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The problem with Black Friday
5 years ago
Excuse me as I have a burning need to talk about a subject that has been a cause of frustration and worry for my peers over the past week. Black Friday is no longer "just another ridiculous American thing", it has slithered it's way over here and many other corners of the world & become an international issue. What worries me most is how most people give very little thought on why it's a thing and what it causes on the grand scale of things.
I'm going to slap the comparison right into the start: It's almost ironic that Black Friday is followed by "Cyber Monday", because the whole trend IS just like it's from a cyberpunk dystopia. Not in the cool way, just the part where below surface glitter everyone is suffering. So the very basic nature of the mass discount trend is exploiting poor people to help big corporations grow. You can't afford more expensive things, so you result into choosing the cheapest thing. Only big corporations can charge little enough, they can even undersell on purpose because they are looking at their own future. Some medium sized companies might also benefit momently a from having an influx of sales, they will rot later on. Over time, this means medium & small companies will die out, people will lose jobs, the remaining jobs will become shitty because nobody can offer other jobs, more become poor, now more poor people will start supporting the thing and suddenly we are a full cyberpunk world - maybe if lucky enough, with the pretty glitter on top.
Of course, the large scale economical damage is only the big core issue, there are also many smaller ones: Such as most of the deals are simply scams, some of them aren't even discounts, they're only portrayed like that even though the price is the same as before. Some items are also pulled out from sale during the campaign so they won't need to be sold for cheaper. People are fooled and over time distrust will cause conflict between people. Also nobody should be queueing up at physical locations during a pandemic.
Then the more specific, furry aspect of my worry:
There are a lot of beginning creators and business owners in this fandom and I want you and everyone else to do well, we need to collectively do well to ensure every single one of us can keep it up. We need to be able to keep creating so the fandom can keep thriving, the more there are creators the more there will be people who are inspired and the more there will be people who can support all the creators (it's less so a competition and more of a collective effort & way of life), and as a result art enriches everyone's lives so they can keep pushing through the hard times (even the people who just come to enjoy it, without being able to support it, we also need casual nice people).
I don't know how to put this into words that don't sound like some elitist lecture because I'm a visual artist, not a writer, teacher or influencer. I really first and foremost want people to start thinking more and make their own decisions instead of following a trend (you can follow trends, just make conscious effort to think why you're doing that first - not to mention some of trends revolve around understanding what you're supporting and not understanding will just make you look stupid).
The specific things I see happening again, they're not really new but I think they need to be highlighted again:
1) As a creator of unique individual pieces, you can't afford to put discounts. You are responsible to charge an amount that reflects the skill and time spent, don't sell short. Discounts are damaging to a small business, clients will come to expect them and only buy when a thing is discounted, you will lose future sales. Scheduled discounts like Black Friday are especially bad because of that. And also, clients are not bad for wanting to buy a thing cheaper, they do generally trust the creator to not hurt themselves.
2) By putting out a "Black Friday sale", you are not only shooting your own foot but also generating peer pressure for others to do the same.
3) Your empathy will be abused: It's normal to feel the need to give an opportunity for poorer clients (because you know how they feel because you are also poor), but consider that you are equally important as others and no nice person wants to see you suffer, so don't do it. Also there is a landslide of abusive clients who will drain you out and demand even cheaper if you slip. If you need to, make the specific discounts in private for those you really think deserve it, never ever to anyone who demands it (not even friends like that, there is never a reason anyone should pressure you to not do well, especially friends).
The only reason discounts ever came to be a thing is because businesses with stock need to clear out their physical items for more storage space. Art is not that. Don't give discounts, plan solid prices. And don't contribute to a shitty pressuring trend.
If someone actually read this rant all the way until the end, thank you!
On a personal note; You know I'm starting to do better in life when I have the capacity to worry about others again. I want to keep seeing the future being hopeful.
-Neo
I'm going to slap the comparison right into the start: It's almost ironic that Black Friday is followed by "Cyber Monday", because the whole trend IS just like it's from a cyberpunk dystopia. Not in the cool way, just the part where below surface glitter everyone is suffering. So the very basic nature of the mass discount trend is exploiting poor people to help big corporations grow. You can't afford more expensive things, so you result into choosing the cheapest thing. Only big corporations can charge little enough, they can even undersell on purpose because they are looking at their own future. Some medium sized companies might also benefit momently a from having an influx of sales, they will rot later on. Over time, this means medium & small companies will die out, people will lose jobs, the remaining jobs will become shitty because nobody can offer other jobs, more become poor, now more poor people will start supporting the thing and suddenly we are a full cyberpunk world - maybe if lucky enough, with the pretty glitter on top.
