OUR PLEDGE : WHY L'ENVERS IS NOT DOING BLACK FRIDAY ?

Black Friday started as a post-Thanksgiving push. Then it became a marketing tactic. Then it became “Black Friday + weekend + Cyber Monday.” Now many brands run offers for two or three weeks. At that point it is not a celebration — it is a system.

Here is what that system does:

- It teaches people to wait. If buyers know a brand will always join the holiday season race, they stop buying in October or January. Real prices lose meaning.

- It rewards volume, not value. To offer deep discounts, brands must make more. More stock → more returns → more waste.

- It hurts small businesses. A slow, European, high-quality knit brand cannot run the same black Friday deals as a fast brand with offshore production.

- It feeds overconsumption. People buy a second cardigan not because it fits a gap, but because “it was half.” That is not conscious.

- It creates waste. November spikes bring extra plastic, filler, and excess packaging, most of which is tossed in December.

You can see the tension even in mainstream media — outlets like the New York Times now run pieces on “do you need this?” right next to “best deals.” That shows the culture knows something is off.

For us, the key point is simple: we cannot tell you one day to “invest in quality” and the next day to “act fast, prices are slashed.” That would make our own slow-fashion education, and it does not align with our mission.

We use the words conscious consumption a lot, but they are not buzzwords for us. They are the frame for everything else.

Conscious consumption here means:

- buy what you will wear,

- buy at a fair price, not at a panic price,

- buy from brands that show who made the garment,

- buy from brands whose sustainable practices are visible, not hidden,

- buy in line with your values, even when it is the holiday season.

Black Friday pushes in the opposite direction: buy today, because competition is buying; buy because other consumers are buying; buy because the economy “needs” you to buy. But you do not need to.

We also know many of you prefer to shop local or support labels that keep production in Europe. We share that. So when we say our pledge: why we’re not doing Black Friday, it is because a slow brand cannot lead people toward fast buying and still call it sustainability.

A deep discount has to land somewhere.

People. Our pieces are made in family-run workshops in Spain and France. Those workshops run on human time. They cannot double output because late November is noisy. If we joined the race, we would need to pressure them, or move production to cheaper places, or cut steps. That would go against what we stand for.

Planet. Big black friday sales create more shipping, more returns, and more plastic. Many parcels in that period are impulse buys. A fair part of them goes back. That is transport for nothing. It is also a rise in excess packaging right before the busiest month of the year.

Quality. To sell a sweater at half price on a single day, a brand has two choices: build the full price higher to absorb the cut, or build the product cheaper. We will not do either. We would rather tell you the real cost and keep it steady.

So for us, no black friday protects three things at once: the people who make, the environment we make in, and the quality we want you to wear.

Refusing one day is easy. Not needing it is harder. We’ve structured the brand so we don’t need it.

- Stable pricing. We do not mark up in the fall to mark down in November. The price you see is the price that lets us pay our makers.

- Seasonless or slow seasonal design. We don’t flood the site with 30 “holiday” SKUs. We work with shapes and yarns that make sense next year too. However, we do introduce seasonal colors, while being a slow fashion brand.

- Education instead of “special deals.” In the weeks when other stores send “Today only,” we publish journal posts on fibers, local wool, knit-to-order, or care. That is a different way to “market,” but it keeps the message clean.

- Care over replacement. We prefer you read the care page and keep your cardigan than buy another one right away.

- Measured growth. Because we choose a slower model, we do not have to chase every black Friday euro to “save” the year.

If you like supporting stores not doing Black Friday, here is a simple way to act:

- Make a short list of what you need for winter. Not what the ads say. What you will wear.

- Check your wardrobe first. Many of our readers already own good wool. Sometimes all they need is care.

- Support brands that publish their costs and process. If a brand shows its workshops and talks about European supply, it is a good sign.

- Tell the brand. A two-line message — “I bought from you because you didn’t do Black Friday” — tells us this choice matters.

- Share slow content instead of deal links. Send a friend our piece on sustainable staples or the post on Spain’s wool heritage instead of “top 20 deals.”

This is not about refusing to save money. It is about deciding when and why to save. A rushed black Friday cart is not always saving ; sometimes it is spending on things that will not be worn.

Late November is the loudest month for advertising. You will see “-30%,” “-40%,” “extra 10%,” “cyber,” “today only.” A lot of that stock was made just for this peak. A lot of it will be returned. A lot of it will bring no real benefit to the buyer. We do not want to add another email to that pile.

Instead, we want to be the brand that stays at the same line before, during, and after Black Friday; the brand that says “buy when it fits your life,” not “buy because it’s Friday”; the brand that keeps sustainability tied to actual practice, not to a discount code.

So when you see us quiet on Black Friday, that is not a missed sales chance. That is the choice.