stance in 2023 by launching Repair Friday and inviting its customers to take sneakers, from any brand, into a Veja cobbler for free repairs. This year, the initiative is running from 5pm to 7pm across its global locations. It forms part of the brand’s wider Clean, Repair, Collect project, launched in 2020 to tackle end-of-life, reduce its environmental impact, and minimize the burden of exported waste in lower income and Global South countries.
“We repair all kinds of shoes and brands, because we consider waste generation to be an industry issue, not a brand issue. The overproduction [associated with Black Friday] imposes an environmental and social problem where customers purchase items in developed countries and export the waste to developing countries,” a spokesperson for the brand tells Vogue Business. “It is therefore really important to find solutions to make items last longer, keep them in use and produce in a smarter way. This is what we aim to do: repair more and more pairs by making it cool and accessible to all.”
Asket: A total shutdown to take a stand
Since 2017 — just two years after its launch — Swedish brand Asket has shut down for Black Friday. No products are available to buy on its website, and its stores are closed for sales, but open for free garment repairs. Unlike most brands, Asket doesn’t introduce new styles every season. It has a permanent collection, which means offloading seasonal inventory isn’t a priority, it’s simply held until the following year. “With a permanent collection and an infinite horizon on every garment, we felt that the only reasonable thing is just to shut down. You can get our products tomorrow, a week from now, or a year from now,” says co-founder August Bard Bringéus.
The brand does feel the impact of sitting out Black Friday (and all other seasonal discounting), but sales bounce back immediately the next day, and the brand has seen steady annual growth since launch, per Asket. As a result, Bard Bringéus is able to reframe the brand’s Black Friday boycott from a risk to a strategy in stability, noting that it’s easier to forecast without the volatility of sales and having to engineer markups around eventual discounts.
Though its shutdown strategy is tried and tested, Asket’s messaging has evolved. The brand previously took a hard line against fast fashion and overconsumption (it’s 110-square-meter “f*ck fast fashion” mural in 2019 being the pinnacle). “For a long time, we were pretty activist and really trying to point to the root issues in the industry. But over time, I think we felt that that might not really appeal to customers anymore. There’s so much going on in the world; there are so many things to be worried about. We don’t put another issue on our customers’ minds. So we thought, let’s just be a bit softer about it and encourage reflection and a slowdown instead. And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last two or three years,” says Bard Bringéus. “Take a breather, no worries. We’re here tomorrow, too.”