Of course, the large scale economical damage is only the big core issue, there are also many smaller ones: Such as most of the deals are simply scams, some of them aren't even discounts, they're only portrayed like that even though the price is the same as before. Some items are also pulled out from sale during the campaign so they won't need to be sold for cheaper. People are fooled and over time distrust will cause conflict between people. Also nobody should be queueing up at physical locations during a pandemic.
Then the more specific, furry aspect of my worry:
There are a lot of beginning creators and business owners in this fandom and I want you and everyone else to do well, we need to collectively do well to ensure every single one of us can keep it up. We need to be able to keep creating so the fandom can keep thriving, the more there are creators the more there will be people who are inspired and the more there will be people who can support all the creators (it's less so a competition and more of a collective effort & way of life), and as a result art enriches everyone's lives so they can keep pushing through the hard times (even the people who just come to enjoy it, without being able to support it, we also need casual nice people).
I don't know how to put this into words that don't sound like some elitist lecture because I'm a visual artist, not a writer, teacher or influencer. I really first and foremost want people to start thinking more and make their own decisions instead of following a trend (you can follow trends, just make conscious effort to think why you're doing that first - not to mention some of trends revolve around understanding what you're supporting and not understanding will just make you look stupid).
The specific things I see happening again, they're not really new but I think they need to be highlighted again:
1) As a creator of unique individual pieces, you can't afford to put discounts. You are responsible to charge an amount that reflects the skill and time spent, don't sell short. Discounts are damaging to a small business, clients will come to expect them and only buy when a thing is discounted, you will lose future sales. Scheduled discounts like Black Friday are especially bad because of that. And also, clients are not bad for wanting to buy a thing cheaper, they do generally trust the creator to not hurt themselves.
2) By putting out a "Black Friday sale", you are not only shooting your own foot but also generating peer pressure for others to do the same.
3) Your empathy will be abused: It's normal to feel the need to give an opportunity for poorer clients (because you know how they feel because you are also poor), but consider that you are equally important as others and no nice person wants to see you suffer, so don't do it. Also there is a landslide of abusive clients who will drain you out and demand even cheaper if you slip. If you need to, make the specific discounts in private for those you really think deserve it, never ever to anyone who demands it (not even friends like that, there is never a reason anyone should pressure you to not do well, especially friends).
The only reason discounts ever came to be a thing is because businesses with stock need to clear out their physical items for more storage space. Art is not that. Don't give discounts, plan solid prices. And don't contribute to a shitty pressuring trend.
If someone actually read this rant all the way until the end, thank you!
On a personal note; You know I'm starting to do better in life when I have the capacity to worry about others again. I want to keep seeing the future being hopeful.
-Neo
Also I really need to add that average prices in the fandom have not gone down and the stepping stone quality where artists generally get commissions hasn't changed, but overall amount of sales and quantity of very high quality art is drastically bigger. Clients that scam and demand lower prices from beginner artists have always been a big issue, and I doubt it will stop being an issue, each creator will need to learn how to say no. And followerbase growth has always been difficult, it has needed and still needs boost from people you know - or initiative from the creator to get to know people. The more followers the easier it gets to gain more, it hasn't changed - we just have a hell lot of more potential followers thesedays, though they are divided between different platforms now.
Also big corporations are good at hiding their nasty issues so we don't know about it, in contrast it looks like they are squeaky clean platforms in comparison to furry sites run by furries, people who are so connected that it's almost unavoidable to hear about every private issue. That of course doesn't mean issues shouldn't be dealt with, but there will always be issues needing addressing.
Many Artists i know of - not all though - have more comissions-request that they can handle, like my inability to get a piece from you yet even trough not due a lack of trying. So from pure marketing perspective you should either expand which is not easily done in this field of work or raise the prices til you reach an equilibrium with comissions-request you can actually do.
Which - given the large jump of prices in the past 5 years at least with furry artists - is exactly what many artist actually do.
However, what i figured out is that many artist have no sense of economics in the first place. Many struggle to put a price on their work or value it. I am able to easily haggle most of the artists i comission down to give me a 20 - 50% reduction in price or make them do more than agreed upon, and i have very meager people-skills. Not that i like to do this, i mostly stick with the given price and rarely ask for even a correction of minor things. I always feel like i cheat them out and sour the relationship which would reflect on the artwork itself.
This also works the other way if i have a special request or an exotic form of art i want to comission, many artists yet again struggle with putting a pricetag on it and just delay.
(As example i have a artist who did many sketches for a comission i bought from him and i asked him if i could buy those sketches. This has been a couple years now. i reminded him a few times too but even trough he says he wants, he has never put a price on it and never came forth)
For me, this is the real problem. Artists simply never looked up how to price things and how to sell stuff.
