Why DECIEM'S Black Friday Boycott Works

0:00Last Black Friday, Americans spent$9.8 billion in a single day. That's more money spent in a single day than the entire GDP of the Isle of Man. Customers are queuing up for deals and platforms like Shopify and Amazon are making billions. But what's really happening behind the scenes for brands trying to figure out how or if they should participate in it all? We'll be joined by a founder who's taken radically different approaches to Black Friday. One who's completely reimagined what a shopping holiday can be. But before that... Chris, you've worked in luxury marketing. so what do you think about black friday i think it's hard for everyone to sort of hold themselves to the same standard i think if you're self-owned and really established you face less pressures to try and sell things quicker and also the nature of your product has a lot to do with whether you discount and whether it's trend-led or sort of timeless or whatever it's very hard to have a brand with a timeless product that's not trend-led that you don't have to discount ever you know that you ever have to get rid of stock so what do i think i think it's a tool but it should be used sparingly i think some companies do incredibly well and some companies just give in for discounting and forever lose the brand equity that they seek for the rest of the year you know yeah it's quite challenging isn't it you have this sort of messaging all year round that we should be more conscious and more sustainable and that you have this complete consumerism obsession and it feels like every single brand whether you're a b corp or not whatever your sustainability credentials or not still fall into the trap because you have to make sales and everyone else is doing it so it feels like a track you just can't get out of we had clients that were doing 50 of their sales in that sort of november through to the end of december yeah so like if you're not capitalizing at that moment yeah you are just fundamentally a smaller business yeah it's fascinating so nicola welcome to secret leaders thank you it's great to be here thanks for coming on um can you give us your thoughts on black friday i think black friday promotes hyper consumerism and i think it you know In recent years, it's become so focused on deep discounts and kind of quite a short window of time.

2:01And I think that ultimately leads to consumers buying the wrong products for them, which I think is terrible for the planet, amongst many other things. And I think it can also drive businesses to make the wrong decisions too. So is there a difference between Nicola, the CEO, and Nicola, the consumer? As in, do you have some bad Black Friday habits yourself? Yeah, but I guess I would probably have learned from that. I think we've all been guilty in the past of buying something because it's on a deep discount. And, you know, you get caught into like the sale ends midnight tonight and you're like, gosh, I have to buy that.

2:32And how often do you look in your wardrobe and you see things because you've bought when they're reduced and you actually never wear them because you were, you know, if you wouldn't pay full price, should you really pay a reduced price? And I think it's something so, you know, when I look at Desiem 10 years ago, we very much were guilty of doing the terrible Black Friday thing. we would do a deep discount. So we would maybe do up to 70 % off just a few products, either just for Black Friday, then it became Cyber Weekend. And when I look back, and I guess one of the reasons we changed our approach six years ago was because we're like, wow, why are we getting consumers to buy the wrong product for them?

3:08Because maybe they need product B, but because we have 70 % of product A, they're buying product A, when that might be a terrible product for their skin. And again, as a business, when we were looking, okay, which few products shall we put on sale, we'd be picking the products that we had the most stock of, or maybe we had the highest margin on because, you know, we'd be losing money. So we'd be like, let's kind of lose the least money. So we'd just be making the wrong decisions all around and consumers would be making the wrong decisions. And, you know, whilst that weekend was our biggest weekend of the year financially and commercially for sales, it just didn't feel right knowing that actually we were getting rid of probably overstocked products and giving them to consumers.

3:45So six years ago, we decided that we would boycott Black Friday and actually try something different. So what we decided, we took the calculation of effectively doing the deep discount on just a few products for a few days and said, what would that look like if it was spread across the whole product range across the whole month? And that's where this figure of 23 % came from. So we said, okay, let's give 23 % off the entire range, so every single product in our brands and do it for the whole month. So that's when it became what we call slowvember so slowvember for us is really about slow shopping and that means actually taking the time to do considered purchases mindful shopping really understand what is it you need and only buy what you need and buy the right products for you and and it was you know quite a brave decision six years ago because when you're now going to boycott your biggest thing and you know 23 when you see how deep some black rider sales are it's not you know the biggest discount out there um but actually consumers just really hard you know I always think DesiM's about good values we always just try and do the right thing and I think so many of our consumers resonate with that too and I think they may be all feeling you know the anxiety that we probably the overwhelming feeling of that cyber weekend where your inbox is just cyber sale cyber sale cyber sale and actually taking ourselves out of that saying look you have the entire month to do this and then what we do on actual black friday is we shop at shut our stores and our website becomes non-transactional so you can still go to the website for education the regimen builder find the information but you can't buy products from us on black friday and again this is part of our friday weekend no just the actual black friday day okay you're not crazy you're principled but not mental well i'm so interested to drill into this actually like like what what was the versus you know was it was it better before financially was it better after financially and then uh like how many people copied um so i mean much better now financially because it's across the whole month even though the discount's much smaller um and again we as a brand so we don't promote throughout the year you'll you know retailers do what they want but as a brand we never support any discounts for the rest of the year so again our consumers when we see it coming to kind of late October, we see in all of the Facebook groups, on social, everyone's like, okay, hold off now because we know the November sale is coming.

