Why we take part in Black Friday

    

Hey everybody! Danielle here, founder and owner of DVR Equestrian. I wanted to take the time out to write this post personally for you, to help you understand why we make the decision to take part in offering Black Friday weekend deals.  

As a brand that cares a lot about sustainable business and carefully considers ethics and environment in everything we do, we feel talking to you about this is important here as there are brands out there that boycott the event from a sustainable point of view, and you might wonder why we don't do the same.

Some brands do this in order to deter people from being coerced into impulse buying because of all the heavily marketed deals. We completely understand and support these brands decisions, but we also have reasons as to why as a small brand, we do take part, and we'd love to explain these to you.

One of the key pillars to our business is transparency. I feel honesty and openness is crucial when wanting to be a fair and conscious brand. That's why talking to our valued customers openly and honestly about subjects like this means a lot to me. Below i've broken down the key reasons we love to offer you Black Friday deals, and at the end you'll find out what's in store this year. 

Black Friday might not be a promotional event we take part in forever. There may be a time where we decide it's right for us to not take part, but for now, we feel the mutual benefits for both our valued customers and ourselves mean it is something we love to offer to you.

1. It helps cashflow 

There's no hiding the fact that the fine art of juggling cash flow is something founders of small businesses have to get to grips with. For small, independent, self-funded brands like us, cashflow is often a tricky area. Sales aren't as consistent as they are for bigger brands, and in order to be growing at the pace you want to, the money going back into the brand is crucial and often outweighing what is coming in. Often large bills come up at once, such as production costs, and so money juggling is a fine art experienced by all small brand owners. 

Promotional events give small brands the chance to have larger more consistent sales over a small period of time meaning a cash injection that can make a real impact of paying for next production runs, marketing bills, or wherever else the money is needed in the business. Apart from charity donations, every penny you spend of DVR products goes straight back into growing the brand in order to be able to bring you more of the products you love. 

2. It helps us to move stock that has sold out in most sizes and products that we have updated slightly in the next production runs

However carefully you plan your production as a brand, however small the runs of products you manufacture, it is inevitable to not get certain sizes sell out before others. You can follow patterns and order according to previous stats, but every product differs and it's impossible to always predict exactly what will sell and how much of that product or colour will sell. To avoid this, and something we are doing as we grow as part of our sustainable practises, is to create core products that will always be available, that work season after season and don't quickly go 'out of fashion'. However, even if you consciously design in that way, with new fabric research, customer feedback and new ideas, brands often want to make small updates here and there even to core products. Both of these are reasons why it can be helpful to a brand to offer customers promotional prices in order to move the stock left in certain sizes or that will be updated on the next run. 

3. It's nice to give back to our customers

As much as we have very dedicated customers, our products are at the luxury price end due to a number of factors, and so it is nice to be able to offer those that love the brand but may not have the budget to purchase the fully priced products, the opportunity to purchase something they will love from a brand they are passionate about. 

4. It's a great opportunity to do something good within our promotion

This year we have decided that as much as we want to offer you all a promotion, we also want to take the opportunity to go a little further and do something good. This year, as well as offering you up to 40% off selected products, we are also going to be donating 10% from each sale to the WWF. Being able to give back to charities we care about is something important to us. We support a range of charities through our Charity Tees collection, however this is our first promotion supporting the WWF. The sale will run from 8pm Thursday 25th until 8pm Sunday 28th November 2021. We hope you enjoy it! 

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me personally at danielle@dvrequestrian.com