Black Friday is a perfectly fine method for producers to sell overstock, its strategically placed close to the holidays where people receive more money and are more willing to spend, so throwing out things that would otherwise become obsolete or collect dust the following year is reasonable.
But, this of course only works for producers who either mass-produce or have to create a stock of something. For individual services such as Artworks, Writings but also other things, there is absolutely no need to put any discount out at any given time unless you expect to have a much higher productivity for a short amount of time (e.g. iron artist challenges or similar) or expect a drop of requests which is rather unlikely.
So from my perspective, if an Artist puts out a discount and then complaints about the low prices "we" (as the clients) make them do, i can only shake my head because its obvious that artist has never looked up a single article how to sell things or how economics work.
PS: Its not my objective with this article to sound demeaning or aggressive or want to put artists down. Its a objective writing of my perspective as a client with more than a decade experience. But again... Poor People Skills. I am not good at "sweetening" words. I am sorry in advance.
And please, never haggle with artists - it's just rude assuming they haven't thought about the prices (even if it's true they haven't, its still rude). Choose one within your budget instead, artists in the fandom come from all around the world, some areas are more expensive to live at.
Also. about the haggling... This is not so easy. I am the "If i can not afford it, i will simply not buy it" kind (which also is bad, because this means some artists will miss out potential clients). but you will always encounter clients who will try to haggle and it falls to the artist to stand firm on the prices. Because the Artist has the last word here.
Yet i more often than not i get sentences like "yeah, but if you buy multiple stickers, i can go down with prices" which now falls to me to set the ground as its not specificed what the minimum amount for the discount which has been offered. And now youre in haggling territory again, initiated by the artist.
I also get artists who come around and say "hey, i have delayed 3 weeks on your work, here is 200€ off" or "okay, its over your budget, i can go 50€ cheaper" - what i am supposed to do here? I can not force my money down their throats and its not in my interest. Gift Horse and all.
A week ago i had a lengthy discussion about a sketch where the artist could not put a price on me and seriously wanted to discuss how to price it with me. What am i supposed to do here? Its obviously a conflict of interest as i as a client want the price as low as possible.
Again. Its up to the Artist to have the prices correct and either accept haggling or just say no. You will always have clients who will try to haggle, trade (for exposure!) or similar. Its simply part of being a professional. No one will display any consideration in my field of work either.
Most artists are very happy with tips. It means you think their art, their time, and their effort are worth more than what they are charging. That is a huge boost in confidence. I have received a few tips here and there and I can not explain how very happy it made me!
So it will only look like being stupid from your perspective, because you do not have the entire context of someone's life opportunities. It may simply be the only way they are currently understanding or aware of, not just ignorance.
--
On the subject of haggling, while it is first and foremost on the artist to stay firm and say the final word (which is what I emphasised on the journal itself too), you also do not have to be an asshole if you can avoid it. People do awful things all the time and it's unavoidable, but you have the choice to be one less person to be trouble for someone - that means you are one more nice person in someone's life and that's what matters the most.
But yes, I can't agree more that artists / businesses who straight up force discounts on you are extremely awkward to handle and I hope one day each of them will realize that it's bad practise, both hurting themselves and making the client feel terrible. I think the best course of action there is to accept it but let them know you felt uncomfortable about the exchange. Since again, they probably don't realize how the other party feels.
The sketch example I can only say that it's very obvious that you didn't work with someone professional on their field, this is why most jobs have schools or apprenticeships before work because people often don't know how to figure things out themselves - it's just how humans are. There's no school for being a furry fandom artists, so it's a no brainer that this sort of stuff is common, all we can do is give a helping hand on eachother.
--
The business side of the fandom is also hard to navigate because it's very similar to cases where you sell to your friends and family. First and foremost we are all here to enjoy our hobby together as peers, so it can be tough for both parties to set the rules clear for the business side of things, and with the amount of new inexperienced creators, it will be rough for the clients to make sense of it also. Best we can all do is try to do our best, which is mostly about trying to be kind where we can.
We really do live in a dystopia. As evidenced with how many people voted this year (for the orange asshole), I don't think we'll be getting rid of this crap any time soon. But. I'm still hopeful that one day we can turn this stuff around and make things easier for the people rather than big corporations that benefit on the "keeping people poor" cycle.
May not see it in my lifetime, but we can start planting the seeds for a better future now.
I have some steady shops where I'm looking for things. If they sell something I want and they discounting just this, I'm lucky. If I can't afford these thing, I have to wait and keep up my money. The shops I use sometimes have a few thing discounted, not anytime or anything. I hate super cheap things, often cheap means bad quality.