6:10So just on that, does that mean you have a really bad October? You can sometimes see it starting to soften You can tell by the doubt in her voice that is yes, yes, but I can't say that myself. No, to be fair, not too much. And again, like, you know, the thing with the ordinary is we very much believe in honest, accessible pricing. So actually all year round, I think consumers feel like they're getting great value for it. So it is a different proposition to something, you know, out of reach to many people where maybe they can actually only afford to enter it. But yeah, for sure, November is our biggest sales month of the year.

6:41So it's incredible for us as a brand, but also we get a lot of new consumers in, the average basket increases, conversion increases. So for every metric you could want from a DTC business, it's incredibly strong for us. But you know, when we think about the pros and cons, so when we do shut our stores on Black Friday, it does annoy some consumers because if you're out shopping in Covent Garden and you have your shopping list and you want to come to us, it does stop you in your tracks. Now, we still believe... Do you put something in the windows about this? Yeah. So we actually used to do events in stores.

7:11So we would do like flower making and things where we actually were encouraging people to kind of be anti-consumerism and more just actually mindful in this crazy day. But then we found we were getting a few frustrated consumers who would then be coming into the store and be like, but why can't I buy products? Yeah, I just want that thing. Yeah, which I know you're like, well, we can't sell today. So we're like, actually, it's... Would you like to make some flowers? No, not really. Can I tell you about consumerism? No, I just want the product. So yeah, we decided it was actually better to kind of, you know, we still display the message on the shop's door in terms of why we're shut.

7:42Again, just to try and promote people to just think extra. We're not saying don't shop on Black Friday because, again, the reason why we take part in the month is we recognise it's a huge shopping moment of the year. you know most people are buying gifts for the end of the year so if people can save money like that is a good thing for consumers but i think you know when you look at black friday sales and i know which did a study of like 66 000 products and only two percent of products were actually cheaper during black friday because i think again brands and retailers have got so used to it being this hot shopping moment for consumers that you know everyone's also thinking about their profits and how they drive sales so well we'll give enough discount but not actually our best discount every year.

8:2366 ,000 products, 2 % worth. With the cheapest price for the whole year. As in living up to the promise of Black Friday. Yeah. God, that is staggering. And for me, you know, like Black Friday. I feel like even Amazon, that's probably true, who started it, right? They literally started it, but I feel like you go on Amazon and you're like, I feel like that much of a discount, I swear, that it was cheaper in January. I've read that like 40, 50 % of Amazon wasn't cheaper in Black Friday. Yeah. I think Jay gave that to me. Because they know they've got the consumer's interest. like everyone is in shopping mode in november and yeah half the time it's cheaper in january or another point in in the year and which really isn't what black friday was supposed to be around so again i'm proud like for the ordinary the cheapest time to buy our products certainly from us is in the month of november like we stay true to the promise of what it's supposed to be about obviously with desi there's multiple brands and ordinary is the cheapest yes yeah so the most accessible we would never use the c word um but at the other end obviously you've got some really expensive luxurious brands which ones are people gravitating more towards because you know 23 % off something that costs 10 quid yeah is okay but 23 % off something that costs 100 quid is very exciting and i mean the ordinary is our biggest brand so of course that's always driving the the most revenues for us but neod definitely sees if we look at the whole year and how many of the the sales come through in the month of November, NEOD sees a bigger portion of its revenues coming through in November because it is a higher price point.

9:49So again, people are finding it more accessible. We'll often get consumers trading up from the ordinary who have maybe been a fan. They understand Decium. They understand the Umbrella Company. And in that month of November, they're like, actually, I am going to try NEOD because it is a little bit more expensive. And again, we find people, you know, NEOD has a very high sense of consumer loyalty. So people will stock up on their favorite products too because if they know there's a product that they want to keep using yeah then they'll buy a few to stock up for the year obviously there's a lot of this conversation is focused on what i want for myself this year but i think really the reason black friday started was christmas shopping surely right so how does that relate do you have any like data or understanding of how many of your customers are actually coming in to buy gifts um so i guess the only data we would really have is our sets and our sets do sell um more again like a bigger percentage of our mix in the month of November than they do through the rest of the year, which would suggest people are buying as gifts now.

