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Nearly everything happens in the name of capitalism. From retailers’ extreme Black Friday sales to Cyber Mondal deals, there is a marketed discount for every consumer ahead of the busy holiday season. We learned that small businesses struggle with these massive sales while major retailers make billions. Read more on this inside.

If you have ever worked in retail, you may already be privy to this information. Just before the year is over, retailers have these massive blowout sales to prepare consumers for the holiday gift giving season. According to The Wall Street Journal, retailers will slightly increase the “normal” price of an item in the days before their Black Friday sales so that the discounts appear deeper. When, in reality, the discount is actually the true price of the item.

Days like Black Friday and today’s Cyber Monday were created by retailers to encourage people to shop even more. Cyber Monday was specially created by retailers to motivate consumers to shop online.

The term “Cyber Monday” was first coined by Ellen Davis of the (National Retail Federation) NRF and Scott Silverman. It made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled “‘Cyber Monday’ Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year.”

They witnessed the rise of online sales taking place the Monday after Thanksgiving Day, and shoppers across the world haven’t looked back since.

People use holiday shopping as an excuse to purchase just about anything. The endless emails from all your favorite stores, sending you reminders about not one massive deal but two back-to-back. It’s insane.

All in the name of capitalism.

While these sales days benefit major retailers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not helpful for smaller businesses. The last quarter of the calendar year — starting from Black Friday to the New Year — is generally the most profitable for the majority of retailers. But not all of them emerge as winners from the Black Friday selling period.

A small, sustainable Black woman-owned business, Oluchi Vintage, sent an interesting email to its subscribers on Black Friday. The email read:

discounts are great, but mindful consumption is even better.

each year i get questions about whether we’ll be having any sales for black friday/cyber monday and the answer is always no.

oluchi vintage is a slow fashion, sustainable, vintage store. trying to keep up with the cadence of BF/CM sales is counterintuitive for our business model, and it would exhaust months of hard work in a single weekend. that’s not worth it (or sustainable) to me.

This effect is referred to as “sales velocity.”

Whereas major reseller sites like Amazon achieve more on these blow out days because of their access to tools like sales velocity. Sales velocity is measured by algorithms to decide the virality of a product, combined with relevance. It’s the percentage of people who saw your product, ended up buying it, and how fast it sold. This will increase the organic search position, allowing them to get more sales on a regular day.

It’s far more challenging for small businesses with a less or niche inventory.

According to NPR, Black Friday sales raked in a record $9.12 billion from online shoppers this year despite concerns of inflation and higher prices, according to estimates. The $9.12 billion figure is up from $8.92 billion in 2021 and $9.03 billion the previous year.

NBC News says Cyber Monday typically outperforms Black Friday in terms of sales: Black Friday raked in $8.9 billion in 2021, while Cyber Monday hit $10.7 billion, according to data from Adobe Analytics.

Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases made these major retailers billions once again this year. It’s never too late to support small Black and Brown owned businesses. Check out our round up here.