Thought this was gonna be from the customer perspective. Never thought about the seller's black friday perspective. Makes sense!
A good reason for buyers to avoid black friday is very often, the sales aren't real. You can find countless price charts for all sorts of different products that show that companies slowly raise the price of goods in the weeks leading up to Black Friday so they can show a huge "discount" that brings the price basically back to MSRP, or even higher!
Personally I find black friday to be a gross orgy of consumerism but wagging my finger doesn't do anything to stop it, even though it seems to be hurting people. I'm trying to find a way to inspire people to try the experiment I did this year that brought me so much joy: outside of certain goods (underwear, food, batteries, etc) I bought nothing new. I would only get things on FB Marketplace or from secondhand shops (Taiwan and Japan have a crazy good electronic secondhand shop scene). I got some really cool things that tickled the consumerist itch, but cost me way less, and depending on the thing, was built better than modern equivalents.
For example, I got an electric pencil sharpener from a vintage shop that weighed damn near 10kg, but it's built like a brick shithouse. Gave it to my mom, she put it in her classroom; it survived so far a year of chewing through hundreds of pencils and level of abuse that would put the fear of god into modern appliances.
There's some content creators that get some decent views on "lenovo upgrade" videos, maybe if one of them tried the experiment it could get more people to try it out? Personally I can't think of a reason to ever buy a new phone again considering I can get current gen phones for 80% of retail in near perfect condition within about a month of release from used shops. Dunno who's selling their phones that fast but there's always a good few of them.
komali2•2mo ago
A good reason for buyers to avoid black friday is very often, the sales aren't real. You can find countless price charts for all sorts of different products that show that companies slowly raise the price of goods in the weeks leading up to Black Friday so they can show a huge "discount" that brings the price basically back to MSRP, or even higher!
Personally I find black friday to be a gross orgy of consumerism but wagging my finger doesn't do anything to stop it, even though it seems to be hurting people. I'm trying to find a way to inspire people to try the experiment I did this year that brought me so much joy: outside of certain goods (underwear, food, batteries, etc) I bought nothing new. I would only get things on FB Marketplace or from secondhand shops (Taiwan and Japan have a crazy good electronic secondhand shop scene). I got some really cool things that tickled the consumerist itch, but cost me way less, and depending on the thing, was built better than modern equivalents.
For example, I got an electric pencil sharpener from a vintage shop that weighed damn near 10kg, but it's built like a brick shithouse. Gave it to my mom, she put it in her classroom; it survived so far a year of chewing through hundreds of pencils and level of abuse that would put the fear of god into modern appliances.
There's some content creators that get some decent views on "lenovo upgrade" videos, maybe if one of them tried the experiment it could get more people to try it out? Personally I can't think of a reason to ever buy a new phone again considering I can get current gen phones for 80% of retail in near perfect condition within about a month of release from used shops. Dunno who's selling their phones that fast but there's always a good few of them.