The association has surveyed its 6,000 independent members of all sizes, to see if they would be taking part in the pre-Christmas sales this weekend, and for the second year in a row, the majority have said they will not be cutting prices.
Of those asked, 86% said they wouldn’t be holding a sale (1% higher than 2021), while almost 70% said they hadn’t participated in previous years.
Andrew Goodacre, ceo of BIRA, said: “With another Black Friday on the horizon, once again, many independent retailers will be choosing to ignore this event. From an indie retail perspective Black Friday is seen as a big business, internet event. This makes it very hard for the smaller retailers to compete as they just do not have the buying power of the large retailers.
“In general independent retailers do not see Black Friday as an opportunity. This has been a recurring trend over the years as the large chains and internet retailers dominate the consumer marketing.”
Andrew urged indies to consider taking part in Colour Friday – organised by Holly Tucker MBE, founder of notonthehighstreet.
Holly explained: “Last year, we launched Colour Friday to kickstart a retail revolution for Christmas shoppers. So rather than taking part in the mass consumption of Black Friday, we encouraged the nation to celebrate the colour and creativity that small businesses bring instead – and buy carefully made Christmas gifts from UK independents.”
Andrew continued: “We are supporting creative ideas such as Colour Friday and Green Friday (which has a focus on sustainability) as these are vents that focus on the smaller, local retailers. We are also advocates of Small Business Saturday which also brings the small business into the public mind. We urge the shoppers to continue to support their local retailers who will still offer value in the form of quality products at good prices.”