10:44I think the only thing that would be different about The Ordinary to some other beauty brands is, you know, skincare is more personal and I think The Ordinary is quite treatment focused. So it's more specific to someone's skin type. So I think, you know, and I remember at Christmas, I often see us on, you know, people are posting their like teens Christmas list and they'll kind of put the specific products they want. Whereas I think other beauty brands where it's more generic where it's more lifestyle probably see a bigger um segment of theirs being gift shopping than we do that makes sense did you see so obviously six years ago you made that decision which at the time would have been incredibly bold but also would have got you loads of pr and probably a massive overall positive for the for the company did that pr must have sort of now that you do it every year must have tapered off a little bit but have other people adopted and copied this in the way that you thought they might yeah i think now you know we see so many already today you know we're halfway through november my inbox has been flooded for what feels like the last two weeks with with november deals so i think we you know certainly it's extended past the friday as a minimum it's the whole cyber weekend most people have a cyber week and we're more and more seeing things for the whole of november the thing that makes me smile i guess is when i see other brands do 23 because it's quite a specific number you know we expect 20 we expect 25 so i always wonder if their inspiration came from us or if they also just chose that random number yeah i think it's quite a nice trend to push people towards so if you do start a trend that's a good trend to be part exactly and again you have to remember like our motivation was around making consumers think more buying what they need like less panic buying so if more brands did this approach like that's a better thing for consumers for the world where people just not buying stuff that they don't need that's going to end up in landfill yeah so i think some people do like so this is very uh like you know this is the way the i shocks don't buy that much stuff you know i was gonna say did you recognize when she said i have so many emails in my email box did that were you like yeah me too i was like i have none no i have none i've like i don't think i've had one email no i haven't either but i don't want to say that It just shows that you and I have zero interests.

12:59I was like, no one's sending me any discounts. Why are all those B2B suppliers not offering us discounts on our Stripe or Shopify accounts? You must always opt out of the marketing emails. To be fair, very good at opting out and unsubscribing from start. There's very few brands where I actually really like the, you know. Like Heights. If there's a reason for you to engage with that brand, you think that they do amazing content marketing, then yeah, for sure. Are Heights doing Black Friday? No. No. no we don't do black friday are you 23 every month we are zero percent on anything because we're great value all year round there you go yeah exactly no but actually for us for black friday we're doing um the only thing that we're doing is for existing customers so a sort of surprise and delight you know just people aren't expecting it they're already subscribed they're already paying for next month give them a discount they weren't expecting yeah which is amazing way to build brand That really is surprising to like.

