small-business-black-friday

Award Winning Lincolnshire Small Business, Make An Entrance, Boycotts Black Friday 2022

January 18, 2023/Rachel Hargrave

Despite having operated online since 2005 and being a very well-established ecommerce business, award-winning doormat specialist, Make An Entrance, has today announced that it will no longer participate in Black Friday. 

“The excessive over consumption encouraged by Black Friday is incompatible with our values of quality, sustainability and longevity,” said Samantha Burlton co-founder of Make An Entrance.  “As a family run small business, proud to produce as many of our products as possible here in the UK, Black Friday is very hard for us.  We do not have the same profit margins as big business and because most of our products are made to order we don’t have old season stock to sell at a heavily discounted price.  Every day, across our business, we work hard to ensure that each mat we send out matches our rigorous quality standards and we would never spend less time making one of our hand-crafted items perfect for our customer just because we sold it cheap on Black Friday. 

“I realise that with the current economic pressure everyone in the country faces some may consider it the wrong time to make this move, but I feel that I must run my business in a way that is true to my beliefs rather than participating in things that feel wrong to me simply because that’s what everyone else is doing.  I feel it’s important to use the profile and platform that our winning Family Business of the Year 2022 for the East Midlands, FSB Celebrating Small Business Awards has given us to make a positive change.”

Small Business Saturday

Every year around the time of Black Friday another less well-known campaign takes place; Small Business Saturday.  Started in 2010 its aim is to showcase all that small and local businesses have to offer. 

Consumers can use the campaign’s Small Business Finder to discover small business offers local to them at https://smallbusinesssaturdayuk.com/small-business-finder

The campaign has grown enormously and there are at least 50 other Lincoln-based businesses listed on the finder alongside Make An Entrance.  Consumers UK wide will be able to use the tool to find businesses to support in their local area. 

The impact of small business cannot be over stated, as demonstrated by these figures from the Federation of Small Business (FSB): 

  • 99.2% of all businesses in the UK are small and independently run – there are 5.5 million of them
  • Around half of all people employed in the private sector work in small businesses, currently 16 million people
  • SMEs contribute £1.6 trillion to the British economy
  • When you shop with small and local businesses 63p in every pound spent stays in the local economy as it is re-spent in rent, rates and wages etc. *

For 2022 Small Business Saturday is on 3rd December.  On this day consumers are encouraged to go out and support all types of small businesses, online, in offices and in stores. 

Added Sam, “Make An Entrance will participate in Small Business Saturday with offers on our artisan produced gifts and personalised doormats.  From today until December 5th we will be offering 10% off our custom printed mats and personalised gifts range to all customers using the code ‘SMALLBIZ’ when ordering online.”

*Figures courtesy of FSB November 2022.

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Rachel Hargrave

Rachel has over 30 years of local, regional, national and international communications experience and expertise across a wide variety of clients including FTSE 100 companies, SMEs, micro businesses and start-ups. She also has extensive charity, Not-For-Profit and Community Interest Company experience and happily offers clients working in these areas a 50% discount on all RDZ PR rates.

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