When I'm impressed by a piece of art, then I'm looking at the artists work and his prices. When thinking, the price is fair (not cheap), I'm trying to buy it. Insofar, your prices are fair.
As an not so well known artist you should not sell your work to cheap, 'cause you perhaps live on selling your work. You should know the worth of your work and stand to it. I prefer the not so big artist; they often are more adventurous and innovative.
To me it seems the whole world depends more and more on materialistic thoughts; having more of anything than other ppl. Where have friendship, solidarity and helping others be gone?
Friends, for instance, had a little gallery. One day they had an exhibition of an artist, and one of the pictures (drawings) I wanted to buy. But to (not only) my mind the price really was too cheap (300€). Therefore I offered him 500€ and he agreed. So we had a fair price and I had a piece to hang on my wall. My income at this time was high enough to do so.
So wishing you good days of drawing and keep your head up. People like you are needed in this world.
I agree with the sentiment that black friday need to end. Corporate greed is hurting so many people.
Art is a work of time and creativity, not a product made in bulk. It's sometimes reasonable for an artist to give a small "theme" discount for things they're more interested in drawing, but the purpose there should be to direct potential commissioners toward what the artist prefers, not to increase volume. Art takes the same time and effort no matter what day it's commissioned on, and should be priced accordingly.
It's a hard system to break, especially when people don't have anything to show them a different way to do things... and those large corporations are doing their best to exterminate everything else.
Thank you for at least speaking out about it, and being a voice against the trend and a counterexample.
I've thought of two kinds of "Black Friday" I could have in my shop in response for this madness: a) no service at all, the doors are locked and the lights are out inside, making the whole place appear "black", or b) have a 500% premium on all prices and a €500+VAT entry fee to get inside, even for just saying hello, for just that one day. But so far I've always been late to set either up because I lack the time and energy to plan things that far ahead. :P
And yes, discounts apply only for physical items in stock, not for labour. The only labour I may apply a discount for are flat rate services like exhaust emissions tests, and only when the service is done as part of other repair or maintenance work which will cover the labour cost of the service.
Also how well you should be doing is dependant to where you live, some countries are cheap to live in so the bar is lower, others are expensive which might mean the effort needed may be close to beyond doable. Cheaper countries also means you will likely have more time to study, it means your career advances faster.
^
To put some of that into perspective, my personal time spent is roughly 15 years practising art skills near daily (counting that I still study and practise at this day, it will never stop), started my marketing 10 years ago, and been making just enough to scrape by for the last 5 years (I'm in Finland, where living is very expensive, but our education at the start was free and contained some art & business subjects). Also majority of this is thanks to my parents giving me the opportunity of time to study and do the marketing, otherwise I would've needed to look for a different job.
it was an amusing album and had some pretty good music
but yeah. NOT a fan of over-commercialism, especially when I'm broke... Cyber Monday came about as an online retailers way of cashing in on blackfriday... but a couple days later.
I do Most of my shopping online with the exceptions of alcohol and food... those I get locally, and I try to shop at smaller locally owned stores
I consider Black Friday a sign of the end of capitalism. It is not sustainable.
Consumerism. It's a very entrenched thing now, the thing that strangles the life out of the masses. Black Friday is at this point really just a symptom.
But, ah well.
As far as the whole "Black Friday" thing and what stores do, you can easily see how the peer pressure works among stores. It used to be just Friday, and then some stores started extending it through the weekend, so all the others had to follow suit, and then some decided to open at midnight, so other stores started doing the same thing, and then some started opening on Thanksgiving for some afternoon and evening hours in order to make sales before the competitors, so the rest started opening on Thanksgiving and even making a full day of it. Just the same, christmas crap starts being sold in August because every store wants to get in on selling what customers apparently want 4 months in advance, and Halloween stuff starts being sold in July, 4th of July stuff starts being sold the day after Easter, Easter stuff starts getting sold before St. Patrick's day stuff, St. Patrick's day stuff starts getting sold before New Year's, and Valentine's stuff hits the shelves before christmas day. (I have a photo of christmas snack cakes on the shelf next to Valentine's snack cakes in mid-December.) Not only do the smaller businesses suffer who can't compete with the huge corporation sales, but also the employees suffer because they're made to work on what used to be a holiday off.
All this has been a ramble but you said it far better than I can.
I also think that discounts for something that's not a physical product but a transaction on future labor really make little sense. Discounts are a useful tool to liquidate unsold stock, especially when changing seasons or when a product didn't sell as well as expected and the money is needed to reinvest, but why on Earth would someone apply a discount to something they haven't even created yet? That's really just shooting oneself in the foot.