13:54Yeah. And I think that's a really nice way to build brand. It shows that you're thinking about things. This is different when you're a subscription company, but when you're a subscription company, it's really fascinating. If you are too heavily on the excitement of new customer acquisition, you can really annoy your loyal customers. It's very tricky balance to get right because obviously all brands need new revenue and new customers. You're trying to attract them whilst also not making it feel like the people who are already giving you their loyalty aren't rewarded. is a very very complicated balance with that you said something earlier that i was like oh interesting because obviously you're a brand but you sell a lot through retail so can sephora for example do whatever discount they want to for the ordinary and then it kind of screws up your messaging or is that not something that happens not allowed to say it you can see the face she's like i don't i don't know i've never i've never looked into whether sephora discount it's an interesting relationship when it comes to promotions with retailers because ultimately a retailer can sell your product at any price they want and when they want to do promotions you know they'll often come to the brand to ask us to work with them to kind of share the funding etc so one of the things that we do to actively not encourage discounts on the brand is not participate so retailers can do it but if they do it that's hurting their margin not ours effectively you're just like oh i didn't see those emails sorry but that's why you'll see less discounts on the ordinary than maybe other brands got it but again it's a hard part of being your brand um i need to find the exact set but i think it was something i saw which was around 48 percent of purchases in premium beauty now go through on discount like throughout the year now premium beauty like that's supposed to be luxury where like discounts don't really exist and now if almost half of every purchase is on a discount or some kind of promotion it's kind of what is value anymore because like you say you know if you then pay full price you feel like you're overpaying because you know it's so many other times through the year it's discounted and i think that's again what's the nice thing about the ordering like it is a fair price throughout the year and you know it's nice november just gives maybe people that extra chance to either like try the brand if they hadn't they needed extra persuasion it rewards loyal customers who know it's there every year they can stock up but it is very tricky because you know we all like think as you build products and brands that like you're charging fairly and ultimately any discount you do at one point of the year it's kind of subsidized at another point of the year so therefore someone who's paying full price elsewhere is paying for that discount so you know i think for any brand they would like to do at least just as little discounting as possible which is why november is so tricky because consumers come to expect it now i i worked in luxury marketing for 10 years and so i used to advise ceos and boards and teams on like how to how to market for the year and it's like a unique pressure that the brand feels it's like target slightly off they're like we could introduce discounting you're like well you're just going to hurt yourself for the rest of the year you could put the effort and time into you know brand work or building the marketing but there is like a nuance to uh company growth which is if you're always growing then you're always faced with the growth challenge whereas if you were to maintain a smaller brand permanently you could maintain a better profit but companies just don't work like that so the best companies i ever worked with were like smaller uh luxury brands who never discounted and therefore the whole year the expectation was they never discounted it's actually really interestingly the argument for family owned businesses estee lauder who bought the ordinary right their family-owned business you've got that's very different obviously but you know um bernard arnold and like you know all of these you know hermese you know but all of these like dynasties that like that family run thing is straight through them where if you're doing a luxury brand they're not totally obsessed at all with the idea of like we have to get bigger and bigger and bigger this year because of all our shareholders and stuff they're like we need to respect the heritage of this brand that's the thing that matters most and brings the most value well what do you think about that and well so when you tell me i'm wrong well when you consider well maybe you'll see you know that the family control it but they're a public company and it is difficult like you were saying chris like as soon as you you do anything the next year you have to anniversary it and again i think it's probably one of the biggest challenges from you know going from desi and being very independent to being a part of like a bigger thing like my personality is if we have a month where we're slightly down like i'm kind of cool with that because I just accept that that's someone else's moment because for us, our sales, like if we have something that goes viral on TikTok, it's phenomenal for us.

18:32But you can't control that because what's wonderful about TikTok is how organic it is. But again, like you enter then a world when it's then actually, okay, last year, maybe glycolic acid was trending and being viral. What are you doing this year? And it's very difficult because I'm like, well, we can't control that because actually what was wonderful is that's just consumers deciding and you're trying to do a new way to use a product. But again, I think the more that I come to understand just bigger ways of working when you become a bigger company is like, you know, ultimately, if you don't perform to targets or budgets, eventually that's going to hurt your people because it's not only just hurting their payroll, but your freezing headcount, you can't grow your teams.

