On Black Friday, as hordes of people begin their holiday shopping rites, Nan Morningstar will keep the door closed at Free Radicals, the clothing and costume boutique she and her husband own in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
To make absolutely sure that no one can buy anything from her that day, she also plans to disable the shopping cart on her store’s website.
“It seems like it’s been getting more overblown in America, and more out of hand,” she said of the annual post-Thanksgiving sales rush. “We don’t want to participate.”
As big-box retailers prepare for their “doorbuster” sales and ever earlier opening hours, some small businesses are making a point of going to the other extreme. They are shunning discounts and avoiding extended hours, especially those that cut into the Thanksgiving holiday.
Some, like Morningstar, are explicit about their desire to fight the holiday season’s commercialization. Lesouque, an online seller of globally sourced accessories and home goods, is closing its website for the day as part of a “break up with Black Friday” campaign, and it won’t be offering any discounts during the holiday season.
Gokben Yamandag, a co-founder of the site, spent years as a textile engineer at factories in Turkey, watching teenagers work long hours in harsh conditions. She came away from the experience with a deep horror of the marketing frenzies that encourage people to buy products in bulk at deep discounts.
“These lower prices come with hidden costs,” she said. “Consumers might not know that when they buy their ‘two for $10’ shirts, someone along the way is paying the price. In most cases, the one paying is the person making our clothes.”
Other retailers simply see closing for Black Friday as a sensible business choice.
“People just don’t go to small businesses. They go to big-box stores looking for big, super deals,” said Gisela Claassen, the owner of Curds and Wine, a San Diego shop that sells winemaking and cheesemaking supplies. “The first year I was open, I had nothing to do. Nobody came in.”
Claassen now shuts her store for the entire week around Thanksgiving. “My employees love it,” she said. “They get to spend the time with their families.”
There is some evidence to back Claassen’s belief that most holiday shoppers are not drawn to businesses like hers. Only 24 percent of those planning to make holiday purchases say they intend to buy them from small local retailers, according to a National Retail Federation report. The organization forecasts that holiday sales will rise 3.7 percent this year, to $630.5 billion.
Some independent stores opening for the season’s earliest shopping hours are doing it grudgingly. As major retailers like Macy’s, Sears and Target have moved their hours ever earlier — this year, all three will open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day — a growing number of malls are following their anchor tenants’ leads and opening on the evening of the holiday after being closed all day. Some require all of their merchants to adhere to the schedule.
Deer Creek Winery, a family-run winemaker in Shippenville, Pennsylvania, has outlets in four Pennsylvania malls. Rhonda Brooks, a co-owner of the winery, would prefer to keep all of the stores closed on Thanksgiving, but two of the malls, Clearview Mall in Butler and Shenango Valley Mall in Hermitage, issued mandates telling tenants to open at 6 p.m. or risk being fined.
Deer Creek heeded Clearview’s rule two years ago and opened Thursday night. Sales were slow — “people only wanted to be at the big-box stores, for all the big sales,” Brooks said — and employees complained about having to leave their families to go to work.
Last year, she refused, putting up a sign a week in advance saying that the store would not be open. Clearview did not levy a fine, Brooks said. (A representative of Clearview did not respond to a request for comment.)
Black Friday has become synonymous with heavy discounting, but small businesses can rarely afford to slash their prices the way the big chains do — and some refuse to even try. Courtney Stamm, the owner of the Cheeky Puppy, a pet goods boutique in Washington, plans to open on Black Friday, but she will not be running any sales or promotions.
“Our customers are not particularly motivated by discounts,” she said. “There are times that I’ve put items on a sale shelf and they just sit there.”
She is instead focusing her energy on the day after Black Friday, which a campaign led by American Express promotes as Small Business Saturday. In past years, American Express has given its customers statement credits of $10 to $25 for making purchases that day at participating small retailers. The company said it would not offer any refunds this year, but it is continuing to publicize the event.
To draw in Saturday shoppers, Stamm arranges special events. Last year, she brought in a popular Etsy seller of custom collars and leashes to take on-site orders; the day set a sales record for her business. This year, a professional pet photographer will be at the store to snap portraits in return for a $20 donation to a local rescue group.
In Albuquerque, Morningstar plans to avoid shopping of any kind on Black Friday. She said she was looking forward to a quiet day of eating leftovers and spending time with her family and friends.
“This is one of the perks of being a microbusiness,” she said. “Since I’m the boss, I get to say if we’re going to take a day off.”