19:14And obviously, worst case scenario for any business is if you have to reduce your people. so actually hitting targets and budgets is really important and i think it's taken like you know my mind shift to change because if if it was just me that owned deciem you know i would just take this kind of long-term approach you know i think any brand goes through moments of being like the coolest brand like think about ugg boots one minute they're cool then like no one wears them and then everyone's wearing again then they're not cool have a crummy feature back all of these brands like and almost to be cool you have to kind of go to be on call again to be cool like very few brands are consistently cool for for a long time and which is why they're growing yeah and like you know one of the things i would love to get to it adesium you know we the ordinary is by far our biggest brand but i feel like if we could get to a matrix of different brands where you're like actually it's okay for one brand to kind of have a calmer moment because actually you know if skincare is kind of a bit calmer maybe color is exploding or fragrance is exploding and i think there's maybe better ways to balance business because yeah for for most businesses if you're feeling pressure if you had this huge growth last year and now you're struggling the easiest answer for anyone is we'll do a discount do a sale but actually that does erode your brand equity over time so it is always just this challenge of having that long-term confidence in your brand that you don't want to do anything to destroy it even if that means you're going to have you know a lighter period so how big is slow member black friday period for the ordinary significant so it's something like one product every second we sell which again is interesting because when we say about like being against hyper consumerism and then obviously it is such a big consumption month for us but again i do like to think it's it's people people really do use the products in the ordinary you know it's not like fashion maybe where sometimes you buy something and you never use it like typically in skincare if you buy the product your intent is to use it and even if you're not consistent using it every day like you hopefully are using it enough to actually make sure it's not a waste yeah I think people get uh I mean it's so interesting I wonder what the difference is between men and women but you know as you know I've been using it for years once you find something that you use that you like use it every day it's not really some I guess my point is it's not really something once something works for you like that it isn't the kind of thing you just change brand for a product for because you don't really change things that are working exactly and especially when you know i always think for the ordinary and it's interesting because we have seen you know many imitation brands come to like but normally when a brand comes in to to imitate you know like zara you can't you can't afford the fashion you see on the runway so you buy zara's version of it like that's typically how it works whereas with the ordinary it's interesting because you know the the brands that i would say were inspired or you know knockoffs to say it in in less nice terms half the time they're more expensive than us or at least the same price yeah so again i think it is quite difficult because for the ordinary the price point is so fair for the quality of products you get that actually consumers aren't particularly tempted to buy another one because they know the ordinary works and they're not likely to get a cheaper quality product so that's why i think they are so loyal to the brand is that your biggest problem with the other brands though as in you like in theory with some brands you would have um an entry point brand you'd have the product etc and then you'd be able to upsell them into other products right that's something obviously the heights can do quite comfortably but with the ordinary that's probably quite hard to upsell you into the more expensive thing because the thing you're getting actually works so well there isn't the desire or is it totally different they've got incredible variety there well and and we do actually have you know some of our some of our products are you know 26 pounds for example so there are some more expensive products and i think we have the trust that consumers are but again it's not to say you know like a high price point doesn't mean a product's better it just means that technology is more expensive for whatever reason that drove them um and do you think that black friday is worth it in the end for consumers yeah because ultimately they are getting savings but it's only worth it if you're buying what you actually want to buy yeah is it worth it for brands for us without a doubt yeah but but but our approach of doing the whole month right okay if black friday went away completely if other people weren't doing it would you carry on doing slowvember or would you be like okay time to find a new thing so so it is something we've toyed with again you know do we just boycott the entire thing and actually do nothing in november but i think for us you know we've had well we've done this approach for six years now so our community they they love it they expect it and i think for now it works for them and it works for us it's not to say it won't change in the future but i think for now it's a good thing mutually and what have you got your eye on this black friday do you know i haven't even started my my shopping list i'm normally very last minute really yeah that's so funny do you make a shopping list well i think consciously for example i'm going to want to buy a barbecue for like our outdoor like at some point this year and like last year i bought a really nice coffee machine and you'd be like i'm getting this on black friday genuinely yeah I waited three months for my coffee I waited three months for that barbecue didn't get one in the summer because I was like well we're not here that much but I'll get it at Black Friday and it'll be for next summer so that's a good example of an egg I haven't got it yet it's not Black Friday yet but will I should I get an egg well looking at it yeah maybe I'll get it in Black Friday okay Nicola obviously being Black Friday today I hope you make no money and enjoy that position in the world but I hope that's been a good slow burn before you we will enjoy our calm day today so obviously Nicola's just left and she's told us about uh the business how it deals with black friday her intentionality around leadership what are your biggest takeaways from today i mean they're definitely on something right so she's right about the consumerism side i mean i like that they started off one way and then they had to change you know six years ago they realized this was kind of pointless so they'll do something different um i love that their actual stores are closed on black friday yeah you physically turn up and they're closed that's pretty cool i like the website doesn't work you know it's not transactional anyway i love that too um i also like the you know that's only black friday there's sober monday back open because you know yeah yeah we're still capitalist it is actually like kind of brilliant in the sense that you get to be so moralistic about it but it is also brilliant marketing it's just one day yeah it's just one day so exactly it's the perfect example of you get all the value of the pr you're not necessarily hurting business and hey you know they do something like half their annual sales or around that i mean she wasn't exactly specific but it sounds like close to that somewhere between a quarter and a half of all their sales for the year in november i think where they're coming from is a relatively privileged position in that their brand has obviously been so viral and therefore they've got so much awareness they have a very unique style of product which is you know you buy it again and again and again and again so it's less you know beholden to a lot of the problems that i think a lot of retail brands do but I do think that they have carried it off very well like having 23 % discount only is actually not that deep considering what Black Friday normally is and so yeah I think they're in a probably quite privileged position because of the nature of their product but at the same time I think they've executed it excellently plus also she's so awesome she's so trustable like whatever she says this is how we do things you kind of feel like that's probably the right decision yeah exactly yeah so thank you very much obviously for listening to our episode on Black Friday.

26:40It's great to get the perspective of a retailer and obviously two people who've worked in retail before. Quite a fascinating approach. And this handsome chap that worked in luxury, let's not forget. Yeah, a long time ago. Doesn't matter. A long time ago. You're looking good. Using her skin cream? I'm not using her skin cream. Not yet. Thanks for listening to our episode on Black Friday. And thank you for tuning in to Steak for Leaders. As it's Black Friday, you can subscribe for free. And if you'd like to see Chris with 70 % off, support him with some Ozempic. Yeah. Anyway, I've been Chris. I'm Dan.

27:07Thank you for tuning in to Steak for Leaders.